We took off for the Mayday weekend - away to the hills and ochre towns of the Cotswolds. As the train passed through Oxfordshire, we saw the dishes of some small observatory among the fields - huge daisies turned to the sun. We spent the first day exploring Moreton-in-Marsh until our hotel room was free - it's not a town really designed for the walker: heavy traffic, you can't always tell the pavement from the car park, and as we found out later, a vital bus stop was only marked out in flaking paint on the concrete. Good real ale pubs though. I rescued a battered 1912 book on Cotswold village life from one. One nuclear Thai curry later, we turned in.
The day after Beltane, we set off for the Rollright Stones. B and I have been talking about visiting for a long time. Part of the Tom Baker story THE STONES OF BLOOD was filmed here. A short busride to Little Compton, then uphill walking: hedges creamy with Mayblossom, hills blue with distance, like the Debatable Lands. More skylarks than I've ever heard before. The last leg was hellish - along a main road with no pavement, builders' lorries rattling past, kicking up dust. Then I saw the stones of The King's Men through a hedge. Worth it after all!
Legend has it the ring of stones was once the army of an invading king, tricked and petrified by a local witch. She's supposed to have become an elder tree straight after. It seems a poor reward for her pains. I don't think human hands shaped the King's Men much. They have rough-rippled outlines, much-pitted; speckled with white and gold lichen. They seem to hunker against the ground; the tallest was crowned with white swags of May. It seemed fitting. One or two have holes all the way through, like huge hagstones. I took a photo through one (cursing my knees which are closer to pensionerhood than the rest of me). A slant of hedge, misty-green profile of firs in the distance. It was only later I realised I'd recreated a still from THE OWL SERVICE title sequence. Someone had performed a rite here the day before - in a little scoop of ground they'd written "Beltane" and a heart drawn in rice grains and petals, as well as scattering sprigs of lavender; some of it was also tucked into clefts in the stones. I didn't count the King's Men, though one girl did while we were there. Partly superstition I suppose, also a feeling that it was poor manners to try.
Saturday, we made a pilgrimage out to the Four Shire Stone, a mile or so out of Moreton. It stands ten or twelve foot high, grey-gold limestone soft enough that generations have cut graffiti into it - a palimpsest in rock. Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Worcestershire met here until the Thirties. The county borders were shuffled like cards. It's tempting to dream that the Stone might call a new shire of debatable hills and into being to make up the balance.
We were waiting for a bus into Chipping Norton, in search of books, ale and lunch. The Stone itself seemed to be the bus stop. At least one driver pointed and laughed. I wondered aloud if even the babies owned cars round here. Anyway, we made it in; after a lengthy browse, Beth had scored a guide to English parish churches and the Observer's Cathedrals. I found pamphlets on sundials, a history of walking in England, a collection of Virginia Woolf's essays and a Forties travelogue along the River Wye. A lunch of soup, a breadboard, and Hook Norton beer. The journey back was soured a bit by a bunch of Australian gap-year students out on the piss. They didn't hassle us, but they were loud and dickish and cajoled one local lad they didn't even know into downing a pint at the stop. Thank god they piled on the bus to Oxford.
We came back Sunday. It turned grey and dreich and has pretty much been this way since, but the May is still in flower.
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