Perranporth and Camelford

Tuesday 8 August 1989. We wake in bright light. Alarmed we check the tent roof, but no... it's coming from outside. High in the sky is a strange glowing circle of light, we later find out that it is called the sun and it is something that we are not often troubled with in the north of England...

We have breakfast and discuss what to do for the day. It is eventually decided that we will go to Perranporth where going out onto the beach for a swim or paddle doesn't have to include a climb down a cliff to get there and a climb back up a hundred or so steps afterwards.

Besides, Perranporth is an attractive beach, bounded by cliffs to the south and a lower promontory to the north. The cliffs to the south house mine workings. There's a square adit visible in the top photograph, these were access points leading to the mine where water could be drained out or ore removed. There is also a huge arch formed by the sea in the rock.

The beach is very popular, perhaps because of the easy access and has lots of small pools filled with exciting life forms such as crabs, tiny fish and crustaceans and falling children...

Along the beach away from this bay are sand dunes and the scant remains of a tiny chapel said to have been the church of Cornwall's patron saint, Saint Piran. He was expelled from Ireland, tied to a mill stone which was rolled into a stormy sea. The sea immediately became calm, the mill stone floated (or he held his breath for a very long time whilst walking on the sea floor) and he ended up here in Perranporth where his first disciples were a fox, a badger and a bear. It's a wonder that Christianity ever became a thing really, but set against this is the fact that if you expressed doubt you were burned at a stake...

Away from the beach is a long shopping street where we found this barrrel on wheels, the delivery van of a local greengrocer.

We spent the full day at Perranporth, eating in a local cafe before heading back to the campsite.

It's not exactly on the way back, being some way in the opposite direction from Newquay and Porth, but we decided to visit Camelford. At this time I was still finishing writing my book about King Arthur (available here) and Camelford is one of the contenders for both Camelot and his final battle at Camlann. I (and most historians) don't subscribe to a Cornish connection even if he really were to have existed, but I set out in the book to try to give fictional reasons why all these local legends might have originated.

The church is the modern church of St Thomas of Canterbury and dates only from 1937/38.

The River Camel. With the benefits of hindsight, the children playing in it may have been at some risk as, the year before these photographs were taken, some 20 tons of chemicals were accidentally released into the local water supply at the water treatment works.

Return to Cornwall 1989 Index Page

A Bird Sanctuary Linked to Arthurian Legend

Back in 1983 I was writing my, to date, one and only novel - a fantasy about King Arthur, but set within a version of England inhabited by a fair number of creatures of legend and superstition. It was based on the original legends as far as I could research them and I ignored most characters that only made an appearance from the 12th century onwards when Geoffrey of Monmouth suddenly conjured Lancelot into being and turned the sixth century Arthur and his followers into eleventh and twelfth century knights in shining metal armour.

Early historical and contemporary records of Arthur are very few and then tend to be no more than single-sentence entries such as in the Annals of Wales. Early legends are full of references to fairy folk. So I included them (with some glee) into the book. Almost every region of England has local legends claiming sites as Arthurian castles, forts, battle sites, Camelot, you name it. So I also set out to include quite a number of both famous sites such as Tintagel and lesser known sites such as this one.

This is Martin Mere near Burscough in West Lancashire. Before it was drained it was apparently once the largest body of fresh water to be found in England. Even today this marshland is an impressive sight. Now operated as a bird sanctuary and wildfowl centre on a cold March day in 1983 birds were few and far between and, if they had any sense, were sunning themselves in warmer climes... No matter. It wasn't particularly the birds that I had come to see.

It was the fact that this mere is one contender for the site of the legendary Lake Linnius, sometime home to the Lady of the Lake of Arthurian legend. It's not the only place that claims to be Linnius and certainly not the only lake to claim the priestess-cum-sorceress-cum-neophyte-cum-enchantress, Nimue or Vivienne or whatever, look let's just say I had a varied choice ok? Anyway, the atmosphere on that gloomy day well suited the legend.

The book, King And King To Be, was published in 2012 and is available as an eBook in Amazon's Kindle Store - see link in the side column.

Return to Legends, Lore and Superstition Index

Miss Franny's Fabulous Fridge Magnets

The last time I showed some of Miss Franny's fridge magnet collection was way back in July. This time I show some of the UK places commemorated on the bits of plastic that disguise our fridge.

This one covers the entire county of Somerset and was bought this year when we spent a long weekend with friends near Wells.

Whilst I'm not going to put up photos of every place mentioned on it - actually there are some places we haven't been yet on it - I'll cover the top right and the one below it. We've been to Cheddar lots of times taking photos of the same unchanging scene every time. The thing that changes is the style of cars in the car parks, so... guess the year!

