Stirling's Brilliant Autumn Hues

 

It's a long time indeed since I posted to this blog ... in fact, I can scarcely believe how long! The fact is that Covid put the kybosh on travelling for a couple years, and life has been "interesting" since the virus began to settle down. Even now, we're a tad reluctant to travel so far that we have to stay overnight, because coming down with that particular plague is our worst-case scenario. (Dave works in aged care, and if the virus finds its way into his facility -- fact: what is an inconvenience to any one of us can cause people to perish. Give one pause! Added to which, the recent strains are incredibly contagious, so easily caught that one could suffer this virus repeatedly. Now, add in the research, that it's also associated with early-onset dementia, and ... why take the risk?) So ...

Since the South Australian state borders opened up again, we haven't "stayed away" at all. We've concentrated on day trips out from home: only what you can do in a day and be home by midnight. And it's amazing, what you can find, and do, within such easy reach. The Adelaide Hills change their face with every season. No season is more beautiful that autumn, and there is absolutely no better place to see the autumn colours that Stirling.

I will add a caveat here: you do need to score a sunny day, to catch these brilliant hues at their best. Having said this, if the weather refuses to cooperate, Stirling also offers some of the best shopping and dining in these hills. There's more gourmet cafes and coffee houses and tearooms than you can count or remember, so I'll just point you at our absolute favourite. Look up Konditorei Coffee Lounge, also known simply as Cafe Kondi. Marvellous atmosphere, inside and under-cover outside dining, great food, the best coffee, and attractive prices. (They're on the mall at 2/37/39 Mount Barker Rd, Stirling SA 5152 ... best yet, they have a woodstove which is lit in winter. There's nothing better than drinking hot chocolate and sitting by the fire while it's raining and howling outside.)

There's many reasons to go to Stirling, but what takes us there every year -- and sometimes several times in a season, to get the weather juuuuust right -- is the autumn colour show. Life meets art. If you're more interested in shopping and dining, you'll find both in Stirling, but for us, it's all about this:

Actually, it's an interesting town. This, from Stirling's Wiki page:

Founded in 1854, Stirling grew rapidly as a result of the expansion of apple growing and market gardening to satisfy the demand of the expanding city of Adelaide, whose centre is only 15 kilometres from Stirling. It also developed as a residential address for English migrants who could afford it, to escape Adelaide's hot summers, often 10 degrees cooler than Adelaide. As a result, many historic, grand mansions can be found in the area. Today, farming has declined as more of the region has been urbanised, with many Stirling residents commuting to Adelaide daily.

Stirling is on the road through to Aldgate, which is another "hills town experience" with its own charm and opportunities for wining and dining, not so much for shopping. Stirling is larger, with over 3,000 residents now, which makes it one of the larger hills towns, and handy for Belair NP, Cleland Wildlife Park, Mount Lofty Summit, the Piccadilly - Summertown - Uraidla scenic drive ... perfect!

So, you know where we'll be next autumn! The leaves an start to turn somewhere around May, and into early June in some years. The climate is getting rather odd lately, and the trees are ... confused. (And I'll try to catch up with this blog momentarily. Truth is, I've got out of the habit of blogging -- and forgotten how much I used to enjoy it!

Glastonbury Memories, Part II: The Chalice Well Gardens

On the morning of the day (in November, 2012) I left Glastonbury for Brighton (a three hour sprint across the south country by highway) I visited the Chalice Well Gardens, at the foot of the Tor. This is a very spiritual place, maintained as such, a meditation park open to the public, and served with shop and meeting room, a supporting society and a worldwide cadre of enchanted followers.

It is indeed an amazing place, and I had it almost to myself on that cool, grey morning. I left my luggage at the George & Pilgrim Hotel after an early breakfast and checkout, then walked the kilometre or so south-east of town, past the famous Rifleman’s Arms pub, and found myself in a truly wonderful place.

This is where the ancient legend really comes into focus. In Celtic lore, springs were holy places, and the local aquifer comes to the surface here in a spring that has run since Arthurian times and probably a great deal longer than that. The ground has iron deposits and they play their role in the lore, that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail to a hiding place in England among the earliest Christian devotees. Thus, the iron-rich water that comes to the surface carries with it the taste of blood – that the blood of Christ is the iron in the water.

It stains the collecting ponds a deep and rusty red and visitors are cautioned to drink only a tiny amount as the mineral concentration may be harmful in quantity. Of course one tastes it, how could one not? I will never forget the blood-like tang.

The gardens were green and damp in the heavy weather, not many flowers were in bloom at such a time of year but the park was quiet and very peaceful. I remember sitting in a small, rustic shelter as rain fell softly, overlooking the green tangles and walks, and having many deep thoughts.

This was one of those moments one is in two minds about – is it better shared or experienced alone? To be alone with one’s thoughts is a very pure state, but perhaps company would bring it a new dimension. To wander those paths was to walk in the footsteps of millions over the last eight hundred years, I was very aware of this, and soaked in the atmosphere – from the ancient stonework to the ammonites embedded in the paths – which held religious significance in centuries gone by. Though it is a designed, tended garden, one feels nature very close, and it seems all faith can equally share in the energies of the spot. From various points you can see the tower of St. Michael at the summit of the Tor, which truly doubles the impact.

I stayed some hours before reluctantly making my way back to the hotel on High St. in the early afternoon to collect my luggage and meet a friend who had kindly offered me a lift across country to Brighton for the second show in the band’s tour, that evening. We met in the car park of Glastonbury Abbey and I had to admit to myself, I certainly packed a lot into those brief days!

