Day 3. Hora Pars Vitae



Today we left our lovely cottage at Acomb and returned to St Oswald's Way. The bed was so comfy that if the countryside had been any less astonishing I might never have climbed out of it!

I had hoped to walk all 97 miles of St Oswald's Way but it turned into a bit of a logistical nightmare when I realised I would only be able to manage a few miles each day, so as not to get too tired, and my health can be unpredictable at the moment. Just last Sunday I was throwing up due to the Lodger (my name for my cancer) causing problems with my digestion, if this happened on the walk it would obviously impact my walking schedule and the planned accommodation.  

So, I'm having a bit of a wander along St Oswald's Way and doing different parts of it over a two week period. This week will be Heavenfield to Lindisfarne, via Rothbury, staying in land, and next week I'll move onto the coastal stretches. 

After yesterdays detour to Hexham and Hadrian's Wall it was time to pick up the trail of St Oswald. First stop was the pretty village of Kirkwhelpington and a visit to the simple church of St Bartholomew with its amazing sundial clock above the porch. The clock sadly doesn't take account of British Summer time, we were there at 11am, but what a beautiful way to tell the time and its motto, Hora Pars Vitae, meaning every hour is a part of life, a small gift of a reminder on this sunny morning.


We travelled on to Lordenshaws, also part of the St Oswald Way route. For some time now I've been fascinated by the ancestors, meaning anything before the Normans arrived really. It started with The Last Kingdom, the lovely Uhtred on TV, taken from the great Anglo Saxon novels by Bernard Cornwell. I devoured all thirteen of them between April and October last year whilst I struggled with side effects from a rough course of chemotherapy. Then it was exploring further back, the prehistoric world of Creswell Crags, standing stones, Arbor Low, Duddo and Waun Mawn in the Preseli Hills was magical, Alice Robert's book 'The Ancestors', a dawn visit to Stonehenge and the World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum....a world I'd never considered before opened up to me. 


Lordenshaws is the site of a Hill Fort dating back to around 350 BC, the high flattened plateau edged with a bank and ditch stands beside the Simonside Hills, looking out towards the Cheviots. Close by sandstone rocks bear neolithic 'cup and ring makings', sometimes referred to as 'rock art', deep circular indentations in the stone and carved spirals or circles. Their meaning is unknown but they are often found in high places such as this, with wide sweeping views. There were examples in the Stonehenge exhibition but today I got to seem them in the wild, open place they were made, to touch the marks left by our Neolithic ancestors over 5000 years ago. It kind of puts me in my place, in the vast scheme of things, but it also connects me to those people, to our shared search for meaning, and our connection to something greater and more mysterious than ourselves.


And finally to pretty Rothbury for the night, where the four men who have accompanied my recent travels awaited my arrival in All Saints Church.










 



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