Sunday 28 June 2009

The White Horse

Its been a blazing hot weekend for the most part.

T-shirt ninja - red
I have no interest in going to Glastonbury, but I do like the countryside. The other week, The Guardian was doing a series of guides to walks round the country, the only one left that I haven't chucked out with the waste paper was the one with a walk round the White Horse thing in Oxfordshire. So the missus and I made a break for the countryside.

The White Horse
The route in the article was miles and miles and up all hills and stuff so we gave up after about twenty minutes, and chilled out under a tree, getting bitten by friendly insects and speculating on what the various crops were in nearby fields.

I want to be a farmer. I want to be part of the sacred lineage, the bond we have with the land, where the same bit of dirt has been poked with sticks and churned out the same sorts of crops for hundreds of years. Techniques and varieties may have changed, yields increased and productivity optimised, but for hundreds of years the land has fed people.

So aye, we abandoned the walking, got back in the car and drove to the National Trust carpark, so it was just a wee stroll up the way to the horse and all the earthworks and stuff.

The White Horse
It makes me feel dizzy sometimes, just thinking about it, like standing on the edge of a cliff and peering down. Three thousand years ago, people in this land were gazing at the same white horse. They probably thought it was pretty neat too.

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