Ironing a few things out.

Here at Snail Towers we love a bit of history - and we particularly love the older stuff - the Mesolithic through to the Iron Age. One of the first things we did on arriving in South Wales was head off to discover what the area had to offer. There was a pretty obvious first port of call - the famed Pentre Ifan burial chamber which sits atop a hill in the heart of the Pembrokeshire National Park. Of course, we did have to find it first - and that was not an entirely stright forward proposition.  

You see, our Neolithic ancestors were pretty sophisticated whne it came to balancing rocks on top of each other - as anyone who has ever seen Stone Henge will happily attest. They were, however, less than thoughtful in their choice of location for their stone circles and burial chambers. For every Stonehenge and Silbury Hill (handily located by the side of the A303 and A4 respectively) there's a Twelve Apostles, a hefty walk from the road across Ilkley Moor, or Pentre Ifan - which is, I grant you, only a very short walk from the road, but finding the right bit of the road or even finding right road, well. That was more difficult...

I'm sure there is a perfectly straightforward route from the main road, through the series of single track lanes that take you up to the top of the hill to the monument. It's probably beautifully signposted.

All I'm saying is that we didn't find it - and I have to say we weren't the only ones. Having failed to find a brown sign pointing us off the main road, we struck off in what we hoped was the right direction armed with a map and Mrs Snail's famed sense of direction. On reflection, the map was a mistake. Mrs Snail's sense of direction is legendary - which is a good job, because I could get lost in my own living room. She can direct us to a place we've never been before without ever looking at a map - honestly, it's practically a super-power.

On reflection therefore, letting her have the map might have been a mistake. Mrs Snail is not good with maps.

I have to say, the fashion in Wales  - which is also big in the West Country - for having twisty turny single track roads with mahoosive hedges towering up on either side preventing you from getting your bearings doesn't help much. Frankly it's a pain in the arse, and it makes it really really hard to get your bearings.

As a result we found ourselves driving along seemingly endless corridors of green leaved walls with almost no reference points.

Eventually we came to a "T" junction. There were no signs to tell us which way to go but Mrs Snail had put down the map and was reasonably sure that we needed to go left. Just as we were about to another car approached from the right and screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. They paused for a moment looking at their map, and when we pulled out to the left, they followed us.

Eventually, after a couple of miles we finally hit on the smallest brown tourist sign we have ever seen which pointed us to the monument. Picking our way down the single track road, cautiously overtaking the horses from the stealth riding school that almost literally appeared from nowhere* until we reached a bit of road where an assortment of cars and camper vans had pulled into the narrow strip of verge that serves as the Pentre Ifan parking area.

Our ancestors just loved stacking rocks on rocks...

At first glance, Pentre Ifan looks like a strange sort of burial chamber. Mostly because it's clearly not a chamber at all, but a large slab of rock supported on three rough stone uprights, with a couple more slabs of rock sort of loitering around.

The truth is that Pentre Ifan is a mere skeleton of its former self. Back in the day there would have been more massive stones involved in this structure, and the whole thing would have been turfed over, making the structure effectively subterrainian. Over the years the turfs have eroded away and stones have been taken by local people with enough sense to realise that nicking stones that somebody has thoughtfully stacked up near where you want them is a damn sight easier than digging a quarry.

What you see is what remains, and it's still pretty spectacular. From the site there is a beautiful view down to the coast, which may have been a factor - the chamber's builders may have wanted their dead to have a decent view. Mind you, if that's the case they fluffed it slightly because the door of the chamber would have been facing inland, not out to the sea...

After spending some time exploring the site (this doesn't take long - everything there is to see is in these pictures), soak in the atmosphere (not quite as ethereal as Stonehenge, but you do get a sense of history and age) and admire the view we headed back down the hill to the coast road.

Not far from Pentre Ifan along that road is the Iron Age Hill Fort known as Castell Henllys. It's not the biggest Iron Age Hill Fort you'll ever see - you'd lose it at one end of Dorset's Maiden Castle, for example, but size isn't everything, and Castell Henllys is probably the most interesting hill fort in the British Isles.

You see they've been excavating this site since the early eighties, and at some point early in the history of that excavation somebody had a stroke of genius. (Bear with me, there's a longish explanation coming up - if you want to skip past it, just scroll down to the paragraph that starts with "Oi!").

