Day 23. Frome. August 29 2001

Where is Frome, you ask? It is on our path and it has a campground, beyond that you don't need to know.

It has been a very slow day today, with only one stop for sightseeing.

We woke to a veil of mist rising from the mill stream behind our campsite. It was surreal. Like waking from dream into dream. The buildings, only a few tens of feet away, were shadowy ghosts floating on the morning clouds. So unreal was it that I drifted between sleep and consciousness without being aware of the threshold. When finally I woke for good the sun had burned off the fog, leaving only a layer of very real water to coat the inside of our tent. The pages on which I write have become larger and as soft as tissue with a surfeit of water. I will have to take care.

When finally we were able to leave we biked, not far at all, to the castle of Farleigh Hungerford, a picturesque ruin with a history, though not one as strange as the brochure would have you believe.

 

The castle was not a true military fortification but one that had been fortified because it was the fashion of the times. The ruins were impressive but the history here was in the inhabitants. One place that was starkley disturbing was the crypts, where some 4 men 2 women and two babies had been interred. At their deaths they had been encased in form fitting featureless metal casks then entombed. The tombs having long ago disappeared the casks were all that remain, silent faceless containers of death that lay most eerily.

The other sites of interest were the towers, were a wife of the Hungerford family had been locked away in isolation for four years and the gatehouse which from outside was marvelously preserved and looked ready to receive noble visitors. Unfortunately we had missed by only a few days a great medieval tournament.

From Hungerford we biked to Frome, a short but very torturous journey. All together we have covered less than a tenth of what I was hoping to cover in the last two days. Nor have I been able to shower. The last place had only cold water and in Bath I was too tired. I will admit that this great traveler is looking very forward to a bath and rest.

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