Hills and Barrows

Wednesday 29 May 1998. After calling at Bibury, Fran and I headed up through Northleach and then Bourton-on-the-Water which we shall see in the next entry. We booked in for two nights in Bourton and then drove out to look at a couple of long barrows, along the lines of West Kennet Long Barrow seen a few days ago.

Our first stop according to the map was Notgrove Long Barrow. Here's the car in the massive lay-by they have provided at Notgrove to take the hordes of visitors who flock in their.... er... we're on our own... There are several piles of gravel stored in the lay-by. A number of traffic cones help by showing a British car in its natural environment... Ok... so why am I prevaricating and delaying our look at Notgrove? Moi? Here it is!

Notgrove Long Barrow (according to the signboard nearby) was vandalised and to avoid further damage was backfilled by the local council. In other words, they brought a load of earth and filled it in. So it now looks like a hill. It no longer has hollow bits.

However, archeologists at some point in the future, say in a few hundred years, if they are confident that the vandals aren't lying in wait, can dig it out again as to their trained eyes it will be obvious which dirt is the added dirt. Ye-e-e-e-es... Ok, let's go somewhere else!

Well this is looking promising! The signpost, despite being perfectly horizontal, points towards a path that really is quite a way from the horizontal and in no time at all we are puffing and panting our way up a steep hill and hoping that we shall find something that doesn't totally resemble a natural hill.

Happily we arrive at a tumulus that does not in any way disappoint the curious traveller. This is not the entrance to the tomb. This is an elaborate false entrance to slow down the would be treasure seeker of millenia ago. The main entrance is round the back and we'll see that in a bit.

Before we get round that far though there are several small chambers entered through small outlets in the side of the mound. Standing against this, the lintel of the entrance is at groin height...

So to take this photograph I've crawled inside on my stomach. The chamber takes a quarter turn to the right and is incredibly professional looking. If they built one of these today it would not look too different from this - neat rows of brick and look at the ceiling!!! What is holding it up?!? So they were no slouches two or three thousand years ago...

And here I am, crouching in the rear entrance - which again has been backfilled. Looking at the height of the mound here, the main chamber was excavated underground rather than built on the level and then covered as at West Kennet.

So we may have started with a disappointment with Notgrove Hill (ex long barrow) but Belas Knap, besides having a wonderful name, offers a wonderfully atmospheric and mysterious glimpse of a past so far back that the name England was still thousands of years in the future.

Return to Wiltshire, Cotswolds and Avon 1998 Index

Wharles the Heck Are We?

Last night we played a Steam Fair in Wharles, which is an area out in the Fylde countryside between Kirkham and the M55 motorway.

It was one of those all too familiar bewildering happenings.

We had a phone call from Jack, who does the steam fairs out at Chorley and he had told us it was Saturday night in Treales (which is an area out in the Fylde countryside between Kirkham and Wharles...)

Then David got a call to say it was Friday in Wharles and thought we wouldn't be able to do it because I was due to be working in Plymouth on Friday. However, having turned it down with the organisers, he phoned Fran on Thursday night and she was able to tell him I was on my way home (from Hertfordshire) because the event in Plymouth had been cancelled. (Following this ok?)

We loaded the car for the last time - I've swapped it in today for a new Mazda - and followed the SatNav as we weren't really sure where Wharles was.

It took us down a road labelled as a dead end, but we figured that as we were in a field it could well be correct. The road tuened into a track and the track turned eventually into ruts and potholes and after a mile and a half with 3/4 of a mile still to go the surface was getting me worried about the bottom of the car and I had to reverse a mile before we could turn round to go through Kirkham to get to it on surfaced roads. The SatNav woman refused to apologise and kept trying to make me turn back to try again...

"Turn around when possible" kept being met with a chorus of "P*** off"

Anyway, we found it in the end and had a great night with a smallish but enthusiastic crowd. It went pitch black outside. Going to the loo was a painful experience for one member of the audience as he walked into a 3-foot high metal pole that had been erected to mark out a pitch.

Fran was gingerly coming back from a visit, feeling the way cautiously in the dark when someone came out of the disabled loo and banged the door just behind her. "I'm gobsmacked you didn't hear me scream, I jumped out of my skin!" she said.

So to the garage who took my Mondeo in part exchange, I'm sorry about all the mud caked all over it...