The thing about archaeology is that it's pretty much a destructive process. You find your site, you dig it up and expose stuff which was previously buried. This is good, because it means we learn about the past, but it is also bad, because being buried is what protected the site from the elements. Now, if you have a big stone building you can leave it exposed and maintain it. If you're only left with fancy mosaic floors and whatnot you can either re-bury them or put a roof over the top.

But if you're digging the Iron Age, what you basically find is evidence of things that aren't there any more and so cannot be preserved. Iron age villages were made of wood. So what you find is evidence of where the wooden posts that supported the round houses were, the "drip circles" caused by rain dripping off the roof, evidence of burning where the hearth was and, depending on the geology of the site, possibly the ditch dug beneath the floor so that it didn't get damp (in the way there's usually a gap beneath the foolrboards of a modern house.

Once you've dug those out all you're left with is the site map you made to record where things were. Because you have to backfill the holes, or people fall down them and sue your university. Besides, if you leave a bunch of holes in a field they'll eventually end up collapsing and filling in by themselves, and what use is a bunch of holes anyway?

And that's where the stroke of genius comes in. Oh, hang on, well get the skippers back first, shall we?

Oi! If you skipped the expanitary bit you can come back now! "Hang on," said somebody, "let's re-create the place as it would have been, to better understand Iron Age life and put theories about how our Iron Age ancestors did things to the test!"

I may not be quoting directly, but you get the general idea...

And that, basically is what they did.  Beginning with the rather unromantically named "Roundhouse One" in 1982, archaeologists have painstakingly reconstructed three roundhouses, including the blacksmith's forge, and a raised grain store. Unlike other "Iron Age Villages" dotted around Britain, Castell Henllys's houses are built exactly on the sites of the originals. Rather than backfilling post holes with soil, they back filled them with, well, posts. These are buildings that have, genuinely been rebuilt.

The roped off areas of posts are where other houses would have stood.

We arrived in the visitor centre car park in the mid afternoon of a bleak, rain sodden August day. This should come as no surprise, the summer of 2015 was, after all, relentlessly wet.

Shrouded in Gore-Tex we squelched our way across muddy car park - Mrs Snail wisely chose to don her wellies, I stuck with my sandals on the grounds that they'd dry quick and my feet couldn't get any wetter - and into the attactive wooden building that houses the cafe, museum, gift shop and ticket office.

As you might expect on a day like this, the place was crowded with people who were less than keen to venture out in the rain. For this reason, I could forgive the lady behind the ticket counter for being a little flustered. However, I always find it very difficult to forgive customer facing staff in any business - but especially one that exists to serve tourists - where staff are straighforwardly rude and/or inattentive. This staff member was both.

There was no queue when we arrived at the desk, but we still stood, unacknowledged for several minutes while the woman faffed about writing something in a book. It might well have been important, and honestly I wouldn't have minded waiting if she'd just given us a brief smile and a "Be with you in a tick." but now. She just ignored us with the self satisfied air of somebody who is secure in the knowledge that whatever they're doing is far more important than you are. When she eventually deigned to recognise our presence she sold us our tickets** as though she were doing us a favour with an expression that made it abundently clear that we were lower than something she might have stepped in in a cow field.

I confess, I was tempted to explain, loudly and at length, exactly how unsatisfactory her level of service was, but then thought, "we're on holiday - I'm not wasting time on negativity". So I took the proffered tickets and we ventured out into the rain and began to climb the hill that put the hill in "hill fort".

If you're not good with walking, or very, very unfit, there's no disguising the fact that it's a bit of a trek to the top. There are, I am told, numerous woodland walks and trails. However, as the rain continued to plummet from a sky as grey as Gandalf's hat we paid them no mind and chose to head directly up the wide path which spirals around the hill to the little settlement.

As we approached the entrance we were struck by the earthwork defences that surrounded the fort. I confess that me and Mrs Snail are not the fittest specimens of humanity, but we were more than a little out of breath merely from a leisurely stroll up the hill. If we'd had to do it at a run, carrying an iron sword, and then had to negotiate the eathern ramparts while people behind a wooden stockade were firing arrows and chucking rocks at us?

Not an enticing prospect.

Fortunately, these days the locals are friendly***.

The Chief's House.

We made our way through the gates to the settlement  - past the rather imposing wicker man guarding the right hand side of the entrance and made our way to the closest Round House (don't call them huts), ducking in through the surprisingly low entrance of the "Chief's House". It was truly a revelation, and it made me glad for the deluvian weather.

