Mythical Britain

Ha! I was wearing inadequate clothing when cycling today. I dare say Wainwright would have said of his beloved Blackburn Rovers these days that there’s no such thing as a bad football club, just inadequate owners!

A special place for sure and well worth the trip to see! As you approach it always makes me think of something out of Tremors, where some great worm hears vibrations on the surface and emerges to swallow up whatever is there.

Scene of a church interior showing two painted effigies of knights from 1480-1520. The knights lie on raised tombs lit by huge windows casting streaked shadows upon them.

Knight-time prayers. Fifteenth century splendour at St Michael’s, Stanton Harcourt. A special place!

And “piss”.

Long painted medieval shield showing a knight kneeling before a beautiful medieval lady while behind the knight a skeletal figure of death looms menacingly as if to steal away the knight from his earthly existence.

Pavise in our time? Exquisitely executed parade shield in the British Museum highlights the ambiguities of the chivalric ideal; at once a portrayal of the lore of a richly coded aesthetic while at the same time a haunting reminder of the brevity of earthly life and the hollow vanity of war.

Sunlit church porch way with light streaming through gates opening onto the churchyard. A bicycle leans against a bench in the porch with the shadows of the gateway stretching towards the viewer.

Sometimes the light catches you in calm, enchanting places. Here, at Albury, it seems the ghosts of parishioners past come through to say hello. #AdoorableThursday

X marks the spot where Roman ways once crossed in ancient hills and earthen banks in Dorset long ago.

Linocut plate showing two men talking to each other, one wearing armour. Two cutting tools are also in the picture.

Working on some #linocut illustrations for a new translation I’m working on. More in due course! #medieval

Definitely one for #TombTuesday - loads of extra info in the trail too.

Castles in the landscape

I have no regrets about leaving what became X. I’ve no interest in the vanity of billionaires nor the politics of hate. It’s a toxic platform.

Perhaps it contains rare earth minerals or maybe China or Russia have been trying to acquire it?

Yes. And wet!

Small flock of sheep cowering behind a standing stone in a stone circle in windy wet weather.

Everyone loves a standing stone! Sheep communing with the ancestors at the Stones of Stenness on Orkney a couple of years back. #StandingStoneSunday

Fantastic- so good to get pukka recognition! Super stuff!

Quite. And it’s not as if they’re prepared to fund the armed forces properly either. Smoke, mirrors and platitudes in the pursuit of pointless headlines.

Gideon Mantell’s story inspired me as a boy and is even more inspiring today. Then, as now, pomposity often stood in the way of progressive thinking but Mantell won through, although his passion cost him dearly in the end. We stand on the shoulders of giants, perhaps literally in this case.

The gambling industry - a malignancy of society whereby a tiny number of very rich individuals are permitted by government to tax the desperate and give them nothing in return apart from hopeless odds, misleading box-tick marketing and the mendacious spin of being part of a group enjoying a flutter.

Funnily enough I wondered about how it was cared for; thank you for the information.

Wow! Seriously wonderful!

With some crackers and a pint of mild!

Large and plain hexagonal font with a square base, the whole cut and shaped from one huge stone. The font has a wooden lid.

A great font fit for Ascapart at Llangelynin Old Church above Conwy. Simple in form yet rich in age and all that it has seen. #FontsOnFriday

Used to take my old Austin Mini to Minifix round the back of there back in the day! I think the pub was Courage back then too - how times change!

Love the RNLI twist!

Tarn Wadling and the supernatural landscape of Arthurian Cumberland Tarn Wadling near High Hesket, Cumberland, was the once watery setting for a series of fifteenth century Arthurian romances which now are largely lost to time. Michael Smith explores its supernatural...

A haunted supernatural landscape with a wealth Arthurian connections- join me on a trip to Tarn Wadling in Cumberland, the site of a lost lake from which the ghost of Guinevere’s mother emerged to warn of things to come… www.mythicalbritain.co.uk/post/tarn-wa...

One of my absolute favourites- snuck in there when it was a total Ivy-clad ruin back in the early 1980s. It’s great that it has been properly consolidated now. A fascinating example of the relationship between castle, landscape, earlier earthworks and church.

As a rookie copywriter years ago my first piece of work came back with the word “no” written on it, with a line struck through the copy. That was the limit of the helpful feedback and critique I received. I wish I’d had the guts to said “no” to the guy before taking on such a tedious assignment…

A sign of the times.

Is it Hegsethtrumpundvancepissupimbrauerei?

A frozen landscape fit for Gawain on his search for Hautdesert!