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| Our shadow-selves walking along Fleam Dyke |
In my family and amongst my own circle of friends it has always been the case that on Boxing Day you go for a long, restorative walk in the countryside. This year was no different and Susanna and I, and an old college friend called Graham, took a spin out of town to walk along the ancient Anglo-Saxon earthwork called
Fleam Dyke to the wonderfully atmospheric Bronze Age burial mound called
Mutlow Hill near which (or so local legend has it) is buried a golden chariot. It's truly a landscape full of magical and mythical resonances that particularly suited our mood fed, as it had been, by an earlier conversation about
Ronald Hutton's splendid body of work.
One of the surprises of this walk was that since I last came this way the dyke has been extensively cleared of scrub. Undoubtedly some people will have reservations about this but it is clear the work has been carried out fully aware of the need to balance both the need to protect the ancient monument and the well being of the site's flora and fauna. What one can say with confidence is the the dyke's monumental nature is now more clearly revealed to all and I, for one, delighted in what I saw.
As always I took a few photos along the way and paste them below for your enjoyment. They were all taken with my Ricoh GR. Just click on a photo to enlarge it.
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| Looking south-east along the dyke at the barrow on Mutlow Hill |
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| Mutlow Hill bronze-age barrow |
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| Mutlow Hill |
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| Graham and Susanna contemplating the barrow on Mutlow Hill |
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| Looking back at the dyke from Mutlow Hill |
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| Another view of the barrow and tree on Mutlow Hill |
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| Looking back at the dyke from Mutlow Hill |
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| Looking back at the dyke from Mutlow Hill |
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| Heading home — Susanna climbs back onto the dyke |
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