You see, had we visited on a warm, sunny day, we would probably have had a look around the thatched round house with its low walls of mud, straw, horse hair and dung and thought something along the lines of "well, it seems comfy enough but I wouldn't want to be here when the weather was manky". Visiting on a day of such damp and chilly weather we got a real sense of how effective the round house design actually was - they might look primitive, but they're not.

That squat little doorway was like a portal between the world of cold and wet and the world of the warm and dry. In my ignorance I had always assumed that your average round house was a damp little place. The Chief's house was anything but. Although the walls themselves were low, the conical roof gave the space a real sense of height and space.

Following the standard round house format the centre of the space held the hearth - literally the heart of the house - providing heating, cooking and a little light, although not much, because embers, not flames were the order of the day. Around the fire four low benches carved from whole logs were arranged to allow people to sit around the glowing coals. The woodsmoke from the fire scented the air and rose up into the thatch. Roundhouses have no chimney, the smoke simply rises up throug hthe pourous thatching of the roof, helping to keep the thick layer of straw vermin free.

At the back (if a round building can be said to have a "back" - it was opposite the doorway. You know what I mean) there were a few private "rooms" separated from the main space by textile hangings and animal hides which would have served as sleeping quarters for the Chief and his family. To the left hand side of the doorway was a low table affair, at which crouched a woman in iron-age dress teaching three small tourist children how to make bread iron-age style.

"Now," she said, as she handed them wooden bowls of dough, "you've seen how I kneeded it. The bad news is you have to do that two thousand times..." She went to tend the fire, blowing the embers up into a low flame, while the children kneeded, counting "1,2,3,80,200,500,1500,2000 - 'scuse me, I've finished!"

With a wry grin which most definately said "Kids today, what can you do eh?" the iron age lady collected up the barely kneeded dough and took it to the fire, placing it on a hot slab of rock to cook. Mrs Snail and I ventured off to the next hut, smaller than the Chief's hut, but build to essentially the same design. This time there was a full ring of log seating around the hearth and these were full of people listening to stories around the fire.

The final of the three roundhouses was smaller still. In this one the hearth was slightly off centre, and there was no log benching or curtained off private space, just a low plank bed. By the fire sat a man in iron-age dress who ushered us in and bid us sit at the back of the roundhouse.

Proudly he showed us a pair of smith's tongs that had been made in that very smithy - for this roundhouse was endeed built on the site of the settlement's original smithy and forge. They had been made, he explained, by a graduate student from the University of Aberystwyth who had spent some months working at the forge working out some of the secrets of iron-age metal working.The student had also begun work on a sword, which I held in my hand. It was horribly unbalanced, and cracked down the middle but it may have been representetive of the kind of weapon your average iron-age foot soldier might have wielded.

Back in the Chief's house there was a much finer sword which I was also privillaged to hold (in that I regard holding it as a privillage - they'll let anyone have a go with it). This was shiney and balanced and pretty damn sharp. When you consider that most people in the iron-age didn't know the secret of working metal, those men that did, who could turn black, soft raw iron into hard, deadly, shiney blades must have seemed like wizards. Given the variable quality of swords you can see why the good ones, the ones that caught the sunlight, didn't bend and kept an edge, must have seemed magical. The origins of stories about legendary weapons like Excalibur are all too easy to see.

By now the weather was closing in, and closing time was approaching. Iron-age residents of the settlement were beginning to pack things away, squelching across the muddy grass in animal hide sandals which somehow seemed far more efficient on the slippery surface than my own twentyfirst century "all-terrain" pair. Had the weather been less driech we might perhaps have explored the woodland walks and herb gardens.

But we didn't. Because we were wet enough already.

Time then to head back to modern Wales, which I'll tell you about next time.


*Seriously, nothing for ages, and then suddenly horses all over the place...

** Summer prices:
Adult £5.00
Child £3.50
Concession £4.25
Family £13.50
Young Archaeologist Club members go free when accompanied by a paying adult.

***If you discount the unrepresentetive misery on the ticket desk - and who knows, when you visit she might be in a better mood - or even on her day off!

Wandering around Grummore.

