The long narrow road to the magician who created insects
Ivest Somerset is notorious for narrow roads, which meander over the hills and down into the deep combes. The high hedges make them seem even narrower than they are. Some of the roads are werepaths or Saxon military routes, used by the locals to hurry to the summons of King Alfred when Guthrun and his Danes came to cry havoc. Or they were old packhorse trails, transporting woollens made in remote cottages to homely little ports like Watchet. Since the long-haired warriors with their spears galloped along in single file and goods travelled in panniers, not carts, what need was there for width? These roads were reluctantly given a hard surface but never enlarged, and motorists must proceed slowly in single file and be prepared to back up a hundred yards if they meet a van travelling in the opposite direction.
I rather like narrow-road adventure tales. Last week I heard of a case near Dulverton, a great centre of rustic activity and minuscule roads. I should explain that Glastonbury, though some distance away from us, casts a wide penumbra of annoyance and irritation over much of the area, being a magnet for weirdos, cranks, flatearth pagans and millennium eccentrics from all over Europe. They arrive by caravan, pony and trap, on foot, four-wheeldrive motor vans and earth-shaking Harley Davidsons to perform ritual dances, cast spells, smoke pot, chant mantras and sing songs about Joseph of Arimathea at sunrise. They include the dreadful crusties, a tribe of long-haired Greens, whose hierarchy is presided over by whoever has survived longest without washing.
One of the customs of these New Age visitors to the ancient shrine on the Tor is to refuse to burn, in their campfires, any form of energy which is non-renewable, to use the current term. This excludes wood, let alone coal, but peat is regarded as renewable and so allowed. Local tradesmen have perceived the need and offer for sale genuine Glastonbury Peat, presumably gathered from the nearby Somerset Levels, a low-lying marshy area where once was fought the dreadful battle of Sedgemoor.
But such peat is hard to come by and to meet the demand quantities have to be imported secretly from the West of Ireland. It is a thriving trade, but not suited to pack
roads. One immense shipment was loaded on board a vast articulated lony and duly labelled and addressed to vendors in Glastonbury, but the Corlcman — or whoever it was — wrote the name in two words. One characteristic of this devious trade is that it employs drivers from Eastern Europe who are willing to work for a fiver a day or thereabouts. This particular consignment was in the charge of a Latvian, whose knowledge of the language of England, let alone its topography, was limited. Clear in his Baltic mind that he had to get to Glaston, in the town of Bury, in the county of Somerset, he found the county easily but with some difficulty finally spotted Bury in triumph on a largescale map. It is a tiny place, across the river Bane from Dulverton, centre of a spidery web of roads which are narrow even by Somerset standards. Thither the conscientious Latvian drove, and persisted despite all obstacles until he was well and truly stuck in a bend whose contours and dimensions made it impossible either to proceed or reverse. The entire neighbourhood was alerted, and with the assistance of various tractors, chains and ropes, after eight hours of strenuous exertions and ingenious stratagems, the articulated lorry, plus peat and Latvian, was dispatched on its way again. Whether it finally reached Glastonbury is not related. But the locals grumble that they were never paid for their efforts as the Latvian had no means and the Irish firm which employed him has a delightful policy of not answering letters. On the other hand, one and all now have a riveting topic of conversation.
My own narrow-road story occurred last year within a short distance of my house. We were proceeding home when a local farmer decided to move 40 or more heifers from one field to another. There they were, clopping peacefully along the road, when suddenly out of nowhere a mysterious helicopter popped over the giant hedgerows with a deafening clatter. The heifers, roaring and bellowing in terror, stampeded down the little road and poured through the gate of our local cricket club, where a tense match was in progress. Alarmed that their precious wicket would be ruined for the season, both sides rose as one man, confronted the excited beasts and drove them back with curses into the road. Their alarm was now redoubled, and the maddened herd galloped at top speed down the vertiginous track, up which at that precise moment our car was climbing, almost touching the hedges on both sides. It was a formidable sight to see these heaving, heavy brutes charging at us in insane fury, clanging into the roof and banging on the sides as they desperately tried to escape the monsters behind them. Much shaken, and our car a good deal battered, we rendered thanks we were still alive, and obtained damages from the farmer's insurers, though the offending helicopter was never traced.
These narrow old roads have felt the tramp of distinguished feet in their day. Not only Coleridge's and Wordsworth's, and little Dorothy his sister's, but Charles Lamb's and Thomas De Quincey's, William Hazlitt's, and Thelwall's — the notorious Republican who did time for treason in the panic following Revolutionary terror in Paris. All thought nothing of walking 40 miles a day.
Another persistent local tramper was the scientist Andrew Crosse, who was known as 'the Wizard of Broomfield'. Crosse's habit was to leave his splendid mansion, Fyne Court, where he had his laboratory, at three in the morning and walk to Minehead 25 miles away for breakfast, using a narrowroad route which can still be followed today. You can see the tree up which he erected his conductor to assist his experiments. His tomb calls him The Electrician'.
Some of the local farmers did not approve. When visitors asked who he was, the reply came: 'Why, don't you know him? That's Crosse of Broomfield, the thunder-and-lightning man. You can't go near his cursed house at night without being in danger of your life. Them as has been there have seen devils all surrounded by lightning, dancing on their wires that he has put up around his grounds.'
There were no devils. But Crosse did produce magical 'insects'. Trying to make crystals of silicon, he took two ounces of powdered flint and six of potassium carbonate, fused the two in a furnace, reduced the compound to powder and, dissolving it in boiling water, slowly added hydrochloric acid to super-saturation point. He poured the result over a porous stone and passed an electric current through it. On the 26th day, filaments which had appeared assumed the form of 'insects' standing erect on bristles. Two days later they moved their legs and began to travel, He eventually counted 100. No explanation was ever forthcoming, but I'm told that if you repeat the experiment the same results will follow. Worth travelling those narrow roads to learn, eh?
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