As promised to
@catseye , I've been doing a fair bit of walking in and around the Cotswolds over the past month or two. At the tail end of September, I did a two-day hike out of Charlbury to the Rollright Stones, then looping back to spend the night in Chipping Norton before continuing on to Banbury the next day.
I do love the eroding limestone tombstones in the local churchyards, this one from Charlbury:
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Then onwards, through spectacularly atmostpheric stretches of woodland:
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I headed to Taston, the placename is a corruption of Thor's Stone, and the stone is still there. Local folklore holds that it was a thunderbolt thrown by Thor himself. The stone is an imposing monument, sadly diminished by being half-hidden by an overgrown garden hedge. Here you can see it in the shadow of the remains of the local medieval wayside cross. It is interesting that when they built the cross, they did not destroy the Thor Stone, which stood for thousands of years before the cross was built:
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My restless feet take me ever onwards, over fields and hills and through woods:
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Until I reached the Hawk Stone, a solitary standing stone at a field edge some way outside Spelsbury:
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It really is a spectacular standing stone, 8 foot tall, standing like a linchpin through Time, pinning the past to the present.
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The stone has some folklore attached, the stone was said to have been dragged to its position by a witch; another says that the cleft at the top was formed by the chains when witches were bound to the stone to be burned. Touching the hollow in the top is said to bring good luck, and passers-by had deposited offerings there:
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Arriving in Chipping Norton, after a coffee break, I headed down to the local church, with its impressive effigy tombs, one example here:
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The onwards to the Rollright Stones, which have collected a particularly large body of folklore that I won't relate here, including rumours of nefarious night-time rituals by black cloaked figure. First, the Whispering Knights, the remains of a Neolithic burial chamber:
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The on to the King's Men stone circle, which I found crawling alive with neo-pagans. Duh! 21st September - I had arrived on the autumnal equinox. Or had I? Google tells me that the equinox fell on the 22nd September this year; however, coward that I am, and not wishing to be offered up as the next sacrifice, I did not point this out to the gathers witches, warlocks and other colourful folk - I'm sure they know their own business. There were more of them than appear in the photo here, and I am quite disappointed that a fellow clothed in multicolour strips of cloth didn't turn up in my photos:
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After dropping by the King Stone across the road, I returned to Chipping Norton via Little Rollright, the church of which had an effigy tomb of this rather dapper gentleman:
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I do love the way these Renaissance monuments are decorated with reminders of our mortality:
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Back in Chipping Norton, I stayed at the Crown & Cushion, a decent stopping point and, according to Doc Paul's app, supposed to be haunted by Gunpowder Plotters. I did not come across any.
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The next day, damp and overcast, I hauled on up the ridge again:
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The Rollright Stones were much less busy, in spite of it being the actual Equinox (that's what Google tells me). I could get decent photos of the King Stone without assorted witchy types:
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And indeed, of the King's Men:
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And the offerings that had been left in the middle the previous day:
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Then onwards, through more atmospheric woods, past ancient farmbuildings, dropping down towards Banbury, where torrential rain caught me for the last hour of my walk, making mapreading impossible by paper or phone, fortunately I was close enough to find my own way.
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I passed by Tadmarton Camp, a small Iron Age fort that is nonetheless quite well defined, at least on the north side of the road that bisects it. The interior is used as a paddock, and I was able to walk around the rampart and into the interior:
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At one point I passed through a herd of cows with most impressive horns. They were docile, but their general spikiness made me a little more nervous than usual:
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