Radical Gloucestershire Camp, June 14th-16th

Radical Gloucestershire Camp in the Forest of Dean, Friday 14^th, Saturday 15^th and Sunday 16^th June.

This will happen only if there is a dry weather forecast. Camping near Drybrook at Greenway Farm Caravan and Camping Site.  See www.greenwayfarm.org

Please book in. We’d be delighted to see you. There is a flexible programme but people are free to ignore the suggested schedule. Even if people follow the schedule, some may wish to cycle, some may wish to walk. Bicycle hire is available after a short car drive from the camp site.

Arrive on the Friday – Cannop Colliery trail and visit Saint Andrew’s Well (5 flat miles).

Saturday – 2^nd colliery trail (either New Fancy (5 and a half flat miles) or Speculation (8 and a half) or bike both )and a visit to the unique cider house and curry house in picturesque Newnham.

Sunday – 3^rd colliery trail and/or visit to Colliery Museum.

Stroud Spring, Stroud Summer 1825; May 19th 2013

The Spring and Summer of 1825?

Nothing here about the weather, I’m afraid,

 Instead, anonymous letters portending

Murder, mayhem and machine-breaking,

 With arson and mill destruction

Thrown into the pot for good measure;

Silent shuttles, strikes, mute looms,

Bosses’ men and strike-breakers

Ducked in the various brooks and waters

In acts of summary Christian justice;

Mass meetings on the hills and in the valleys,

On the commons and in the streets of Stroud,

The Riot Act read, with gallant hussars

Riding down would-be trade unionists,

(“We accomplished this with…slash of the sword only”)

The street-seller of “The True British Weavers”

Thrown into gaol without trial, or jury.

This was the spring and summer of 1825,

When thousands fought the market place,

In the hills and valleys of the Cotswolds;

This is our unmarked Radical Heritage,

But your sixth sense can secretly sense it:

Create theatres of memory in your mind,

Invoke Stroud's Spirit of Place,

Then invite spectators to their seats.

Weavers and Workhouse Walk, Sunday May19th, High Noon

Before I give details about the next walk, I do recommend a visit to ‘Water - The Miniature Museum of Memories’ at Stroud Museum (throughout May) and also ‘Walking the Land: River’, discussion 10-noon at Stroud Brewery, Thrupp, Saturday 18^th May.

RADICAL STROUD WALK SUNDAY MAY 19^th

Meet mid-day in front of the cinema.

We then look at the 1825 weavers’ riots whilst meandering along the canal to Cainscross.

We then ascend to Ruscombe, where we look at poverty in the 1830s and the local alternative to a cash-economy.

We descend via Callowell, so as to amble along the Slad Road with the intention of reaching the top of the town via Libby’s Drive and Baxter’s Field.

We discuss the workhouse and the 1839 Miles Report about the poverty of the handloom weavers whilst at the cemetery.

We then skirt the Heavens to descend to the canal.

We walk back into town to look at the poor law guardians’ plaque in the Ale House and have a chin-wag.

No charge – hand-outs provided – mystery guest - please bring own victuals.

Finding the Source of the Frome by Bike

I can’t recommend this enough. Have a look at the pictures that will eventually appear on www.radicalstroud.org.uk in the Landscape section, but here is a recommended route from Stroud. This ride obviously involves quite a few climbs, but get off and push along the quieter lanes when you fancy it and that should provide variety. I took about four hours there and back from Stroud, with breaks for walking, eating, photographing, musing and so on.

I went along Bisley Road to climb up to Stancombe and then past Camp and Foston’s Ash, to turn right towards Brimpsfield. Keep your eyes peeled for Climperwell Farm; just past that is a footpath into a clearing on your right. Here you find a well and a spring – one of the sources of the Frome. It is an absolutely exhilarating sight, for when you glance at the map you notice that there are tumuli in the fields above this spring. You have bicycled through time into a landscape with prehistoric meaning.

Brimpsfield is a medieval delight: a church set well away from the village, next to a motte, once the site of two separate castles. You can see water down in the valley below the motte and the map indicates springs down there. If you walk to the wall behind the church, then you are looking towards Nettleton, where springs also issue and feed the eventual Frome.

It seems a bit of a shock to see traffic hurtling along the road, when standing in such a medieval spot – but that road is, of course, the old Roman Ermin Street, running between Gloucester and Cirencester. There is a footpath going down towards the valley bottom in the direction of Watercombe farm, but I chose to bicycle – I think I might walk it next time. There are springs down there  - the other source of the Frome.

These two sources merge and the waters at Caudle Green are christened, as it were, the River Frome. Caudle Green is another delight – it was interesting to see how puddles were standing in the road below Spring Cottage, even though the recent weeks had been so dry. (I made this exploration on May Day - Underneath the Pavements, the Beach!) A climb up through Caudle Green (Stroud ‘bus service once a week, on a Thursday) took me back to the Stroud-Cranham road; I then descended towards Slad for Stroud. I think it better to return to town on this route: it is such a sustained and unrelenting drag up to the top through Slad; the Bisley climb is more abrupt, but shorter, and then you have the free wheeling freedom of the long drawn out downward ride to Slad and Stroud.