Weston-Super-Mare was a regular holiday destination place during my early teens. We first went in 1967 but it's a while since we stayed there. I think the last time I visited was in June 2004 whilst on the road for work and whilst it was a June evening, it was cold and dull so that I remember the weather more than the town.

This one is for a very specific place. The British Museum in London is a fascinating place to wander round and anyone with an interest in history and cultures will find time going very fast indeed when you are in there.

I remember it with the open courtyard, but for quite a while now it has been roofed with glass. This looks even more spectacular from outside provided you can view it from a vantage point such as the 17th floor of the Centre Point building.

The King Arthur magnet could have come from any corner of England, or from the centre of it. So many places claim to be the site of his birth, his battles, his city of Camelot...

I even wrote my own version a few years ago which is available for Kindle e-readers.

The fridge magnet came from Tintagel in Cornwall, where the famous castle remains are a few hundred years after the historical Arthur was supposed to have lived. Tintagel features in my book as the home of Merlin.

A 3D sculpted fridge magnet from the Prince Regent's opulent and exotic Royal Pavilion at Brighton. A real mix of styles it comes across as an Indian palace from outside and a Chinese one inside. Well worth a visit.

My photo was taken one night whilst I was travelling for work and due to run a workshop at Brighton University the following morning.

The Polperro fridge magnet shows the entire county of Cornwall and therefore makes finding Polperro quite hard unless you already know where it is!

It's one of my favourite places in the whole of England and despite the fact that it seldom changes, my camera always gets a thorough work-out when I'm there!

A look at foreign parts in the next article about Miss Franny's Fabulous Fridge Magnets!

Glastonbury Abbey

Sunday 24 May 2015. Mary and Rod at the White House B&B had warned us that the road through the village of Dulcote was due to be closed from 9:30am due to a running event, so we opted for a fairly early (and mouth-wateringly huge and lush!) breakfast in order to be able to get the car out and away. We drove a short distance to Glastonbury and went into the famous abbey.

We found some sort of event taking place. After paying and starting out in the small museum there was a woman dressed in the costume of a medieval peasant standing looking at us but not saying anything. "Are you real?" I asked pleasantly, not wanting ghosties phasing through me just after eating Mary's massive breakfast - it would put me right off... Anyway... she was real!

The two eastern piers of the abbey's crossing. The western piers have both fallen and only a single stone foundation exists of them. The majority of the abbey buildings have been lost, but there are some quite spectacular things to see here.

The main Abbey church seen from the chancel. The chained area marks where the High Altar once stood. Seen between the piers is the Lady Chapel, of which more later. Beside the Lady Chapel, in 1191 the monks of the abbey claimed to have unearthed the body of a huge man with his wife in a coffin made from a single hollowed out oak tree trunk. They announced that it was King Arthur and Guinevere his queen. This has to be set against the fact that the abbey had burned down in 1184 and they were desperate to have the money for rebuilding that hordes of pilgrims would bring.

The sign reads: "Site of King Arthur's tomb. In the year 1191 the bodies of King Arthur and his Queen were said to have been found on the south side of the Lady Chapel. On 19th April 1278 their remains were removed in the presence of King Edward I and Queen Eleanor to a black marble tomb on this site. This tomb survived until the dissolution of the abbey in 1539."

To the east of the abbey, the grounds contain areas of protected wild flowers and an arboretum. Even such a committed non-gardener as myself, whose most exuberant uttering on looking at the most luxurious flower specimen would be "that's nice..." could enjoy the walk through trees, past shrubs and signs warning of badger setts and mole holes. Despite some rather dullish weather, we walked around the entire perimeter.

The abbey pond. Fish were spawning and causing swirls and splashes in the water as they broke the surface in their mating.

A number of people were breaking camp in this area, having spent the night under canvas, or at least under some sort of thin material with a long chemical name, whatever it is they make tents with these days. They were happily calling to each other in German or Dutch or some other language that was beyond me, saying things like "If you go for a dip in the pond, dear, don't come back with your shorts full of pond weed like yesterday..."

We are returning back down towards the visible bits of the abbey again. This is the view from the south side of the abbey showing the Bishop's Kitchen towards the left.

This is by far the best preserved building of the abbey and is one of the best preserved of all medieval kitchens in Europe. It was built as part of the abbot's house, during the tenure of Abbot John de Breyton (1334-42).

Inside are little tableaux set out to show how the kitchen might have appeared during medieval times. I suspect a great many people might have been running about and working here! This was a preparation area, not a dining area. In another corner were little waxwork roasting porkers, complete with wounds from arrows, skewered above a "fire" which does glow and emits little gasps of "smoke" and also a bacon smell!

