Avalon Sunset - the shining levels

And did those feet?

“Let's go forward into this fight in the spirit of William Blake: I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall the sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.”  The words of a committed cry for Brexit?  No way.....

In 1945 Clement Attlee encouraged the voters of the United Kingdom to choose him over Winston Churchill (who mentioned the Gestapo in connection with a potential Labour leadership) not from a blind adherence to little England, but with a passionate view of a welfare state that would flourish at peace with its neighbours. 

And William Blake, who speculated on the visit of Jesus of Nazareth with his great-uncle, tin-trader Joseph of Arimathea, to Cornwall and Somerset, would not have recognised the term Euro-sceptic (a bit of a Neo Romantic, our Bill)……

...Won't you meet me down by Avalon

In the summertime in England

In the Church of St. John...

Did you ever hear about Jesus walkin'

Jesus walkin' down by Avalon?

Van Morrison - Summertime in England

St Michael's, Glastonbury Tor

Naturally, sceptics will say that the legend of holy feet on the Somerset Levels was just a ploy by Michael Eavis to hype up the Glasto fest, but, hey, anything that gets Dolly Parton on the Pyramid Stage cannot be all wrong….  Post Truth or Alternative Facts?

And did those feet in ancient time,

Walk upon Englands mountains green:

And was the holy Lamb of God,

On Englands pleasant pastures seen!

Van Morrison’s 1989 album Avalon Sunset touched, perhaps obliquely, on the links between mysticism and human love, and took in elements of pastoral beauty and personal happiness that stir deep yearnings for peace and harmony.

There's a love that's divine

And it's yours and it's mine

And it shines like the sun

At the end of the day we will give thanks and pray to the One

Van Morrison - Have I told you lately that I love you

Marsh Harrier, hunting over RSPB Ham Wall

Van celebrated birdwatching (not a recurrent theme in popular music) which relates well to my motivation to visit the Avalon Marshes…..

Coming down from Downpatrick

Stopping off at St. John's Point

Out all day birdwatching

And the craic was good

Van Morrison - Coney Island

But it goes beyond.  The imagination does not have to be fed on psychobabble to see Arthur out with a pair of bins and a bottle of mead, Excalibur peacefully scabbarded by his side.  Whoever he was, the legends distort – were the bones discovered in Glastonbury those of him and his unfaithful wife, Guinevere, as well as his lover, Lyonors? 

Whoever Arthur was, Sword in the Stone or Morte d'Arthur or not, the imagination thrives on stories, and this is fertile ground.....

Black-tailed Godwits, with an escort of Lapwing

Love of the simple is all that I need

I've no time for schism or lovers of greed

Go up to the mountain, go up to the glen

When silence will touch you

And heartbreak will mend.

Van Morrison - I'm Tired Joey Boy

A flock of Wigeon above RSPB Greylake

The Somerset Levels are ancient lands, with human history reaching back 10,000 years….  That's approximately 8,000 years before those feet were even mangered.... 

Yes, for sure, flooding may be a terrific hardship for those who scrape their living from the inundated soils here, but this is not new…..

These are the days of the endless summer

These are the days, the time is now

There is no past, there's only future

There's only here, there's only now

Van Morrison - These Are The Days

I have been out on the Somerset Levels, stepping slowly across the gleaming wetlands, watching the flocks of nervous Wigeon, or restless Godwits.  I’ve ascended Burrow Mump, 

St Michael's, Burrow Mump

To watch over the shining meadows.  I’ve toiled up Glastonbury Tor, directed by Tiger Balm scented individuals with wispy scarves tied in their hair.  And I have paddled through the wetlands of RSPB Greylake, the Avalon Marshes and Ham Wall in search of birds, common and rare.

Fill my life with gladness

Ease my troubles that's what you do

Fill my life with gladness

Take away my sadness

Ease my troubles that's what you do

Van Morrison - Have I told you lately that I love you

A pair of Canada Geese

And, as the light faded, I have watched the spectacular flight of a million Starlings as they flock down to roost amongst the reeds, spiralling, convoluting and fluttering, but never missing a wingbeat in the beautiful diamond coordination of their molecular bondings.

Every day is different, and on this occasion there are no famous murmurations,  just thousands upon thousands of birds descending from the air to sleep in the comparative safety and companionship of numbers….

And then, in the last vestiges of winter dusk, I look back towards the fifteenth century tower on top of the ancient Tor, and glimpse, for a moment, the purity of the mythical past. 

These are the days by the sparkling river

And His timely grace and the treasured find

This is the love of the one great magician

Turned the water into wine

These are the days now that we must savour

And we must enjoy as we can

These are the days that will last forever

You've got to hold them in your heart.

Van Morrison - These Are The Days

And in the deepening gloom, the spirits of Attlee, and Blake, and Jesus, and Morrison (Van, not, with the greatest respect, Ken) blend into one great murmuration of spiritual uplift…..

And then it’s dark, and there is nothing but the wind among the reeds…..

Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

W B Yeats - Into the Twilight

Or, as another W B appended to his Jerusalem:

Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets

Numbers XI.ch 29.v

La Gomera - Next stop America.....

Sound and Fury

La Gomera is made of cheese. Very hard cheese. I know it is hard because a bit of it broke off and hurt my car....  But more of that anon.

