the White Horses of Wiltshire

This is my new map of Wiltshire's white horses (and of course Uffington, which is in Oxfordshire but I could hardly leave it out now, could I?). It's available from my Etsy shop in various sizes; here's the link to the big version (it comes in A3, A4 and postcard)

 I've taken some liberties with perspective, distance and orientation, because some of the slopes upon which the horses are found are north-facing, and some (well, the Devizes one at least) are so shallow that the horse is considerably foreshortened. Do you draw them as seen from below? From some distance away? From above? It all depends. So it goes. 

My friends made some useful and helpful suggestions for Things To Put On The Map. Without Deborah Harvey's compendious knowledge of West Country history, I'd never have known about the Salisbury Hob-Nob, a hobby horse with hobnails for teeth and a nasty bite. And although to my knowledge the RAF never dropped horses by parachute, only mules by glider, and then only in the Far East in the Burmese jungle, Richard Jones pointed out that one of the most useful gliders in that war was the Airspeed Horsa, many of which took off from Wiltshire airfields on D Day. Which is enough to get it onto the map; I do like drawing aeroplanes. Ditto the Westland Dragonfly up at the top there, suggested by Christine Beckett. There is an obscure horse reference there, and if you can identify it you will win a round of applause. 

There's a couple of artefacts from the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes. I went there to find the Romano-British horse and rider brooch found at Cold Kitchen Hill ('thought possibly to have a religious significance', which an archaeologist friend says is what they say when they haven't a clue), but also found the Marlborough Bucket, which was worth the entry fee alone. It's decorated with heads and horses, and is reckoned to be Gaulish work. The Celts apparently used their buckets to binge from (they'd have fitted well into canal society, particularly the society of Sherry Jim, I reckon); and the decorative metalwork would have enclosed the wooden staves of the bucket, which was left as grave goods in a burial near Marlborough. Anyway, the representation of the horse is interesting to compare with that of Uffington, although Uffington predates the Marlborough Bucket by a considerable time. Probably.

There's Wayland the Smith, outside his smithy, which is a long barrow on top of the North Downs near Uffington. If you leave your horse there with some money, the elusive Wayland will shoe it for you. Best not get on the wrong side of him, though, he might make a drinking vessel out of your skull like he did with Niðhad's sons, though admittedly Niðhad had hamstrung Wayland. The story of Wayland was brought over by the Saxons, so I've given him yellow hair. He features in the Anglo Saxon poem Deor, by the way, each verse of which features someone having a truly horrid time, and then ends with the refrain Þæs ofereode,  þisses swa mæg - 'that came to an end, this may well do so too.' A bleak sort of comfort, but one that I've recited to myself fairly often in hard times. (If you want to recite it too, then þ is runic 'thorn' and pronounced 'th', and all letters are sounded; thus 'ofereode' is 'over-eh-odour')

Some horses had makeovers; so there's been a horse at Westbury for longer than the present one may suggest, with its Stubbs-ish appearance dating from 1778. And some are relocated; so the Devizes white horse is on a hill around the corner from the earlier one which had a far more imposing position on Roundway Hill, from where it would have been visible for miles across the vale of the Wiltshire Avon. The Alton Barnes horse was inspired by envy of that at Cherhill to the north, and its construction was complicated by the chap employed to do it scarpering with the money. 

Coincidentally, the white horse at Alton Barnes, which is less than five miles from where I'm moored right now, is in the news this morning after an Extinction Rebellion logo appeared on it. Apparently it's being removed even as I write. 

Anyway, there we go. I think I'm going to have to scan the picture again, there's a line across it where there's a dead spot on the scanner. This picture is five scans stitched together, and it's a damn nuisance when something slips through like that. And it's pouring down now, and to get the computer up and running I need to stick the generator out on the back deck, and then put a brolly over it. And that can wait till daylight, and as there's a neighbouring boat I can't run the genny before 8 o'clock anyway. 

And then I can send it off to the printers. And tidy up the damn boat. Honestly, it goes to pot when I'm working on a picture.

otter madness

The lights were on at the Fisherman’s Rest
but nobody was at home;
for their halves of mild had added a zest
to the anglers’ habitual moan-

“Oh what shall we do with the otters, me lads?
They’re a-coming on over to here
and swamping our culture. It makes me so mad
that they’re threatening all we hold dear

with their sinister plottings and otter cabals,
and something has got to be done!”
Forthwith these stout fellows marched to the canal
with rat poison, snares and a gun.

They stalked through the reed beds as bold as you wish
intent their foul deeds to perform
and they swore every otter that ever ate fish
would regret it’d ever been born.

then a cloud hid the moon, and from deep in a culvert
a whistling forthwith was heard,
and a patter of paws quite like those of werewolves, that
would make any sane person scared.

’Twas the otter apoc’lypse, aquatic disaster,
an Armageddon of Tarkas;
there was crunching and chewing, and screams, then at last a
great stillness of bones and old parkas.