A glance up a chimney though reveals a mass of spiders' webs who wouldn't have hung about so much when fires really did blaze below! In yet another corner a deep oven is set into the wall. Bread would have been a staple of the monks' diet, though no doubt in the Bishop's House a rather more splendid fare was available.

We exited the Bishop's Kitchen on the opposite side to which we entered and a fragment of masonry allowed me to climb to a railed area for an elevated viewpoint.

Unfortunately the Bishop's House has not fared so well as the kitchen. But we do know from archeological evidence that there was a sumptuous guest house attached to it that was built for the royal visit of King Henry VII - a king who had claimed his throne in battle against Richard III and who spent the rest of his life watching for and imagining acts of vengeance and treachery on every side. It would have been much safer to have made a fuss of him with a huge welcome!

Here we are looking north towards the Lady Chapel across what was a cemetery - the cemetery where the grave of King Arthur and Guinevere was found, buried at a great depth between two pyramid structures. The female skeleton still had long blonde hair attached to the skull but it disintegrated on being touched. A lead cross lay over them according to the records with an inscription that brooked no doubt: "Hic jacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus in insula Avalonia" - "Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon".

1194 is 641 years after the claimed date for the Battle of Camlann in which Arthur was reportedly slain. The find is almost directly comparable to the 21st century finding of the burial of King Richard III, in that very similar amounts of time passed between burial and discovery. Yet the monks at Glastonbury had no sophisticated tests to verify the identity of the remains, nor cameras to record it. Their search is sometimes reported as being at the behest of King Henry II following his interpretation of a tradition told to him by a Welsh bard and sometimes as having been ordered by the Abbot Henry de Sully.

The bones of whoever it was they claimed to have dug up were lost forever when Henry VIII threw his hissy fit at the Pope and Catholicism and destroyed all evidence that might have remained. The tomb and its contents have never been heard of since the Dissolution. The Abbot at the time, Richard Whyting tried to stop the desecration and for his efforts was taken on 15 November 1539 to the nearby Tor and there was hung, drawn and quartered.

On the interior walls of the Lady Chapel, built very soon after the finding of the Arthurian remains, there are still traces of paint from a very sumptuous decoration that adorned the entire interior with colour and design. There are also traces of ancient graffiti...

The Glastonbury Thorn. Or rather, one of the thorn trees, said to have originated from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, the uncle of Jesus Christ who donated his own tomb to hold the body of Christ after the Crucifixion. It is said he stopped to rest on Wearyall Hill above Glastonbury and when he awoke next morning his staff, which he had pushed into the ground, had taken root and burst into blossom. This is one of several trees in Glastonbury grown from cuttings taken from the tree on Wearyall Hill.

We left the abbey and looked for somewhere to sit down for a coffee. There are lots of places available but I do have a liking for the more traditional tea rooms and we found one called "The Abbey Tea Rooms". We went in, sat down, ordered and got a coffee and sat watching the Heavens open...

Links

Glastonbury Abbey: www.glastonburyabbey.com
Glastonbury Abbey Shop: www.glastonburyabbeyshop.com
The Abbey Tea Rooms: abbeytearooms.co.uk
King Arthur (Wikipedia): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur
King Arthur (BBC History): www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/anglo_saxons/arthur_01.shtml
King And King To Be (Kindle book by this blog's author): www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008BL7HUG
Other articles referring to King Arthur: on this blog

Somerset Weekend Index

Book Scenes in the Northern Lakes

Saturday 15 June. We took half a day to drive up to the Lake District, intending to call in at Ambleside. However it was the day of the Great Northern Swim. Roads were choked and when we crawled into Ambleside all the car parking spaces were taken.

We carried on through and towards Grasmere where we stopped for a bite of lunch. But even there we only managed to park for an hour.

We set off to Keswick but I had an idea. In my book, King And King To Be, a couple of key scenes are set at Lake Bassenthwaite which can be found on the A66 just north west of Keswick. I've driven past it but never stopped to take any photos.

The A66 is a fast road and splits into a dual carriageway past the lake, but just past is a turning that leads to a parking spot by a path down a steep bank to the lake itself.

After you climb, step and slither down the slope you find a paved area skirting the lake. It makes little sense - why is it there? Why does it stop before it reaches the water? But actually, why does it need to make sense? In the book Bassenthwaite is the home of Vivien, the Lady of the Lake. This area has strong links to the King Arthur legend and Bassenthwaite does have a legend that Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, was thrown into it at his command and that a hand rose out of the water to catch it.

So is this line of stones the last remaining remnants of the path to Vivien's lake stronghold? No... my book is just a fantasy tale. ...isn't it?