A great day out.

Ashleworth, Spring and Ivor Gurney

I have been fruitlessly trying to get hold of a copy of Edward Thomas’ ‘In Pursuit of Spring’ for some while, but that failure didn’t matter in the least today, at the end of April, when I walked around Ashleworth, following in the footsteps of Ivor Gurney. The sky, the land and the river all put on such a show, that it seemed as though I followed a perfect dream of spring; there was no need to pursue.

The blackthorn blossom, smoky and dusty in cloudscape shadow, dazzled the eye with its brilliant whiteness as the morning progressed. The Severn, too, changed from a dark, sullen, turbid force to a gentle ‘ water’s canvas’ where ‘ bright sunshine paints the picture of the day.’ The hawthorn hedgerows grew ever greener; the haze on the Malverns drifted towards some blue remembered hills, whilst Barrow Hill stood sentinel, as I walked upstream, with the Cotswolds to my right, way beyond the waters.

I didn’t see a sinner for about three hours: just parliaments of rooks; a pair of ducks taking off to destinations known only to themselves; the occasional hawk; a robin; then my first swallow of the spring, sweeping over the Severn’s surface. I even heard my first cuckoo in years, and then glanced up from the newspaper to see a swan gliding along, for all the world, just like a Viking longboat.

I don’t know if the Vikings came here but the Saxons certainly left their herring bone stonework in the church; but it is the medieval that predominates in Ashleworth: the barn; the manor house; the preaching cross; the quay, down by the pub called ‘The Boat’. The quay reminds us of how riverine transport was a darn sight easier before the age of turnpike roads and railways; equally, many of the footpaths here move in Euclidean straight lines, from village to village – unlike the constantly curving lanes and roadways.

The village post office did not have a Victorian postbox such as I saw in Hasfield, but it did have a collection box for food, ‘The Lord’s Larder’, as did St.Mary’s in Hasfield. These food parcels are for needy families in the area, coordinated by St. Mary’s in Newent. Sometimes, modernity still shocks. I used to associate Christian charity with what was once called ‘The Third World’; it is a surprise to find such alliterative support now so localised. We are, of course, all in this together.

Any road, the walk from The Haw and Hasfield down to Ashleworth was as delightful as the stroll out along the Severn’s banks: cow parsley; my first sighting of bluebells; pear and apple trees in blossom and the thought of my walking in Ivor Gurney’s wake. The only traffic I saw in the five minutes I spent waiting for the ‘bus at the crossroads in Ashleworth was a girl on a horse. I read Gurney’s poem ‘Above Ashleworth’ on the journey back to Gloucester. How much more meaning it now had, after walking the landscape.

O does some blind fool now stand on my hill

To see how Ashleworth nestles by the river?

Where eyes and heart and soul may drink their fill

The Cotswolds range out Eastward as if never

A curve of them the hand of Time might change;

Beauty sleeps most confidently for ever.

The blind fool stands, his dull eyes free to range

Endlessly almost, and finds no words to say,

Not that the sense of wonder is too strange

Too great for speech. Naught touches him; the day

Blows its glad trumpets, breathes rich-odoured breath;

Glory after glory passes away.

(And I’m in France!) He looks and sees beneath

The clouds in steady Severn silver and grey.

But dead he is, and comfortable in Death.

Searching for the Source of the Frome

This is, at this very moment of writing these words, a virtual exploration of the source of the River Frome. It will eventually become real, booted and begrimed, but until I get my head around Cotswold Green's rickety-rackety 'bus timetables, this riverine search takes place on the laptop on the kitchen table, rather than on (or is it in?) a water table. I know I have to get up to Nettleton, near Birdlip, and Climperwell Farm, near Brimpsfield: what watery poetry is contained within these names! Two groups of springs issuing forth in 'Nettle-ton' and 'Climper-well', near 'Brim-(p)sfield'.
These two trickling lines join together at Caudle Green, near Miserden, where the water is honoured with the name, 'Frome'. For some, 'Frome' is derived from the Celtic river-word, 'fram'; this certainly seems to make sense along what was once also called the Stroudwater, with Frampton, Framilode, Fraherne and so on. Do we walk this river in the company of shadowy, dripping and muddied dark-age ghosts?
Whatever. But it is certainly a beguilingly deceptive river as it drops down to Sapperton, disappearing, as it does, at times. No wonder King George 3rd became confused in 1788, when he started talking to trees. It was probably his visit that year to the canal tunnel wot done it: where's that river gone? It was here a minute ago.
But we are more interested in the origins of this river - its first cause, as it were; its ability to spring from nothing in a sort of duck and egg conundrum. I know that geology and hydrology help explain the pattern of springs; I understand that gravity and scientific laws explain why water flows in the direction it does. But, at the same time, isn't there something magical, alchemical and beyond imagination about it all? The John Keats as well as Isaac Newton trope sort of thing; I'm not invoking a deity - just metaphorically standing jaw-dropped at the is-ness of it all.
For there we have the confluence of two springs, determined by the shape and content of sky and landscape, dropping down to Caudle Green. Here on a delicately balanced watershed, on the finest of lines, gravity's scales of justice direct some water west via the Frome, to the Severn and the Bristol Channel; other droplets drift eastwards via the Churn to Cricklade, then on to the Great Wen and the English Channel. Conjoined droplets of water, slipping apart to opposite points of the compass, yet still conjoined by history and language: the Celtic 'fra', denoting a 'brisk' river; the Celtic 'chwern', indicating a 'swift' flow.
When I was a child, a popular junior school essay was 'A Day in the Life of a Penny'; what about, instead, 'A Tale of Two Oozes'?