So, there we were, pitched up on the banks of Loch Naver in the heart of the Northern Highlands. It was a bit windy - but the weather was dry and bright, and however happy we might have been just taking in the spectacular view of Ben Klibreck we all know that you can't just sit around outside the 'van.

Besides, as noted in the last posting, there's a lot of history to be found in Strathnaver and its environs, so we set out to explore. We were feeling a little bit lazy though, so we didn't initially go all that far. A short walk up the hill behind the site brings you to the remains of the cleared village of Grummore - or "Big Grum" in English. The cleared remains of its counterpart Grumbeg, or "Little Grum"* can be found a little further up the road. Grummore is rather peaceful now. Unlike much of the surrounding country this relatively gentle slope is covered with lush green grass rather than heather and so is also covered in quietly grazing sheep and their associated droppings. Don't walk up there in sandals, is what I'm saying...

The low stone walls that are all that remain of this once thriving community protrude through the grass and bracken, rough grey scars amongst the vivid green. It looks in many ways like many other ruined villages you might see elsewhere from all sorts of different times. The difference with these ruins is that we know exactly when they became ruins. The precise moment when they stopped being homes and became the forlorn mounds of rubble they are today. We know who was here, we know why the people were removed and the buildings removed.

We know this because there are records, and because in the grand scheme of things it didn't happen all that long ago - just about two hundred years ago in the years between 1814 and 1819 in fact. Grummore was the first village in Strathnaver to be cleared on the orders of the Duke of Sutherland. By this time the clearances were nothing new, with many landowners in Scotland having already moved people off the land to make way for more profitable sheep. In many ways, in spite of the fact that he has become the symbolic hate figure for the clearances the Duke was in fact somewhat late to the party - he was neither the first nor the worst of the landowners who cleared their tenants from the land, he is simply the best remembered.

Not that this excuses what happened, of course. Prior to 1814 there were thirty settlements in Strathnaver. Now there are three. Altnaharra sits at the southern end, Syre is roughly half way up, and Bettyhill - where many of those cleared  ended up, sits right at the northern end on the coast. That's it. The clearances, overseen by the Duke of Sutherland's Factor, one Patrick Sellar, was zealous in his approach. In other parts of Scotland tenants were allowed to remove the timbers from their houses so that they could be re-used wherever they re-located. Sellar seems to have preferred to set fire to them. You can't argue that this wasn't an efficient method of making sure that people left and didn't come back, but it's hardly surprising that the clearances on Sutherland have come to represent the worst excesses of this depressing episode in Scottish history.

Sellar was, in fact, tried for these actions and for the murder of an old lady who died as she was being removed from her house. His defence seems to have been that he was acting lawfully because he was carrying out his employers orders - a defence that has become the default position for people involved in atrocities - and he was acquitted.  A cynic might well take the view that this acquittal owed more to the composition of the jury - they were all landowners who had something to gain from the clearances - and certainly the crofters who were removed did not feel that justice was done.

Still. The horrors of the clearances here at Grummore and elsewhere are history now. What you experience on the hillside now is peace. It's an easy walk - sheep droppings notwithstanding - not least because there is a planned trail around the site with wooden walkways carrying you over the roughest ground. This is because Grummore is the first (or last, I suppose, if you're starting at the other end...) stop on the brilliant "Strathnaver Trail". All the way along the valley sites of interest are marked by lilac coloured posts and provided with informative information boards so that you know what you're looking at. At most there is even space for you to pull off the road and park - a very important touch on a road that is only wide enough for one vehicle at a time.

As you wander through the abandoned and fallen houses - there are at least twenty that I have been able to make out; in some you can even still make out the floor plan - it is worth looking back down towards the loch, which looks spectacular from this vantage point. You also get a good view of the Broch that occupies one corner of the Caravan Club site - tangible evidence that occupation in this beautiful valley has a history that goes back a long, long way.

Brochs, as mentioned in the previous post, were circular stone towers and are very nearly unique to the Highlands**. Most date from around two thousand years ago, and nobody is entirely sure what they were used for.  In fact, there is a lively debate in archaeological circles regarding how many there actually are. The problem is that unlike a Roman Villa or ancient church, Brochs don't leave a particularly distinctive footprint once their walls have gone. You can see there used to be a round building there, you might even find evidence of occupation, but was it a Broch, or a roundhouse, or something else?