We climbed back up the path to the car and drove back to Keswick, managing to park quite easily by the lake - this time, Derwent Water. This is where the dragon... but no... it's just a book!

Return to Lake District and Cumbria Index

"King And King To Be" Poetry

I've received a few nice emails recently complimenting me on the few bits of poetry in my King Arthur book, King and King To Be.

There are several sections of poetry, some of which move the story along, being flashbacks and some like the following sung by bards in the hall of a king.

In the starlight, elven twilight
Wood and water silver seem
In the deeping, softly sleeping
Lies a woodsman lost in dream

Under skies he closed his eyes
No roof for the travelling man
In ferny nest he finds his rest
Sleeping where and when he can

With a shake he comes awake
His faithful steed had called and shied
As he laid, the fairy rade
Set out on their night time ride

Wraps cloak around from off the ground
The misty rain is cold and damp
A flickering light off in the night
Approaches on his hidden camp

Woodsman watches fairy torches
Held up high as voices sing
Eyes open wide, as past him ride
The court of the Fairy Queen and King

King And King To Be, Chapter Nine.

The book is available for Kindle only at the moment, but I am looking to get it out in paperback. This is going to involve getting more artwork done for the rear cover and spine so will take a few weeks yet.

You can download a sample 10% of the book at the Amazon page linked above to read either on your Kindle or on your PC screen and it's also possible to read on other devices too I believe.

King And King To Be Locations and News

The Facebook page for my book, King And King To Be now has several photos of different locations to be found in the book.

I've found it amazing how much it shoots up the bestsellers lists when a sale is made and how quickly it drops when no sales are being made - a bit like a yo-yo!

Today I have uploaded a photo of the location for one of the final scenes - the slope from the Roman fort Camboglanna ("Camlann" in the book and possibly the best candidate in real life) down to the River Irthing at Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall.

Facebook users can "like" the page and I'll be very grateful if they do!

The URL address for the page is https://www.facebook.com/#!/KingAndKingToBe

The book received a 5-star rating recently from Mr W J Peacock who wrote: "As an avid reader of any books about the dark ages and the Arthurian legends in particular. I was interested when I heard of a new author entering this popular arena where the competition is so tough. As soon as I stared to read this well written and engaging book I was hooked. An enticing mix of fact, fable, legend and fantasy with a clever twist. I would certainly recommend this book and am looking forward to this author's next book, albeit sequel or prequel."

Well I can reveal that I've started writing a prequel which will concentrate on the story of Myrddin and Nimue/Vivien. Don't hold your breath... I remember how long the last one took...!

King And King To Be Facebook Page

I've created a Facebook page for the book. Today it had climbed from a position in excess of 110,000 to 20,381 in Amazon's bestsellers (paid category) as another couple of copies were sold. A grateful thank you to the two buyers!

The page will feature discussion between readers (though give them a bit of a chance - at time of writing it has only been available for a week!)

Also I hope to put a few extracts on every now and then to give a flavour of the book and also I'll add a few insights as to how the book came to be written and how the plot developed.

Facebook users can "like" the page to feature it on their own timeline. And I'll be very grateful if they do!

The URL address for the page is https://www.facebook.com/#!/KingAndKingToBe

King And King To Be

Introducing my new baby - my first novel, a fantasy: King And King To Be. It has published today on Amazon for the Kindle and other eReaders.

I wrote this mainly during the 1980s and then it got put aside when I got immersed in computers and learned a new career which has taken me to where I am now.

The book took on the role of "retirement project" but with the advent of ebooks and the ease of self-publishing now I've taken it up again over the past few months and edited and proofed and edited again several times until I'm struggling to find the mistakes that are probably still in there!

The product description reads:

Britain in the Dark Ages. But a Britain that has been forgotten by history. A Britain where elves, fairies and goblins still reside, feared and mistrusted by Men.

As a dark force threatens to conquer the kingdoms of Men they turn to the elves and a wizard for help. Together they seek for the one person who could save the Britain of the sixth century. A man called Arthur. A man who was born and lives in the twentieth century...

A startling first novel by J D Burke combines fantasy with half-familiar legend and a hero who struggles to accept the fate that he once thought was either a story or that belonged to someone else.

A huge thank you goes to my cousin, graphic artist, Catherine Metcalfe, for the fabulous cover. The brief I gave her was "Stonehenge, a sword and some idea of magic"... I cannot fault her interpretation.

To all those who read it years ago and gave me encouragement, a thousand thanks.

To anyone who goes out and buys it (including those who rushed out today on the first day) a thousand more thanks.

Large version of the cover: at Amazon of course! Oh and Flickr also!

Links to buy the book at: amazon.co.uk or amazon.com