England's sacred sites

I had a pretty amazing 10 days driving around Devon and Cornwall, visiting some of the sacred sites in the British countryside (however there are many more!). After leaving Totnes, I picked a car in Torquay and spent some time acquainting myself to driving again, as opposed to getting around on two wheels. It's been years since I've driven a manual car and I started it in gear without the clutch a few times, oops ;-)

For much of this time the weather was awful, high winds, rain, cold etc. If it was Australia I'd be tucked up in bed, watching youtube etc (you get the picture). Even so, I was pretty determined and put up with rain, wind, copious amounts of cow poo and even falling in mud :-(

Many of the roads here are impossibly narrow. What would be a one-way street in Australia is two-way, and in two-way streets people park in one lane, rendering it a one-lane street. In the countryside, many of the 'roads' are tiny one-way lanes, or what we would probably call a footpath. Fortunately the locals are very proficient in reversing, much more so than me ;-)

The GPS was a godsend in navigating the countryside. I always thought these were for people who can't read maps, or remember where they're going, but I'm totally converted now. There were a few occassions however when it got sworn at, like the time I went on a 5 mile loop for no reason, or down a tiny, very muddy lane where I nearly got bogged.

Many of the sites I visited were off the beaten track, they aren't well known and there is no signage. There were many times when I found myself trekking through thick bush, moors or cow paddocks in wind, rain or both, wondering what on earth I was doing? Some sites I spent hours looking for, only to give up. Others were spontaneous finds along the way.

Here are a few of the places I visited;

Forest of ancient stunted oaks - Dartmoor

Stone circle near the Cheesewringers

The Cheesewringers - Bodmin Moor

Obelisk near Bodmin

St Michaels Mount

Ruins of Tintagel Castle - birthplace of King Arthur

Orbs - near St Nectan's Glen (unfortunately I couldn't get in to see the waterfall)

Launceston Castle

St Michael's Brentor Church - on top of this hill (I think I nearly blew away up there!)

Inside St Michaels Brentor church - super eerie, not another person in sight

Burrow Mump - another large hill/mound with a ruined church (dedicated to St Michael) on top.

Cadbury Castle

Stonehenge :-)

Saw this limestone horse while driving around :-)

Silbury Hill

Avebury

Cathedral dedicated to Mary Magdalene in Oxford - amazing earth energy here :-)

Canterbury Cathedral - again this sits on an awesome energy centre :-)

The Cerne Abbas giant - loved this place!!

Many of these places are on the Michael-Mary ley line running through the UK. Since this part of the trip I've been reading the fascinating work of Hamish Miller and Paul Broadcast who outlined their work dousing this ley line in 'The Sun and the Serpent'. It was good to see how much of what I found with my energy work at these sites matched with their findings. Sometimes it's nice to get some validation :-)

This was a really full on schedule, including the holy wells and Gastonbury. This is a really long post so I'll blog about those separately. I'd suggest to anyone doing this to allow more time. I'm still catching up on sleep, blog posts etc :-)