Anyway. The traditional view is that the structures which have been identified as Brochs were purely defensive, but modern thinking is that they were more akin to fortified farmhouses. The Brock at Grummore is pretty much collapsed now, but if you look down on it from the road you can still clearly see it's "doughnut" shape. The ones that survive in a more intact condition always remind me of power station cooling towers, and to me they suggest something about the ancient Scots which is quite surprising.

They didn't care about the view.

How do I know this? Because there are several Brochs which remain pretty much intact, and they all have one thing in common. There are no windows. Once inside, you couldn't see out - even the entrance ways are tiny - openings a couple of feet high by a couple of feet wide. I appreciate that our Iron Age ancestors had more to worry about than we do now, and that in the absence of glass windows meant no protection from the wind - which I can attest is pretty icy and pretty fierce at times - but even so, the idea of being in such a place and not being able to see it boggles my mind slightly.

Because there is just so much to see - as I hope to demonstrate in the next post...

*"Mor" means "Big" in Gaelic, "Baeg" means "Little" or "Small". I'm guessing that "Grum" means something too, but I'm still a novice in the Gaelic language and I have no idea what...

**There are a couple in southern Scotland, but the vast, vast majority are north of the Great Glen.

Sites for Sore Eyes - an occasional celebration of perfect places to pitch up. 1: Grummore/Altnaharra

I really am in two minds about this post. There's  a bit of me that loves this place so much that I just want everybody to know about it. There's another bit of me that loves this place so much I just want all of you to stay the hell away so that me and Mrs Snail can have it all to ourselves. However, the Caravan Club has been promoting the bejeezus out of the place this year - so if I'm ever going to talk about it, now would appear to be the time...

We discovered the place about five years ago and were instantly smitten - there is real magic here, so I'm making it the first of an occasional series where I talk in depth about the actual sites where we stay. I don't normally do that, preferring to concentrate on the places to see and places to eat in the area. But some sites are special and deserve some extra attention. Grummore is one such place. 

The Caravan Club site at Grummore*, sits on the banks of Loch Naver about four miles east of the little village of Altnaharra, and twenty odd miles north of the town of Lairg in the Northern Highlands. The site occupies a narrow strip of land between the road and the Loch, offering one of the best views I can imagine of Ben Klibreck - one of the 282 "Monros", or "Scottish Mountains over 3,000 feet". When the weather is calm - which is surprisingly often given the location, Loch Naver becomes a perfect reflecting pool, offering a double view of this extraordinary peak. Whatever the weather the constant changes of light make the view endlessly fascinating.

Facilities are spartan, at least by club standards. Only about half of the pitches have electric hook up, there is no shower block, no laundry, no toilets. Just a chemical closet emptying point, a waste water drain and two taps. Oh, and unless you're carrying a portable satellite system (which we do not) there's no TV signal. Even the FM radio reception isn't perfect. Oh, and you have to drive over twenty six miles on single track roads.

For me and Mrs Snail, there is more than enough. We would be quite happy to park up the 'van here and just sit and watch the ever changing view. But even if that's all you do, that's not all there is. Interest is added by the vast quantity of wildlife which frequents the place. There are the ever present sheep (the warden is often to be seen patrolling the site with a small shovel and a bucket clearing up after them), the groups of red deer which can be seen on the hill behind the site and on the opposite shore, and the astonishing abundance of bird life.

Our bird feeder has attracted Blue Tits, Great Tits, Chaffinches and Siskins in great numbers. At the right time of year you will see huge quantities of Swallows and Swifts and while you may not always see them, in late spring and early summer the distinctive call of the Cuckoo is pretty hard to miss. You're also guaranteed to see larger specimens.

If you've been reading this blog from the start you'll know that I have a thing for Raptors; one of the earliest editions of the blog went on at some length about a falconary display. There is just something about the larger Raptors that makes your heart race when you catch a glimpse of them wheeling and soaring in the distance. Well, around Grummore you will not only see Buzzards doing just that, there's every possibility you will see them up close and personal - I've been within three feet of one which just sat on a wall and looked at me.

There have been sightings of Golden Eagles in the hills around nearby Loch Loyal - although I confess I've never seen one - and when we were there last (Whit Week 2013)we learned that one of the people staying at the same time as us had seen our largest bird of prey, the White Tailed Eagle, on the opposite shore of Lock Naver not once but twice. Ironically at the time we were parked up by the shores of Loch Loyal scanning the sky for Golden Eagles... We've also seen pairs of the rare Red Throated Divers, and their even rarer Black Throated cousins. Herons, Tufted Ducks, Geese, Plovers, Dunlin (see below), Oyster Catchers - it's a veritable bird watching paradise! 