Large versions of the photos: the band, car boot load (labelled)

Ford Mondeo Mk IV

At last! I managed to get my hands on one of the new Mondeos from Ford this week. First time I've managed to drive a James Bond car - Daniel Craig drives one near the beginning of Casino Royale!

My own car is a MkIII Mondeo and I had a MkI for years - it had done 195,000 miles by the time I swapped it in!

So how did I find the MkIV? I was quite taken with it actually, although I did have a couple of niggles. For one, it felt cramped inside! Now that, I think, is only due to the fact that it had bucket seats whereas mine has fairly flat seats and the new ones, shaped more are wider. What it means is that if you want to adjust the driving seat to move it up and down (electronic) or to adjust how reclined it is (a manual knob) you can only do that by opening the door because there just isn't room to shove your hand down between the seat and side of the car to get at the controls.

But the model I had was full of features. The media player was a multi-CD player which took mp3 CDs. This meant I could have taken enough music to have driven right round the country without having to change a CD. The onboard computer has an easy to navigate screen between the speedometer and rev counter that allowed me to use controls on the steering wheel to select any track from any folder from any CD - or do the sensible thing and just start at track 1 on CD 1 and let it do its own thing!

The power outlet is set to the left hand side under the stereo unit and caused no problems with gear shifting and trapped fingers - definitely a point scored over Vauxhall's Insignia! The gear lever has a nice solid chunky feel to it and reverse now has a lift-ring before swinging the stick to the left and forward. The 6-speed box coupled with the 2 litre diesel engine was smooth and reliable, though an experimental quick start made me purse my lips at the delay before the engine started to rev - had I been trying to nip out into fast traffic I'd have been frightened at the lack of movement for a couple of seconds!

But I don't drive hard and fast much these days and definitely not at the beginning of December! As I drove out of Blackpool almost every lay-by had a small group of hopeful traffic cops, none of whom were in the slightest embarrassed at my stolen VCR never having been found and returned after all these years...

So once on the motorway I whipped it up to 70 and engaged the cruise control. As the speedo reached 70, my SatNav showed 67-68 which is not so bad. My own car shows 67 on the SatNav at 70 on the speedo and the VW Golf I had last week showed only a measley 64 mph!!! That's why so many people are driving about at 25 these days!

At 70 (or 68 depending on which you believe) the Mondeo is so smooth you think "Surely I'm only tootling along?" The clock goes all the way up to 160 and at 70 you believe the car would do it without any problem. Certainly the once or twice I dipped the pedal to go past someone doing a mile-an-hour less than me had the car leaping forward rewardingly. I nipped past them and let it slow back down to the cruise control - a very nice car to drive!

The cockpit had independant left and right temperature control. I set them in tandem and it kept me happily at a constant comfortable temperature whilst outside the temperature dipped and rose with the weather.

Had I had any passengers in the back seat, they even had face-level ventilation from the side strut between the front and rear doors.

I drove from Blackpool to Taunton on Tuesday, from Taunton to Brighton on Wednesday, from Brighton to Oxford last night and then back to Blackpool today. After starting with a full tank I just put in a coupe of gallons at Warwick services on the way back then filled up when I got home. I'd used 76.44 litres to do the entire trip of 720 miles and I make that almost 43 miles per gallon which isn't bad at all! Bear in mind I've driven on cruise control at 70 (or 68!) most of the time so I haven't been taxing the engine at all!

The petrol cap was a surprise - Ford have gone for a simple push from the outside and it will spring open. There is no unscrew cap inside, it has the new style spring-loaded flap that you push open with the nozzle from the pump. I presume that the petrol cap locks as you lock the car to avoid tampering. Locking was another of my niggles - the buttons on the key are not the small circular buttons that I have on my MkIII. They cover the entire width of the key and as you grip the key to pull it from the ignition - you lock the car. I did it every single time I took the key from the ignition. The first time I set the alarm off by opening the door. After that I learned to unlock the car after taking out the key! The actual key is a flat blade too, unlike my circular shaft with a broader end. The ignition slot can't be seen at night - no light shines on it and it was fiddly putting the key into the slot. I never thought there was anything wrong with keys dangling from the dashboard myself...

Other snippets? Locking the car swivels the wing mirrors inwards automatically which is a nice touch and this morning I got in a deep frozen car with thick ice on all windows - the heated windscreen and rear screen were clear in a short time and all side windows not long after.

The hire guys just came round to collect it. As I opened the door they started singing Christmas carols. I told them to bog off... I want to keep it...!