Mike Adamson

Glastonbury Memories, Part I: The Old Town

Sometimes a place you have only visited once lives in your memory so vividly you can close your eyes and be there again, visually, in sound and in texture.  One such place for me is the famous, historic town of Glastonbury, on the Somerset Levels, south-east of Bristol.

Glastonbury is of course one of Britain’s and the world’s centres of magical and New Age thinking, with its (probably spurious) connection to the King Arthur legend. It was theorised to be the ancient “Isle of Avalon,” as 1500 years ago Glastonbury Tor was indeed an island in marshy lakes upon the Levels. In 1190, the monks of Glastonbury reportedly discovered the burial place of King Arthur and Guinevere, which cemented the place’s mythic association ever after (as well as raised large sums for the rebuilding of the abbey, which burned in 1184…) This is so commercially convenient one cannot help doubting the verity of the discovery, doubly so as the bodies were relocated twice in following centuries and of course can no longer be produced. Modern Glastonbury is however imbued with the same spirit, and lives and breathes the mythology and alternate spiritualities of the age. Nowhere else boasts the density of magic shops and traders living off the magical mythos as Glastonbury Highstreet.

Underpass to the Assembly Rooms, looking back at the George & Pilgrim, opposite.

I spent just one night there in the November of 2012, but managed to get around a few of the sights. I was on foot so did not find my way out to the ancient trees of Gog and Magog, nor did I get up to the Tor, but these things remain for a future expedition.

The weather was damp and grey. I left Sunderland about 5 that morning, sharing a cab with friends from the just-finished conference at the university, through to Newcastle airport, where we parted company, they for connections overseas, I on Easy Jet down to Bristol. The flight was sold out, and I remember boarding the old fashioned way, via steps, in a chill drizzle before daybreak, getting an aisle seat rather than my usual window, and the flight being rather bumpy.

Bristol seemed a cold, damp, hard sort of place, but maybe it was just the weather; the trip, from the city bus depot out across the green country, grew more pleasant and the sun peeked through a few times. Glastonbury was so small I almost missed it, and that’s a fact! I hauled my baggage to the ancient George and Pilgrim Hotel, from whose second floor windows Henry VIII is reputed to have watched his soldiers despoiling Glastonbury Abbey in 1539, and found myself in one of those amazing, quaint places without a straight line or a true right angle anywhere in the architecture, and was somewhat awed by the passage of the ages in this place.

I was in town to meet friends and catch the first performance in a tour by a band from Australia I follow. They went on that evening at the Assembly Rooms, itself an old building but still new compared to the ecclesiastical buildings of the town. I took a walk in the rain that afternoon, wandered near and far, and committed everything to pixels, as always. The second day I made a pilgrimage to the Chalice Well Gardens at the foot of the Tor – more about that in the next part.

The thing I remember most was the damp and chill, and the way it seemed so right – it went with the greenery and the old moss-grown stone, and the bare trees of the season were the symbol of all things arcane and mysterious. The town was well-patronised even in the poor weather, shops all did brisk trade. I wish I could find my journal of the trip, I recall writing while taking a snack at a small eatery just along from the Church of St John, on the corner of High St. and The Archer’s Way – hot chocolate in a pint cup! Or was I writing on a digital notebook? I believe I was… According to Google, there’s a fabric crafts gift store there now.

On the highstreet you find meditation centres cheek by jowl with boutiques and bookshops, sellers of herbs and essential oils, magical giftware, the full gamut of modern mass-market arcana. I was a little under the weather and bought pure peppermint oil at a magic shop just off the main street. The town knows where its livelihood is! But beside commerce, there is a genuine spiritual element, from the historic ruins of the abbey and the still extant Abbey House, to the Shekina Yoga retreat on Dodd Lane, on the slope opposite the gates of the medieval complex. One walks by on the way to a lesser-used track up over the hills to the Tor, and one just cannot do so without turning the prayer wheels by the gate. I never realised there was a traditional meditation labyrinth in the gardens of the Church of St John until I used Google Earth to check the lie of the land, but there it is!

The foothill above Dodd St., looking over rooftops to the Church of St John on High St., and the Somerset Levels beyond.

Prayer wheels at the gates of the Shekina retreat.

Many other places are likely as aware of their underlying spiritual connections, and Glastonbury’s is unashamedly commercial, but that makes it no less an amazing experience to visit.

I shall certainly visit Glastonbury again, there’s so much still to do, many would say I barely scratched the surface. Perhaps a week would be enough to do it better justice. I would imagine things would be much more expensive in the good weather, though, so risking whatever providence brings in the later months may well still be the way to go.

Watch out for the next installment!

Mike Adamson

Artwork adorns the walls of the dining room of the George & Pilgrim Hotel on High St., celebrating the town's connection with the mythology of the islands.

Magic is everywhere!

This was the weather -- grey, cool, in every way a British autumn.

The Tor, shot telephoto from the carpark of Glastonbury Abbey.

I took this one the afternoon I left Glastonbury for Brighton. Note the low sun angle and the streelight glowing, and the time on the clock -- 2.05pm! And the day will be a lot shorter come winter...

Hill St., looking north past the ancient gates of the Abbey House.

The gates of Abbey House, seen from Dodd St., on the slope up past the Shekinashram toward the Tor.

The abbey ruins, from the carpark.