Birds aren't the only things flying around either. While they're not frequent enough to become a noise nuisance, you will also get to see the RAF's fast and not so fast jets doing their thing. I don't think we've ever stayed there without having at least one low flypast from either a Tornado or a Typhoon skimming the Loch - and by low, I mean low enough to make out the profile of the pilot - and slightly more in the distance you can often see pairs of Tornado GR4s dancing between the hills as they rehearse their ground attack/force protection routines.

Seriously, if watching stuff that fly is your thing, you may never want to leave the site!

Indeed, in some ways there's no need to. Grummore sits almost literally in the middle of nowhere. the nearest towns are Lairg, twenty off miles southish and Bettyhill, twenty odd miles to the north at the mouth of the River Naver. With no disrespect to these little towns there is very little reason to visit either - although there is a rather good museum in Bettyhill, about which more in a later post...

Lairg and Bettyhill are probably the closest shops - don't get excited, they're pretty small and will only be able to supply the basics - but if you plan well before you set out you probably won't need them unless you're staying awhile. The absolute basics - bread, milk, etc, can be obtained from the warden's little shop, which will also provide ice-creams - and does a roaring trade on hot days as cyclists pause for a wee rest by the lochside.

There is a good day out to be had in the town of Dornoch on the Eastern Coast, and in the town of Ullapool on the Western Coast, but they're both something of a hike from here and easier to get to from almost anywhere else. The space inbetween these places however is full of beauty and wonder, so a certain amount of "getting out there" is highly recommended.

Then there's the history. The valley of Strathnaver, where Grummore is to be found, and the surrounding areas possibly drip with it. Not all of it is happy. Grummore, the village after which the site used to me named can still be seen on the hill immediately above the site. Well, the remains of it can. The Village of Grummore was cleared rather violently at the height of the notorious Highland Clearances - a violent and shameful sequence of events which have both shaped and scarred the Highlands of today. There are many clearance villages along the valley - now largely empty of people but once positively humming with communities. As a result we'll keep coming back to them as we explore the place in future postings.

But the history of human occupation in this valley goes back much further than the tragedy of the clearances. On the Loch shore at the edge of the site itself sit (for they are far too collapsed to be called "standing") the remains of an Iron Age Broch - a sort of fortified farmhouse/tower unique to the north of Scotland and the Islands. The broch at Grummore is little more now than a ring of rubble, but there are better preserved examples both in the valley and in the surrounding area.

And it is the area around this amazing little site that we'll be exploring in the next post.

*Now officially called "Altnaharra" as part of the Club's efforts to make the location of their sites clearer. Because obviously everybody knows where Altnaharra is...

Lydford - when is a castle not a castle?

As you may have gathered, we love a good castle. As the afternoon sun finally began to challenge the drizzle and greyness we decided to round off our day on Dartmoor with a visit to a little Motte and Bailey style affair in the picturesque village of Lydford. 

Snuggling cosily in the stage coach route between Okehampton to the North and Tavistock to the south the collection of pretty stone cottages sits on the site of "Hlidan", an Anglo Saxon settlement founded by Alfred the Great as part of his fortifications against the Vilkings, who were ravaging his kingdom from the east, and the Cornish, who were lying in wait on the other side of the Tamar, presumably waiting to overwhelm the Devonian locals with savoury baked goods.

Just slightly north of the village is the rather beautiful Lydford Gorge, a natural feature cut into the rock by the force of the river Lyd. This steep sided river gorge sports a pretty spectacular thirty metre high waterfall and "The Devil's Cauldron", a deep pothole. I don't know any of this from personal experience, mind you, because the site is owned by The National Trust, who would have charged us £5.90 each for the privillage of having a quick look. Earlier in the day we might have forked out, but we were not that far from closing time and after a quick discussion we decided that it probably wasn't worth it.

After all, we are from Yorkshire, which means two things. First of all, the Yorkshire Dales are literally ten minutes from our front door, which means that if we want river gorges, incredibly high waterfalls and deep potholes, we don't have to go all the way to Dorset to find them. It also means that, as Yorkshire natives, we're as tight as the proverbial duck's arse and as a result  there was no way we were going to fork out the thick end of twelve quid to see something we could see closer to home for free.

