Hiking in Oxfordshire: follies and fields near Faringdon

by Sean McLachlan on

I’m spending the summer in Oxford, and so far the English weather has been pretty disappointing with rain, clouds, and cool temperatures that are already making the leaves change color.

Whenever the weather is good here I’m out in the countryside hiking. The weather hasn’t been cooperating, so I and a friend went anyway. We chose a hike from Faringdon to Buckland. Faringdon is an old Oxfordshire market town with some fine pubs and historic buildings and a completely useless tower that is Faringdon’s main claim to fame.

The so-called Faringdon Folly was built in 1935 and was the last of a craze among England’s bored nobility to erect useless monuments on their property. There are follies all over England, including the “ruins” of fake Gothic churches that were never anything but ruins, giant stone pineapples, and even artificial caves that in their glory days were staffed by professional hermits.

The Faringdon Folly was the work of Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (1883-1950), a local eccentric who liked having his horse over for tea and dying his flock of doves in bright colors. Berners made no apologies for his strange behavior, once remarking that, “There is a good deal to be said for frivolity. Frivolous people, when all is said and done, do less harm in the world than some of our philanthropisors and reformers. Mistrust a man who never has an occasional flash of silliness.”

A large hill stood on his property and one day Berners casually remarked that there should be a tower on the top. His neighbors took this seriously and complained that a tower would ruin the view. To bait them, Berners decided to make the rumors become reality. When the planning committee asked Berners what the purpose of the tower would be, he replied, “The great point of the Tower is that it will be entirely useless.”

%Gallery-130606%Being the local nobility, Berners soon got his way and built the tower. In the interests of public safety he posted a sign warning that, “Members of the Public committing suicide from this tower do so at their own risk.”

Before heading out to see the folly, we had good coffee and excellent homemade cakes at the Faringdon Coffee House on the main square. Try the coconut and mango cake! Once we were fully caffeinated and sugared up, we walked a few minutes to Folly Hill, a tall but gentle hill covered with Scottish pines. The oldest were planted in the 1780s by the local celebrity Henry James Pye (1745-1813), often considered the worst Poet Luareate England ever had. Because of the thick greenery you don’t get a good look at the folly until you’re almost at its base, at which point you crane your neck up to see a plain square tower with a Gothic top. Berners had an argument with his architect about how it should look and so it ended up as two different styles.

The hill is 300 feet high, and the tower another 104 feet, so the observation deck gives you sweeping views of the countryside. On a clear day you can see 25 miles. Little villages dotted the rolling landscape and patchwork of fields. Far in the distance I spotted the mysterious chalk figure of the White Horse of Uffington.

While the tower may be useless, it draws a lot of visitors. It’s open the first Sunday of the month and on selected other dates. It will open for groups by prior arrangement. It’s also an officially registered lighthouse, with a beacon that shines from December through March, even though there aren’t any boats that need guiding. It’s said to be the only lighthouse that can’t been seen from the sea!

After visiting the folly we headed north across farmers’ fields and through patches of woodland towards the village of Buckland. I heard about this hike through The AA guide 50 Walks in Oxfordshire. This book is filled with great ideas for hikes and inspired my walks to Dorchester Abbey, the Rollright Stones, and a little-known church and holy well near Oxford. I say the book is filled with great ideas, because the directions leave something to be desired. The text is vague and the “maps” are hand-drawn sketches. Most of the time when I use this book I get lost, but since the hikes are never longer than ten miles it’s usually easy to find your way back. Besides, there are worse places to be lost than the English countryside.

We did have one good landmark–the Folly. Every time we got out into the open we could see it, and since Buckland is east and a little north of Faringdon, we could gauge our progress by the relative position of the Folly. Of course this meant the hike ended up being longer than intended. There was some scrambling over barbed wire, pushing through thickets, and the discovery of just how dense a corn field can be, yet it was all good fun.

