We chased each other round the manicured lawns of the great manor house for a couple of days. Hiding in the yew grove, and amongst the giant rhubarb plants.
The house stood empty for the summer while we nested in a small satellite building, a converted cowshed that looked over an artificial fishing lake. In the distance, on the horizon a jagged rock outcrop scratched at the clouds. The map suggested it was about eight miles away and I spent the first half of the week wondering if I could reach the remains of the hill fort at the summit and be back before breakfast.
Pulling the door closed in the pre dawn chill, I set off along a steep avenue up to the main road that dropped down to the local market town. Feet clipping metal roads, I ran without a map, using the mountain as a guide, and a memory impression of the map I’d found in the house. Tarmac would carry me all the way to the mountain base, and from there a steep hack over sheep fields and rock paths to the summit itself.
Passing stiles and the signs of trails, I’m tempted to attempt a cross country navigation. To get lost amid the field borders and oak lined meadows. An ancient kings trail crosses my path. Its wooden signposts marking a single line from the great tidal river in the south, all the way to the wide mouthed bay in the north, both channels drowning with tales of the islands grim past. Hill forts, medieval castles and dark age depressions are scattered along the path, a defensive line to keep invaders out and a challenge to attacking armies who patrolled a hundred and eighty miles of the border looking for a weak point to break in.
Off the main road, trees overhang the lanes, hiding the hill and making navigation tricky. Past a quiet farmhouse as the sun rises and a meadow opens up on the left. A stile to cross and a path threading through the bracken, leading up towards the rock face that towers above like the devil’s mountain. But this is a holy mountain. A religious rock. The scars of the cliff above, if the legend is true, the result of a lightning strike cracking the earth apart at the moment Christ was pinned to the cross three thousand miles away. Another legend suggests it was formed by the Devil, cheating in a bet to prove local hills were bigger than the mountains across the border. In reality, the hill is the stump of a mountain range eroded over millions of years, something determined in the rock causing this crag to endure long after the surrounding land has been ground down by rainstorms and howling winds.
Slipping down a gear I push up the hill, bracken giving way to a sandy shingle path that tracks along the mountain side, switching back on itself as it nears the double peaked summit. I surface on the southern end, looking down on the silent shadowed town below, the sun still only half over the horizon. A final sharp right turn and I can see the stacked stone pillar with a plaque marking the location of the remains of an ancient hill fort, sharing the summit with the ruins of a medieval chapel.
Four hundred years ago, a small but dedicated congregation trekked up here for their monthly sermon, bathing in the glory of the surrounding views and the notion that the lord god made them all. Close beside them, Iron Age pagans watched their invocations, their eyrie offering a strategic viewpoint of prospective invaders and a position of dominance from the heavens.
As my breathing become steady again, I head across the broken walls and. trace my path back by eye, along the main road, following its tree line back to the empty manor house. I can see the white walls gleaming in the dawn light, and perhaps a smudge of the dark, shuttered barn. I imagine them still sleeping in the dark.
The wind blows fiercely from the north and I zip up my shirt and turn back into a network of trails carved by cloven hooved sheep. Cautious on the light dust and loose shale, I pick up speed all the way down, laughing as I barrel across the lush meadow grass at the end. Almost vaulting the stile I catch my breath on the tarmac road and begin to wind my way back home.
The avenue curves round the manor wall to an old open tithe barn and I stop for a moment, to look back at the mountain. Low clouds draw around the summit like dragon smoke and I feel pulled back towards it. I wonder what it might be like to spend the night up there, sleeping amongst the ghosts. The heavy tapestry curtains are still draped across the windows of the barn behind me, and I hear no sounds inside. It’s still night in there and I sit on the grass for a while and wait in the light.