So, we pulled a U turn quicker than a cabinet minister with an unpopular policy and headed back to Lydford proper, pulling in to the ample (and free) public car park opposite the pub. Because we're all high tech and cutting edge, (and because it was free - I mentioned that we were tight didn't I?)  I'd downloaded English Heritage's audio guide onto my 'phone (thanks to the free WIFI in the pub the day before - sometimes I bloody love living in the future) so we didn't cross the road to the castle immediately.

Instead the guide directed us to turn right out of the car park and down the road a bit to a little field on the right hand side of the road near the old post office. It's not an obvious landmark, and had the guide not directed us there we wouldn't even have noticed this unremarkable little patch of grass. Aside from a slight mound running through it seems to be completely featureless. That mound is important though - because it's the remains of Anglo Saxon defensive earthworks, which means it's a direct physical connection to the men and women who defended Alfred's kingdom of Wessex more than a thousand years ago.

An unimpressive bump in a field to some, perhaps, but to me it's basically time travel, and I love time travel!

Still, there is a limit to the amount of time even the most avid archaeology fan can spend looking at a bump in a field, so we turned ourselves around and ambled back towards the castle, which stands next to the pub on the northern edge of the village. The castle is administered and maintained by the fine folks at English Heritage, is free to enter and is open at all times. If you don't have the handy audio guide on your 'phone as we did, there are plenty of helpful display boards around the place. I'd recommend you watch your step, and probably don't go there in the dark - the hill that the castle stands on is smallish but reasonably steep, and the interior of the castle itself boasts steep staircases and some pretty hefty drops. 

As castles go, it's a reasonably modest affair - and this might well be because technically it isn't a castle at all. As I said at the top of the post, it looks like a pretty standard Motte and Bailey castle, a two storey square stone tower atop a small, steep hill. It seems to me rather likely that it's meant to look like that, but it is in reality something of an architectural fraud. It's certainly old - the castle we see today was built in the thirteenth century - but it wasn't  built as a castle, and it wasn't built on a hill.

The audio guide informs me that back when the structure was first put together it was in fact a three storey tower with the ground floor at what is now street level. The "hill" that the two visible storeys now appear to stand on was actually added later, basically by piling copious amounts of rubble and soil around the ground floor, so that the top of the mound effectively turned the first floor into the ground floor. It seems that at the time this was done, most of the former ground floor was filled in with rubble, leaving only a small "dungeon" type space. That rubble has now been cleared, and if you make your way down the steepish metal stairs and examine the walls you can clearly see where there used to be doors and windows.

For most of its active life this "castle" was a prison and courtroom, serving as an office of the royal Forest of Dartmoor, and also housed the "Stannery Court", which had jurisdiction over the Devonian tin mines, and the miners that worked in them. The Stannery Court made the place infamous for its ferociously hard line approach to "justice". The Lydford website gives this chilling example of the kind of punishment that could be meted out here:

" the penalty upon any miner found guilty of adulterating tin for fraudulent purposes was that three spoonfuls of molten tin should be poured down into his throat."

In other words, not just "death" but "really horrible and painful death".

The place was also used by the Royalists to imprison captured Parliamentarians during the Civil War. It's not all incarceration and misery, mind you. Lydford was also the site of a royal mint in Anglo Saxon times, and the silver "Lydford Pennies" were valid as currency throughout Wessex. Indeed, some of them made it to Scandinavia - perhaps pillaged by the very Viking Raiders that Alfred the Great founded Hlidan to defend against.*

We really liked Lydford and its castle. I suppose it helps that we visited the place in the sunny afternoon of what had been a pretty bleak and miserable day, but it really was a pretty little place, and it's always fun to have free reign of a "castle" - even a slightly fraudulent one. Should you find yourself on Dartmoor I'd recommend giving it a look. There's also a rather nice church that's also worth a look by all accounts, situated just next to the castle, and the earthworks of the original Anglo Saxon castle just on the other side of that.

Sadly we missed both of these landmarks because by the time we'd done with the castle it was starting to get a bit dark and we were keen to head back to the 'van. Maybe next time, eh?

*Oh, alright, it's equally possible that they were given as payment for goods the Vikings were trading - either way they have a rather nice collection of the little silver critters in the Stockholm museum...