England is dignified…yes. Polite and steady and with a lot of good sense. But out on the moors, in the little villages clinging to the countryside existing for almost a thousand years, there is a different testament.
traveling in europe : Go to Genoa | The Artificial Tropical Rainforest
A cry, a hint of something wilder— a passion and a will to live.
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| england |
There is no pillaging, no enemy barons warring over land now, so perhaps the English have sunken into a more tame way of life…but I think in their step, underneath their reserved opinions there is a greater lion.
For how else could these villages, like Bovey Tracey, have survived high on the moors with little connection to the outside world?
And England is one of those countries where the past feels very close.
It’s the river Bovi that passes through the village–a river that like many things in England, is ages old.
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| river Bovi |
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| river Bovi |
When it rains the banks swell forcefully before the water floats down again to pass underneath stone bridges and away into the moors.
I wonder what it’s thoughts have been…of all it has seen and heard through the many years of it’s journey.
About the thirsty knees that have knelt before it’s cool water or the hands that threw a crime away in a feverish effort to drown the dead. About the soldiers trampling the banks to bring a decree to the neighboring village. About little children playing innocently beside it.
This river starts somewhere far off, like all the little paths leading into the village. And it’s so strange to think of people walking down them and beside the river so long ago who probably felt modern for their time. Yet to us they would all be so primitive.
It’s equally strange how similar humanity stays throughout time…regardless of “progress”. We might have computers and cars and they had knights and armor–but we are so much the same!
What brings humanity down and lifts it up is always ever much the same.
an abandoned stone bridge in the middle of the forest
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| Bridge |
And it was one of these same de Tracey’s, Sir William, who built the town’s church (it is said) as penance for his part in the murder of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170.
For a church erected because of guilt it is a surprisingly open, cheerful place.
There is little medieval darkness here…and much light streams in through the windows.
When I go in, there is a little, old lady laying out books for the next Sunday service but she doesn’t say anything as I come in quietly.
For some reason there is joy here in the ceiling and stone: a place relatively untouched by pompish extravagance or gloomy splendor.
And surrounding this church is the village of course…many of whose houses have their own names–
Bovey has less than 5,000 people–and everyone pretty much knows everybody else. And I really love all the narrow streets with their people walking back and forth from house to the store.
It’s November in England now…but beside fog and cold nights, the days have been fairly mild. Of course there are the rainy days, but people here carry on in the pouring rain. The occasional umbrella appears, but the people do not really hurry through the falling wet, they just duck their heads down and keep going.
the flying pig: does anyone want a coffee? :)
Really, maybe that’s the thing that keeps them going– this town of Bovey that has always carried on regardless of sun, wind, or rain.
“Keep your head down mate, you’ll get through it!” And when the sun shines again, look up.