The Wayfaring Path

Another fairly quiet week, with lots of feeling like it was going to be hard to leave ‘our’ cottage and the Amberley area. We felt very much at home and very much like we would like to live there one day. I had thought I’d go again to Gloucester but a sore back put paid to that, so I visited my fave spots in Amberley and Nailsworth; as well as having two acupuncture sessions.

Then it was time to leave – we were seen off the premises by Casper the barky dog and collected in the worlds smallest red car by the car hire company. It was a precarious game of tetris to get three adults, four bags, and a box of food inside, but we managed it and headed down to Stroud to fill in the paperwork. We made it out of town easily enough and on to the open road – the car was a lot less cramped with just the two of us!

We were heading to Chalke History Festival, which is officially my Most Favourite Thing Ever. It’s held on a farm near the village of Broad Chalke in Wiltshire, and proved a bit tricky to get to as my GPS wasn’t working very well. But in due course we made it to the site, were figuratively blown away by the number of cars parked up, and nearly literally blown away by the high winds!

I’ve not used the tent for a while, maybe not since we had our section up at Ōhau, and over the years my memory of it had clearly morphed into me thinking it was a tent big enough for two people plus gear. You can’t jump around but you can be quite comfy type of thing. I looked at the tent in front of us and felt sorry for the two people squeezed in there. (I bet you can guess what happened next!) It was VERY windy and a bit of a struggle to keep hold of the tent but we eventually put it up… and realised it was at least half as small as we both remembered! Possibly smaller than the neigbour’s tent! Lol.

It’s an absolute miracle my back didn’t ping as doing anything in the tent involved sitting sort of hunched and grabbing things and hauling them either in front or behind me. We blew up the two mattresses and it wasn’t wide enough for them both, let alone having gear in with us… it was going to be a cramped weekend indeed!

But none of that mattered once we started heading down to the main site. We were picked up by a lovely chap in an electric cart who whizzed us down the hill and we saw all the huge tents and the people and the vintage fairground rides – heavenly! We grabbed a quick bite to eat and perused the huge Waterstones bookshop (in a tent!) and went for a super quick wander about before I had my first talk, on prehistoric clothing. There were four speakers and two of them are kind of heroes of mine, so it was an excellent start! I was a bit starstruck, to be honest!

We knew Friday night was the night we wanted to have a few ciders and have a dance to the Queen tribute band, so we had another quick walk about to try and get our bearings (it’s a BIG site!) and then took our places up the front to get our Freddie groove on. He was great! Proper camp and and good singer to boot. The vibe was friendly and fun, and while there was a lot of cider and beer being consumed, it all stayed relaxed and positive. It was one of those places where you felt like everyone was determined to keep it feeling safe and enjoyable, and I just love it when that happens. Plus it was super well organised and the loos didn’t get feral until really quite late!

After Queen was a choice of either a DJ or a folk band but we were pooped so headed up the hill to our very cramped tent. The car was parked a ways away from the tent so we had to fit ourselves in around our gear as we hadn’t taken it back to the car. I took half a sleeping pill and conked out pretty much immediately, wrapped around my daypack and with my clothes stuffed into the bottom of the sleeping bag! But it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Regan had a less good time of it but got some sleep and we woke up feeling fairly human. Coffee was first thing on the menu!

Saturday was our only full day on the site and I had two courses booked with the The Medieval Apothecary – one on making ink from plants, and one on making dye. For the morning session we learned all about the different plants that would have been used – the apothecary would have travelled with the household and would have been in charge of everything to do with plants (except food). So, medicine, dyeing fabric for the livery and other clothing, creating inks for writing and illustrations, and a myriad other things. We learned how to make a proper feather pen, and then practiced our writing with ink made from dried prunings of grape vines.