Buckland is famous for The Lamb, a popular gastropub with locally sourced cuisine. We hoped to get a snack there, or at least a couple of pints to reward ourselves for all that hopping over barbed wire, but sadly when we finally made it, the pub was closed for the afternoon. We made up for it by eating at The Magdalen Arms back in Oxford, one of the best gastropubs I’ve visited. We both ordered rabbit in honor of all the rabbits we saw on the hike.

Done correctly, the loop trail from Faringdon to Buckland and back is ten miles (16.1 km). It’s an easy day hike with some pleasant countryside. It’s easily accessible from Oxford on the number 66 bus, which takes 40 minutes. It’s also doable as a day trip from London, going via Oxford.

Civil War reenactor injured in groin by his horse

by Sean McLachlan on

Two Civil War reenactors were injured yesterday preparing for a reenactment of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek.

One man playing a Confederate cavalryman got pinned under his horse, while a Union cavalryman got injured when his horse stepped on his groin. Exactly how he got into a position where his horse could do that is unclear. Both were given medical attention but neither was thought to be seriously hurt.

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek was the first major Civil War battle west of the Mississippi. A Confederate army was menacing Springfield and a smaller Union force attacked the rebel camp on the morning of August 10. The Union army was defeated and its general, Nathaniel Lyon, was killed. Both sides suffered heavy losses.

Frank James, brother of Jesse James, fought on the Confederate side in this battle. He and his brother later became rebel guerrillas before ending up as famous outlaws.

Missouri had already been the scene of several small battles and skirmishes, including the Battle of Boonville, the first truly important battle of the Civil War.

A reenactment of the Battle of Wilson’s Creek will take place today through Sunday near Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

[Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons]

Marco Polo: travel writer fraud

by Kraig Becker on

As a child, I was fascinated by stories about Marco Polo. History told us that the 13th Century Italian merchant and explorer famously traveled to the Far East, where he witnessed the wonders of Chinese and Mongolian cultures, and even served as an ambassador to the court of Kublai Kahn. For more than 24 years, Marco wandered throughout Asia, where he traded with the locals and became intimately familiar with their way of life.

Eventually, Marco returned to Venice, where he mesmerized people with tales of his far-flung adventures. Those stories would later be documented in a book entitled Description of the World, a work that was incredibly popular, even long after Polo’s death in 1324. Many historians consider it to be amongst the first travel books ever written and it helped to cement Marco’s stats as a legendary figure in history. So much so, that 700 years after it was first published, we still revel in the tales of Polo’s fantastic travels.

But what if the famous merchant wasn’t exactly honest about his exploits? What if he hadn’t traveled as far and wide as he claimed in those tales? What if Marco Polo was a travel fraud?

That’s exactly what archaeologists have now come to believe after pouring through Description of the World and lining up what Polo described in the text with what we now know about historical events and places. In fact, according to a story published in The Daily Telegraph a few days ago, historians now believe that Marco Polo never even went to China. Instead, they think that he picked up his stories from Persian merchants that he dealt with directly along the Black Sea. Polo may have then taken those stories, embellished them a bit, adding in his own details for good measure.For example, when describing the fleet of ships that Kublai Khan used on his failed attempt to invade Japan in 1281, Polo claims they had five masts, when archaeologists know that they had just three. Something he could easily have forgotten or overlooked you say? Agreed. But his book doesn’t mention the Great Wall of China at all, nor does he make even a passing reference to drinking tea or using chopsticks while visiting that country. Marco also uses a variety of Persian words to describe locations in China as well, which also indicates that he may have been getting his stories second-hand.

Dr. Frances Wood, the head of the Chinese section of the British Library, also says that there was nothing from China ever found amongst the Polo family’s possessions and that throughout his book, Marco rarely mentions that he witnessed something first hand. She believes that he actually came across a Persian guide book on China in his travel and simply used that for the basis of his tales.

