Walk a mile in my shoes...

Walking can be a frustrating hobby, but then there are cloud/silver lining moments that make it all worth while...

The Best Laid Plans of the Weekenders today led to us to Beckington, a pretty stone village just to the north of Frome. A copy of 'Where Somerset Meets Wiltshire' in hand, our guide (usually reliable and informative) sent us across a stile that was no more, into a strip of field (barely trodden) to a barbed wire fence lacking in any exit. The cricketers on the adjoining pitch looked on nonplussed, as if they'd seen it all before.

Iford Eyeful

We've hit too many rambling dead ends in our time to do anything other than abandon a false lead, so a quick peruse sent us to another of WSMW's suggestions. And what a joy... Avoncliff is one of those places where the Kennet & Avon Canal crosses the River Avon by aqueduct. The railway line is squeezed into the only other bit of land that isn't either river-wide or gorge-steep. The walk was varied and delightful. Reminiscent of the Wye Valley in parts, and still filled with the scent (of the now past-its-best) wild garlic, it follows the Avon and then the Frome via Freshford and Harold Peto's Iford Manor, before a steep climb up to Westwood and a final descent back to Avoncliff.

Arriving at Iford just too late for a cup of their famous tea, we nonetheless had a chat with the housekeeper who was about to lock up. She gave us a brief history of the place and revealed herself to be an example of history's cyclical nature - she had ended up on the same estate as her one-time mill-worker antecedents.

Westwood is hosting a Scarecrow Festival. Slightly naff? You might think so, but the topical theme of Kings & Queens had inspired the locals to come up with some wonderfully witty creations such as King Kong and Burger King (!), as well as the somewhat more inevitable fairy tales. Clever, the good folk of Westwood.

Westwood Royalty

This unexpected excursion was rounded off with a large glass of house white and a half of Box Steam's Funnel Blower at the Cross Guns' beer garden, right on the riverside. We watched the trout, almost suspended in the shallows, while musing on serendipity. It all worked all right in the end.

www.ifordmanor.co.uk
www.crossguns.net

Borderlands

What does a county mean to its residents? Here in Frome we are virtually on the border between Somerset and Wiltshire. Not far to the south west is Dorset, a few minutes north the less-than-poetic acronym that is BANES (Bath and North East Somerset). Although we are in Somerset, our DAB radio thinks BBC Wiltshire is our local station. To listen to BBC Somerset we have to go analogue. And we tuned into the Beeb’s local offering this morning -  an outside broadcast from Watchet; a coastal town at the far end of the county from here that has little in common with Frome except the last line of its postal address. It set me thinking about county identity – is there such a thing for most of us? (We’ll leave Yorkshire out of the equation).

Reflections on identity? Nunney Castle (which is in Somerset)

Our immediate neighbours here at Weekender Towers work in BANES, Wiltshire and Somerset. Frome people don’t think twice about shopping in or using the better train service from Warminster and are highly exercised about the recent controversial changes to access at the Longleat Estate (both in Wiltshire).

I was born in Essex and identify more with the town of my birth than the land of TOWIE. Cricket fans may feel attached to their county teams and we all have a financial stake in the administrative body via our council taxes. Maybe if you live in the geographical heart of a county, working and playing within its boundaries, it means much more. Parents with children will think carefully about which local authority runs which schools and that may well colour attitudes to the lines on the map. But generally speaking, if you’re in border country, does it really make any difference to day-to-day living and state of mind? Does anyone on this side of the divide say, “I’m not going to the new Waitrose in Warminster because it’s in Wiltshire”? I doubt it very much.

The Mystery of the Stones

Every time we drive to and from our adopted home, we pass Stonehenge.  Whatever the time of day, week or year, there is a constant stream of pilgrims circling the stones, paying homage. For us it has a particular, if somewhat trivial, meaning - it signifies that we are well over half-way to Frome, and the change in landscape as we climb up from Amesbury lifts the soul. But why do people travel from all over the country (and all over the world) to see a a collection of rocks in a Wiltshire field? Is it simply their age - the fact that they are still here at all? Is it the myths and legends that are attached to the place? Or is it because it's a World Heritage Site and must simply be ticked off from the list of X Hundred Things To Do Before You Die?

A heap of stones in Wiltshire

In the 1990s, you might recall there was a quite a craze for "spiritual" music - Gorecki, Tavener et al. Aided and abetted by some canny marketing, people who wouldn't usually touch contemporary classical music with their neighbour's bargepoles, snapped up works like 'The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs' and 'The Protecting Veil'. The feeling was that traditional religion was not fulfilling the need we have for something beyond this temporal being, and that this music filled the vacuum.

I wonder if a visit to Stonehenge likewise - knowingly or unknowingly - somehow connects people to an other-worldly past, plugging a gap in our predominantly secular 21st Century lives. The same coach parties might go on to Salisbury Cathedral or Bath Abbey. Are they all connected?

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/daysout/properties/stonehenge

PS. Am going to try and get to this - spiritual void or no spiritual void:  http://www.salisburyfestival.co.uk/cms/site/news/the-festival-presents-fire-garden-at-stonehenge-for-the-london-2012-festival.aspx

Music to our ears?

To the Big Garage On The Hill (aka the Wiltshire Music Centre - see blog of 18.12.11) for Québecois trio, Genticorum.

The auditorium looked slightly less stark than at our last visit as the tastefully pastel-coloured acoustic panels had been put up to give the place a more intimate sound. But it still feels more car maintenance than concert hall. The band was good - technically highly proficient with oodles of good humour in their presentation. But only the a capella numbers gave the hairs on the back of my neck any exercise. This was perhaps more to do with the very nature of the French-Canadian music they play which, stripped of the big band arrangements of the likes of La Bottine Souriante or the more eclectic style of La Volée d'Castors, comes across as rather relentlessly repetitive.

It didn't help that for the whole of the first half Yann Falquet's guitar was virtually inaudible. I mentioned this to him in the interval (someone had to) and matters improved somewhat in part 2.That was until Yann whipped out his Jew's Harp (!)  - which we couldn't hear either.

There's not much point in playing a hall which trumpets "the best acoustic outside London", if your sound engineer has Van Gogh's ear for music.

www.genticorum.com

www. wiltshiremusic.org