I had deliberately kept the number of site visits low for Beltane. The daylight hours are still short, the distance we had to travel to get there was sufficient to drain away the day, and I wanted to be able to feel ‘unhurried’ when we got to a site. Almost as if enhancing this mood I had parked at The Broad Oak pub car park in the village of Strelley. It took us ten minutes to walk to Catstone Hill, and really it would have been easier to park right on the corner of the road just before the main village where there was ample parking, and the distance would have been more than halved. Such is life!
That wasn’t the end of our woes finding the site. Intuitively, and with only the barest map navigation, we found our way on to the hill. We inspected the broad flat plateau but couldn’t find any “capstones” for burial chambers. Were they hidden by the brambles and gorse? We tried to find more accurate maps on our phones but failed, so we resorted to dowsing rods. The rods pointed us out in the direction of a ploughed field. Our rationality kicked in and caused us confusion. We split up and went searching. Eventually I found the right place. It was at the end of the ploughed field and off the plateau behind a line of trees. The M1 motorway was is view below. Nice! Being off the main plateau was why we hadn’t seen it. We also realised there was a much easier way in if we’d only taken the steep tracks up the hill instead of following the main path. Once you know, you know – hindsight is clear.
We inspected the area around the capstones. No entry into these chambers, if ever there was any. They were silted up to the brim now. Disappointment began to set in. We stumbled around tripping over the tangle of briars and bramble thorns, the thick dead grass and the outcropping tangle of shrub branches. Our sense of frustration was compounded when we discovered that the site had no energy signature either. There were no earth energies running through the site at all. The disappointment grew. Should we turn away and go somewhere else?
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