This has been a long and busy year for The Mercian Pilgrim, I turned 50 and made it a resolution to visit as many new places as I could. It’s safe to say that I hit that mark already, and still have till April! A lot of things went unreported and unfilmed, suffice to say that I had enough issues with time and mental energy in 2025. My travels this year have covered a lot of ground, Avebury and West…
This morning I walked through heritage of a different kind, the canal network here in the Black Country is much closer to home in both time and space than Belas Knap. The canals were once the industrial lifeblood of this country, carrying heavy goods along their lengths; drawn by horses or driven by motors, the boats carried heavy goods that would have damaged the roads. While Belas Knap was serene, seemingly (some might say literally) from another world; the canals…
I started to write this post inside a Neolithic Long Barrow. A wonderful old place of still stone and earth, with the modern world at a distance. The sense of the ancient people, our ancestors, is strong here. I sit looking around this low stone chamber, the ceiling low enough that I must stoop to move around, there’s a sense of stillness and peace. As I move around the barrow, the sense of peace and almost otherworldliness is strong. Normally,…