Regan attended a lot more talks than I did, and enjoyed all of those. We barely saw each other during the day, and I had a quick smoothie before heading back to the pre-historic area for more ancient clothing – this time with the ability to get hands on… I learned how to spin wool using a drop-spindle! I’m terrible at it, but can only get better from here 🙂 A quick bowl of curry (complete with chats with four swing dancers down from London for a show that evening) then back to the apothecary tent for the class on plant dyes.

We dyed fabric and yarn with one dye made from onion skins and one from weld. I have no idea if I can get weld in NZ, but I can definitely get onion skins! It’s a great dye as you don’t need a mordant for it, so a really easy one to get started on. The apothecary, Fin, was brilliant – calm and knowledgeable and really inspiring. I’d love to be her apprentice!

Quick dinner with Regan (another smoothie – it was VERY hot weather and fresh fruit and vege were a bit hard to come by) and then a singer-songwriter was playing. We had a walk around but most of the stalls were closed by then, and so we headed over to hear the most excellent Amy Jeffs promoting her book “Saints” with stories (and songs!) about the different saints she had researched. She’s amazing! Regan had seen her at the Hay Festival and raved about her, so I was stoked to have seen her too.

The last event of the night was a talk on the history of magic… complete with proper magic tricks! The evening over, we slowly made our way back up the hill to our tent and collapsed into bed exhausted and happy.

We actually had good sleeps and packed up the tent and grabbed coffee. Regan had more talks, and I went to a flint knapping demonstration. After that I was determined to get around all the stalls to chat to the re-enactors as I’d still not seen them all. There were talks I wanted to see but I couldn’t do everything! I had some wonderful chats with people – with archaeologists, sail-makers, 18th century soldiers… and everywhere you look was someone dressed as something interesting.

From the ‘why didn’t I take a bloody photo?’ files… when I visited with the Historical Sail-maker she said “hold still… your hair…” and called to the man in the next stall to come and look. I thought there must have been a spider in my hair or something and tried to stay calm. But nope, she was excited as I was the only person she’d seen that weekend with ‘flaxen hair’. She held up a hank of flax fibres and I have to say it did look a lot like my hair! The flax that makes linen is a different plant to what we know as flax in NZ, and when the fibres are prepared they look like hair. I’ve never really loved my hair colour – kind of mousy – but now I think of it differently! But maaaan, why didn’t I take a photo?!

Regan texted me to say he was in a great talk about promoting heritage in the digital age so I whipped over there. He was right, it was a fab talk indeed! Then, sadly, it was time to go. We drove our tiny car away from the site and I hoped it wasn’t the last time we’d be at Chalke. Driving down the green tunnel of a country road was lovely, but then we had to turn onto a dual carriageway. As we turned onto the road a group of motorcyclists went absolutely HOONING past us. Like they were on a racetrack, not a public road – really scary. Then a few minutes later we saw cars stopped and someone waving at us to slow down. We drove past a really awful accident site, where one of the bikes had hit a turning car so fast the bike was upright and sort of melded into the car. It could so easily have been us one of them rode into.

It was really really hard to witness, and I’ll never forget the driver of the car, sitting on the grass verge with his head in his hands and people comforting him – he’ll have to live with that forever and it was absolutely not his fault. I don’t know what happened to the rider, he was many metres away and not moving so I’m assuming the worst. It was scary and horrible, and made me grateful that Regan is such a sensible rider. We were both really shaken by it and it was a pretty subdued drive to Torquay.

But we made it safely to our Airbnb, on a leafy street and nice and quiet. There were showers at Chalke, which I appreciated, but there’s nothing like a proper shower in a proper bathroom and then a proper bed! We wandered down the steep hill for a cheap feed and were surprised at how many exceptionally wasted people there were stumbling around. Not sure if there had been some kind of outdoor concert or if it’s always like that on a summer Sunday in Torquay but it was a massive shock after the mellow vibes of Chalke.

This trip has definitely involved many large hills to walk up, so we dragged ourselves up the hill and into bed, ready for work in the morning.