I am privileged, I walk.
Up the heathen hill of Harrow I climb, and stare out, across the gravel basin from where I was born.
I spy through the dip in the western ridgeway and out onto the red-land and beyond to the fortress on the rock.
From my vantage point, topographic outlines merge into the grey - on this bleak, mid-winter’s day.
I walk across the heath, from Beltane to the Iron Age camp at Honnington - a rectangular enclosure that presides over the Ancaster gap.
To my west, the subtle, holy hill of Hambleton that rises out of the Withma plain. Even in her barron phase, and with a fine dusting of snow, she still appears plentiful and abundant.
Along the ancient gap, once carved by the ancient trespasser and on to Anna’s encampment, past the British-Romano shrine of the three mothers - once addressed by the young god ‘Veridios’
Along the unrelenting Ermine Street, where in 1998, I was propelled from my bike by the speeding, blood-red god of Peugeot.
Here at the crossroads, I am bewitched by the blind horse of Bayard. No leap of faith is required here, to imagine a chalk-cut steed, lit by the moon beneath the nearby Crone’s well.
In the midst of the land of sheep, I meet the Templar and here, in the centre of the heath I stand in the remains of the circular shrine and I ponder upon the possibilities of a more ancient origin for this designated green and pleasant real-estate.
In the preceptory tower, the Templar, reveals to me the covert cat and the ritual protective runes amidst the carved chaos of the centuries. Beneath my feet, unexplored chambers, that will one day reveal the hidden head - of which I once dreamt.
I walk across the heath, over the rutted, limestone Ermine track, that carves through this sacred land to the low road – a track that marks the eastern boundary to this sacred plateau.
Here at Dorrington, I visit the church of St. John and St. James, a building that now occupies the once sacred space of the ancient shrine of the Teutonic thunder god - Daron-Wy.
The megalithic remains of this shattered temple can still be seen in the form of the Drake Stone, reclaimed from the fields by the Reverend Dodsworth, and placed safely outside the church of
St. Edith at nearby Anwick.
At fenlands edge – this mid-summer shrine presides over sacred marsh. Below me the village of Dorrington – the halfway house that stands as testimony to ‘Duir’ - the stout guardian of the door.
For it is here, until recent times, pastoral epochs were celebrated in the playgarth, beneath the Three-Grained Oak.
But time is not on my side, and in failing light the north wind begins to bite, but unconcerned I draw my winter coat around me, for unlike many of my fellows, I am totally aware of my privilege – and I will walk….