There are few better places to spend a rainy March day than on the moors, not least because it scares away the punters. It was a scenic drive, as I meandered down the lanes of the Mendip hills. The landscape revealed a panoramic view of the lowlands of Somerset, afflicted by a month of heavy rainfall. The flooding made Glastonbury Tor appear as a lake isle once more.
The roads approaching the marshes were now mile-long straight tracks, with industrial scars on the landscape, leaving a nice cross-hatched design on my OS map. The tracks were barely more than a car's width in places, and on either side of the trail there was lake. I almost got marooned on the bank at one point as a truck rudely barged past as I reversed precariously to the water's edge. The familiar pastoral shires of the Mendips, beautifully marked by weathercocks on church spires was a stark contrast to the flat and inhospitable marshes that looked the same in every direction.
As I negotiated the narrow causeways I took a right at the crossroads as I could spot a bungalow off in the distance. Expecting the road to widen, I crossed a stone humpback bridge and the road promptly disappeared in front of me beneath a dark green lagoon. The bungalow in question was also in the lagoon, and I still cannot be certain whether the house was meant to have two storeys rather than one. I reversed and picked a different causeway with haste, unsure if the water was still rising from the day's persistent rain.
To give a bit of historical context of the landscape; what remains today on the Somerset Levels is a carefully recreated peat wetland from a time before the landscape was drained for agriculture, and before the peat cutting during the industrial revolution. While the original Somerset moor is long lost, the environment returning to a more natural state is good news for wildfowl, raptors, wading birds, rare spiders and bog-brush crickets.
The moor lives rent-free on the Anglo-Saxon psyche. It is the home of the wretched swamp creature Grendel; the sinister Long Lankin, with his spiderlike limbs blending in among the reedbeds and the vines, luring his victims in the dead of night; as well as the inspiration for the dead marshes and the Lady of the Lake. For the uninitiated, the landscape is a treacherous one, where the blanket bog wobbles when walked upon and mud gives way without warning to murky open water. The mist will disorientate, leading one out into the unstable mud like quicksand. But once familiarised, the marshes can be a place of refuge and resource.
Inhabitants of the marshes back in the Iron Age would carve canoes and move around by wading, fashioning walkways with timber, or made stilts. It was here that the Iron Age tribes built villages on stilts and log piles. Roman legions complained of how tribesmen would hide so that only their heads were above water. It was near here that King Alfred's company fled from Chippenham to a marsh isle in Athelney, separated from the mainland by a causeway, and lived among the reed beds. He was completely dependent on his surroundings and local villagers for food and shelter, while he planned his campaign against Guthrum's heathen army. It was here that the monks of Glastonbury sought refuge and built a network of monasteries and hermitages and where Anglo-Saxon Christianity solidified a foothold in the West Country.
I always find it an inspiring place to visit, invoking all sorts of wild imagery while traversing through the remnants of ancient fen, alder carr woodland and wet meadows, and not least because when in the open looking across the lake, Glastonbury Tor dominated the horizon, rising from behind the birch and oak trees like a vast ancient headstone, a tangible trace of Arthurian Britain and all those legends.
The moors; a landscape that once felt hostile is abundant with life. Besides the footpath are boughs of wild herbs and flowers, a veritable spread that would have been familiar to your average Elizabethan homesteader: wood sorrel, ribwort plantain, yarrow, jack-by-the-hedge, hogweed, three-cornered leek. The verges were both a medicine cabinet and spice rack that will re-stock itself every year. As I moseyed through the fen I heard the chattering of reed warblers and in the sky marsh harriers patrolled the skies like drones over the great plains.
I reached a wooden hide on stilts and took a seat, and scanned across the open landscape. Moments later a small flash of electric blue darted across my peripheral, the first and last sighting of a kingfisher that day. White egrets perched precariously in the trees on their giant rookeries. A pair of veteran birdspotters told me that the male marsh harriers have a white bit on their heads and necks while the females are brown. They had travelled two hours to be there that day.
Later, a little egret waded through the reeds, waiting patiently for a glass eel or a marsh frog to swim by, neck cocked and long pointed beak ready to spear through the water like a javelin. Moments before I left, a great murmuration of starlings filled the evening sky, so densely packed they resembled a great whale emerging over the moor. On the table in the hide was an old notepad in which keen eyes had reported their sightings from the day: Gadwall, cetti's warbler, m. swan, starling, goldcrest, chiffchaff, cormorant, coot, moorhen, marsh harrier, canada goose, shoveler, woodpigeon, b. tit, g. tit, blackbird. I scribbled down a few more birds to add to the list. Egrets and glossy ibis are frequent visitors to the moor, birds that look more at home on the African plains next to gazelle and buffalo now frequent the Somerset watering hole. Pelicans once inhabited Britain right up until the Roman occupation, now it doesn't seem so far-fetched that they might return one day.
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