And everyone swore, as they passed down the pound,
that the place was now cheerful enough
how the miserable sods with their rods weren’t around
-just the wild creatures, doing their stuff.

An otter was killed by rat poison at Marlborough, Wiltshire - I wrote this after the story was posted up on the canal Facebook group and an angler complained that the otters were getting out of hand and needed controlling- we're faced with an 'aquatic disaster', he said. He was given short shrift....  it was an important reminder that you should be careful about mentioning when and where you've seen otters. Because there are some unpleasant folk around.

wild times on the canal

Sitting out on the back hatch while the sun comes up; one of the joys of summer on the canal. If you keep still, you tend to get ignored by kingfishers and whatever else happens to be around, so you see lots. Yesterday morning I heard a clop, and turned, startling a roe deer on the towpath right next to me. It dashed back the way it had come, and dived into the canal, swimming across and scrambling up into the woods, where it did that disappearing trick that roe deer are so good at, only the white rump persisting a little longer, like the Cheshire cat's smile.

Up by the Sainsbury bridge in Bradford on Avon, a flight of steps ascends from the towpath to the road. I was heading up that way, and about to insert the front wheel of my bicycle into the ramp that allows you to get bikes up and down, when I saw a slow worm wriggling its unhurried way down.

I put the bike to one side and took its picture. A woman appeared at the bottom of the steps, pushing a pram with two small children in it. I told her about the slow worm, thinking the children might find it interesting.... they were more than interested; they picked it up and started to squabble over it, playing tug of war as I attempted to intervene without shouting at someone else's children, and the mother made ineffectual remarks; she evidently wasn't concerned about the welfare of the poor slow worm...

...and its tail came off and wriggled furiously. The brats were persuaded to deposit the creature in the grass, and led off crying. 

Hey ho.

Then there was the dog that came galumphing along the towpath, leaping into the water and emerging with a Huge And Very Dead eel. It dumped it by the side of my boat, and trotted away. Well, thank you.

I heaved it into the middle of the canal, and for the ret of the day it drifted to and fro in response to the vagaries of the water flow down the lock and up through the pump.... I began to contemplate means of sinking it or attaching it to a passing boat. But it was finally lost from sight and smell.

I hope.

the bicycle thieves

My lovely and very distinctive Strida bicycle was stolen last night from the back of my Morris Traveller, which was parked in Bradford on Avon.

Observe triangular frame, with release mechanism at the front of the lower cross tube allowing it to fold up. Also belt drive, drum brakes, and, the one thing that distinguishes it from other Stridas, the handlebars which have been recently been repainted with Hammerite gloss black.

Here's the mess the thief or thieves made when forcing the back door

....and this is the quick repair I did to allow me to use the car again....

that bike thing

We’ve all gone bike crazy in Wiltshire, let me tell you.

The Tour of Britain passed through last week. To mark the route that the race took through the county, Wiltshire Council have tied lots of gold-painted bikes to lamp posts. I examined a few of the bikes, and concluded that they’d been pulled out of the bins at council dumps and recycled. They were mostly shopper bikes. Ironically, the ones I looked at were in better shape than a folding bike I’ve been repairing for a fellow boater. I considered nicking one of the gold jobs after the race had gone through, but decided it would be too much faff, and the gold paint would be a right bugger to get off the gears and chain and everything. So I bought new gear and brake cables, brake blocks, and Sturmey Archer gear toggle and trigger, from an Ebay shop, and the bill came to more than £30. Ouch.

On the day the race went through Bristol, I’d popped up there on some errands, but managed to avoid the road closures. I did notice, though, both on the streets of Bristol and all along the roads back to Devizes, that there were lots of MAMILs out and about, accoutred head to toe in expensive lycra clothes, with the obligatory wrap-round sunglasses, and mounted on road bikes which cost more than my car. And often displaying a complete lack of road sense- manoeuvring without rear observations and half-hearted signalling- not to mention their plodding along at a speed that seemed entirely out of keeping with the rig. It dawned on me that these were the older versions of little boys in Spiderman costumes, dashing around being superheroes before going home to tea.

When the race came through Devizes, we found a good vantage point at the roundabout next to the Wadworths brewery. I stood on a wheely bin to get a better view. Police outriders on motorbikes came by, and directed traffic off the main road. Then more outriders, then cars, then even more outriders. Then even more outriders. I never knew there were so many police motorcyclists. Then a bunch of cars with lots of bicycles on their roofs. Then more outriders.



Then a knot of cyclists. Whizz they went, and lots of the spectators blew whistles as they passed. I never knew this was a thing, otherwise I'd have brought a whistle. If I'd had a whistle. I wondered if Bradley Wiggins was in there with them.

Then more cars. Then another knot of cyclists. Then even more cars and outriders. Then a loose gaggle of more cyclists.

“Who are they?” wondered Suzanne, who was watching the race with me.

“Nothing to do with the race,” said the policewoman who’d been charged with command of our roundabout.

“Ah, Walts” I said, and she smiled agreement. It’s that Spiderman thing again.