Elen Sentier ~ Wye's Woman

Sunday morning we were off by 07.30 heading north back over the Pennines, up to Glasgow, by Loch Lomond and on to Rannoch Moor and Glencoe. We made loch lomond by lunchtime, found a layby to brew up in and have lunch. This was the beginning of the serious Oooo-Aaaaah time! The mountains are completely amazing! So are the moors ... dark, wild, full of wyrd, a place of the Old Ones, the ancient gods, the ones from far before the later gods we know now, the time of even before Math ap Mathonwy, the times of Beli Mawr, Beli the Great, who I know through the Sun.  Crossing Rannoch Moor that afternoon, heading for the King's House, we passed through dark lands full of water and peat bog, not an easy place to walk if we had had to but one that would swallow you whole without a second glance. Some folk would be terrified but really want the chance to walk there - with due care, attention and a map! To sleep out in that ancient land, in the hand of the gods, to wake in the night an...

Being back home again it seems soooo long ago since we left. This is episode 1 ... The Kite Waggon We got off to a good early start and headed up the Leominster road, to go via Shrewsbury, then on to Cheshire to climb over the Pennines and arrive in York in the afternoon. We managed very well and the Kite Waggon showed her metal climbing the mountains. It's a long time since I've sat high up in a truck, it's fantastic having such a great view. Many years since I've been to York too. It's a small, pretty city enclosed in its wall with the Fosse forming a moat. We fetched up at the camp site first and got a great place on hard standing and close enough to the facilities, then headed into York to meet Steve and the PFNE folk at the Black Swan . Black Swan Cat It's a great tavern and pagan-friendly. Fiona parked the Waggon absolutely to an inch in their narrow-entranced car park, then we headed for the bar. I had OP (Old Peculiar) it being one of the o...

We're back in Scotland. Will blog properly tomorrow. Here's a sunset to be going on with.

Today was Forsinard, the Flow Country, the largest area of blanket bog in the world. Amazing, dark, brooding, peaceful and full of boggarts. And full of wonderful plants just beginning to flower. The season is a month behind us at home in Hereford, still winter with the earth just stirring now. We walked out into the bog land on the trail the RSPB have made, it's NOT safe to walk the bog unless you have perfect foot dowsing as the deer and the wildcats do - I haven't! The walking was wonderful. Windy but so silent of human sounds, just the land and the beasts and the birds. And the sky. It's a wide, broad spacious land. On our way north we saw the back end and tail of a wildcat leaping into the off side bank ... a sign again, especially as we are in Caithness, the land of the Cat.

Place of Ice Giants ... And of the great deer. We came up from York across the Pennines then up to Loch Lomond, beautiful country. Then we entered the lands of the Ice Giants. These mountains used to be as big as the Himalayas, what we have now is the result of 4 million years of erosion, polished by the glaciers of the last ice age. I'm sensing right back there, all the way. And the Great Deer are there, Elen and Gwyn they call themselves to me although they have many names in many places. I'll be dreaming with them tonight, prepping for the Meadow of Stags tomorrow. We were graced by deer tonight already ... I go to dream.