(originally written on November 1, 2017)
Strange how things come back to you, unbidden….you might have read my previous blog post about a visit to Tintern Abbey in 1973. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that there was something else to that day, but much to my frustration I’ve been unable to recall what it was ; and yet now, today, I remember visiting Tewkesbury Abbey later that same summer’s day, climbing with much fear and trepidation to the top of the tower. We were young and blessed with overactive imaginations, for every creak of the ancient wood seemed to us supernatural in origin, and being the only ones making the ascent, we were near to hysteria by the time we stepped out into the fresh air.
Old houses, some half timbered, lined the road beneath, whilst across a field there snaked the silver ribbon of the Severn, whose occasional flooding can isolate the Abbey within a very small island. But not on that day ; then there was a wide green panorama and a huge overarching sky of blue, with the sun picking out two young girls leaning over the parapet and waving wildly to no-one at all, and wondering what else the world has to offer. Halcyon days, did we but know it.