Church Walk

It was a sunny enough April day but the chafing easterly wind cut your cheeks to shreds. People in the streets of Stroud had donned hats of every shape, size and elevation, in the forlorn hope of keeping heads and ears warm, but their faces bore the tell-tale brunt and burden. Everyone was wondering when spring would finally and decisively take its place amongst us – or would this bitter winter defiantly and continuously persist?

But as the day progressed and the sun rose higher in the sky, so the patches of blue grew ever wider, and the clouds changed shape to ‘traveller’s joy’. Snowdrops were still abundant, but primrose, violets and even a solitary cowslip reminded us of how Spring will, every year, eventually hammer the final nails into Winter’s coffin.

And so it proved, as we walked out from Arts and Crafts Sapperton to St. Mary’s at Edgeworth. This is a church well worth a visit. The path takes you past Pinbury Park, once the home of John Masefield, then through hollow-ways, green lanes and four-ways-went. There is a distinct DMV vibe about the rolling greensward here; so many paths intersecting in the middle of nowhere; big sky country with the occasional big ploughed open field; the ghosts of medieval peasants turning up the stones: “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?”

The contentment continued at St. Mary’s: a carved Saxon stone in the porch; a stained glass window from betwixt the Black Death and the Peasants’ Revolt; a local cured of leprosy at Canterbury through the Thomas a Beckett cult; pews marked ‘Manor’ at the front of the nave with ‘Cottagers’ at the back; a plethora of 17^th century gravestones and a wooden seat in the sun. What more could you ask for?

Only to visit this place again. The village is ‘said to be the most remote in the Cotswolds’; it is about 8 miles from Stroud and 8 from Cirencester. This makes the church feel even more adrift in time and space – but death linked even this isolated village with the Bay of Bengal and also with the Great War. The Empire and the European Balance of Power are present even here, with melancholic inscriptions, in this wind-blown graveyard, high up on the wolds.

Also present were memories of our recent trip to Cusop, near Hay on Wye. There we had linked arms around thousand year old yews: it took 6 adults to encircle one of those venerable trunks. That worked out according to my rough mathematical arboreal abacus at about 160 years per adult. We had also looked at the 12^th century frescoes at Kempley, near Dymock, the day before. 5 adults did the trick there. It seems as though we may have a ready reckoner similar to the hedgerow calibrator - I’m sure you know about the old adage of 100 years for each species of tree or shrub in a 30 metre stretch of country hedgerow.

We returned to Sapperton via the Daneway: as good a pub as you can find on as good a walk as you can make. Tea and beer were taken before walking along the canal, the vanishing Frome and through the field where the horses and donkeys were led as the bargees legged it through the tunnel. Perhaps King George 3^rd became as perplexed as we did about the whereabouts of the Frome, when he visited here in his annus horribilis of 1788, and so began to first lose his mind.

But it was near here that my aunt and father used to play when they moved to Frampton Mansell after the First World War. This was one of their favourite spots. My Auntie Kath wrote the following poem some 50 to 60 years later.

For My Brother

When we were young and full of fun

And all our days were carefree,

Do you remember that September

We climbed the old pear tree?

The finest crop grows at the top,

That bramble jam we ate,

Our mother made and carefully laid

On shelves with name and date.

We took a stick and went to pick

The biggest blackest berries,

Pulling down to near the ground

Clusters hung like cherries.

Remember the gate where we used to wait

For the early morning light,

To show in the field the wonderful yield

Of mushrooms, gleaming white.

The nuts we found so full and round,

And filberts too, so rare,

That lovely autumn on Sapperton Common,

What joy we used to share.

Wild harvest brings a host of things,

Mushrooms, nuts and fruit,

But best of all, with every fall,

Comes memory, absolute.