So, let me get this straight. Marco Polo not only helped to launch the travel writing industry, he also became one of its first writers to plagiarize and exaggerate his content? This guy really was ahead of his time.

Historic toilets of the world

by Sean McLachlan on

When my family and I went to Aberystwyth in Wales last month, we visited the Ceredigion County Museum and saw an amusing exhibition called At Your Convenience all about historic toilets. The hardworking curators had amassed an impressive collection privies, commodes, chamber pots, early flush toilets, even an entire outhouse.

Needless to say, my five-year-old son loved this. Imagine, getting to make toilet jokes under the guise of education! This chair that lifts up to reveal a chamber pot especially impressed him until he noticed the yellow stains.

Being the highbrow kind of guy I am, I’m always interested to see historic toilets. These don’t get mentioned in history books much, and are generally not displayed in museums, which makes this exhibition a pleasant surprise. That such an important day-to-day item is blotted out of history tells us something about how the past is written and presented.

The sharp-eyed traveler can still discover privies from the past. Many survive in Roman archaeological sites. Ephesus has well-preserved Roman latrinae consisting of a stone benches with holes in them. Housesteads Roman Fort along the Hadrian’s Wall Path has a military toilet that gets lots of attention from younger visitors. The Romans had running water to clean these commodes.

They weren’t the first, however. The Neolithic settlement of Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands had flush toilets 5,000 years ago. The ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan had toilets at around the same time. More modern toilets can be of interest too. In Addis Ababa, the Institute of Ethiopian Studies is housed in one of Haile Selassie’s palaces. The tour takes you through his private chambers, where you can visit the Imperial bathroom and see his baby blue toilet and bidet. Sadly, they don’t let you take photos.

Loo lovers will want to check out the Museum Für Historische Sanitärobjeckte in Gmunden, Austria. This toilet museum has probably the largest collection in the world. There’s a great gallery of photos here.

At Your Convenience is open until September 3.

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Fifty years ago today: youngest person in space throws up

by Sean McLachlan on

Fifty years ago today, Gherman Titov became the second man to go into orbit. The first was Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union on 12 April 1961. Titov was also Soviet, and flew aboard the Vostok-2 mission.

While Gagarin launched into enduring fame and became one of my personal heroes, Titov has been largely forgotten. That’s a shame, because his flight included a number of records and advanced our knowledge of conditions in zero gravity.

Unlike Gagarin’s single-orbit flight, which was largely to see whether the Soviet Union could get a man into space, Vostok-2 on 6 August 1961 was intended to test how well someone could deal with zero gravity for 24 hours. Major Titov was chosen for the task. He was only 25 years old and is still the youngest person ever to have gone into space.

It didn’t all go well. Early in the flight Titov became space sick and while trying to eat lunch on his sixth orbit around the Earth he threw up. The effects of this in a small capsule in zero gravity must have been unpleasant to say the least. Titov was made of tough stuff, though, and took the manual control of the capsule for a time and also snapped a picture of the Earth from space, the first human being to do so. Ten-and-a-half hours into the flight he felt good enough to fall asleep.

That’s probably the most amazing part of the story. I can’t imagine actually falling asleep when Earth is shining outside my window. Perhaps the adreneline rush finally wore off and Titov conked out due to sheer exhaustion. He slept for eight hours. When he woke up he still didn’t feel a hundred percent but was able to keep his breakfast down. After 17 orbits he reentered the atmosphere and safely landed.

One interesting footnote to the flight is that the Soviets made all the radio frequencies between Vostok-2 and ground control public, so that the whole world could listen in as the capsule passed overhead and could track it using directional antennae. This kept anyone from claiming the flight was faked. Conspiracy theorists have been saying ignorant things about the space program for a long time now.

For more information and some cool images, check out the great website Space History Notes and their article on Vostok-2.

Image of Maj. Titov and Vostok 2 patch courtesy Wikimedia Commons.