La Gomera is a Canary Island, with a particular claim to fame.  This was the last bit of land Christopher Columbus set foot on before he discovered what may eventually be known as the Dis-United States of Trumpica.  Here is his boat.....

Quite small isn't it?

La Gomera is also the home of a tribe of Clangers - at least it seems so, as the folk here have developed a language made up entirely of whistles.  The reason for this being that the island is so gullied and ravined that rather than make extremely tiresome journeys down and up to cross valleys of cheese to make conversation with their neighbours, the islanders whistle at each other.  So developed is this language, that even the emergency announcements on our ferry from Tenerife were given in Siblo, as it is called....

Or did I imagine that?

Anyway, our accommodation on La Gomera was basic:

Though it looked better from the back:

Up the hill above the port, or rather above what appears to be The Vale of Eden:

I find apples growing. Thorn Apple. AKA Datura stramonium, aka jimson weed, which gets its name from Jamestown Weed after an unfortunate incident in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1676, when British Soldiers inadvertently stewed up some of the plant and spent eleven days totally out of their tiny minds.....

Which brings to mind Benjy, in The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner:

I'll declare. Luster said. You fusses when you don't see them and you fusses when you does. Why can't you hush. Don't you reckon folks gets tired of listening to you all the time. Here. You dropped your jimson weed.  He picked it up and gave it back to me.  You needs a new one.  You 'bout wore that one out. We stood at the fence and watched them......

[The book is a little on the confusing side, but well worth a read....]

Perhaps this coloured my experience of the island?  

But I digress.....

I seem to be followed by birds.  

But I digress.

Our accommodation is in fact quite secure.  I had earlier mistaken the road from the harbour, and now we are settled.  This, I believe, is what is known as a paramour.....

Torre del Conde (1447)

But maybe I got that wrong?

Anyway, the island of La Gomera is just far enough from Tenerife to be able to see El Teide, but to be out of earshot of the hoi polloi on the esplanade at Los Cristianos....

In order to explore the island, I acquire an antique Seat Ibiza five door hatchback.  This vehicle has a clearance of approximately 25 centimetres.

I know this because the precipitous, tortuous roads are strewn with lumps of hard cheese that have fallen from the overhanging cliffs. Most of these, I can attest, are less than 25 centimetres in diameter. 

One rock, however, on the road just outside Vallehermoso, was more like 27 centimetres in height.....

I rang the office in San Sebastian. They told me to drive the next twenty five kilometres of tortuous, cheese-strewn, mountain roads to Valle Gran Rey, where they had a mechanic. The car sounded very sick, but, we did, eventually, make it..... Just before the mechanic closed for his traditional four hour lunch break.....

Lovely scenery on the way.

When you can see it.....

The mechanic, having checked that I had taken out full insurance, gives me an identical, but roadworthy, Seat Ibiza, and we return to the misty heights of the Parque Nacional de Garajonay, where busloads of day trippers marvel at the mists.....

This is a remarkable stretch of forest, swathed in condensation as warm breezes from Africa and the Mediterranean meet Atlantic trade winds.  These forests, largely made of evergreen laurels, represent what much of Europe was covered in before the ice ages, and it is now protected by World Heritage status.

There are also cheese trees up here.... Clangers whistle softly to each other. The Iron Chicken clanks around and there are Soup Dragons in the undergrowth....

Down on the south coast, at Playa de Santiago, near the island's only airport, the Avenida Maritima is closed....

The black volcanic beach is quiet.....

The petanca pitch is quiet.  Just a quartet of Germans passing the time.....

And on the rocky jetty a solitary venturer contemplates swimming to Trumpica in the wake of Christopher Columbus.

Though half way across the Atlantic he meets a shoal of fleeing barracuda who warn him of the Trumpfish.  So pretty soon he is back.....

To make the most of the cultural opportunities of the island, I spend the afternoon in a bar,

While Amanda explores the exotic local gardens,

And then it is time to say Adios! to the delicate charms of Playa de Santiago, 

To wind over the cheese mountains again, with their delicious prickly pears.....

To return to San Sebastian de la Gomera, where the locals are very pleased to see us and have arranged to celebrate our arrival.

Though, perhaps, since it is January 20th, they were going to celebrate anyway.  

I think the clue is in the name of the town.....

Though quite why these charming people should be so keen on one of Diocletian's imperial guardsmen (from Gaul) who was shot full of arrows as a punishment for being a Christian and then cudgelled to death (when it was discovered that he wasn't dead as he had been nursed after the shooting by the widow of St Catulus) and buried by the Appia Antica in Rome.....

I just don't know....

Nor, it would seem, do the stars of the show.....

I notice that the local people all have flat heads, with rims,

But I spot one lady, who must be Irish, who is shouting about the beans she has seen washed up on the west coast of Ireland, which brings me back to the story of Columbus and his expedition to discover the source of these beans....

But I digress.....

So we go and eat with the Clangers.....

Where, having ordered by whistling in Siblo Gomero, we have soup from the volcanic soup mines, followed by Blue String Pudding.....

Pass the jimson weed.....

[I may have got confused.  The reference to the whistling and the Clangers was supposed to link to the book, The Sound and the Furry.....]