The Giant Bones Of King Arthur's Cave | Ancient Tracks E5 | Absolute History

[Music] britain is crisscrossed by an amazing network of ancient trackways these remarkable routes are our oldest rogues and have been traveled for more than 5 000 years he's quite small isn't he he's small but he's mighty small but mighty i like that walked by pilgrims and traders hunters and invaders celts and romans saxons and vikings each track is bound up in myth of all the archaeological finds i've come across when i heard about it my jaw actually dropped i'm on a quest to connect the clues and rediscover the stories hidden among britain's ancient pathways i want to find out what it is that tempts today's travelers to go back in time and rediscover these mystic tracks do you recognize the north star not the brightest star in the sky but it's probably one of the most useful it's a bit like me smell a leather you can still smell it 1900 year old leather isn't that absolutely amazing this week i'm trekking the ancient earthwork frontier that straddles the border between england and wales offers dyke inspired by legends that transcend time itself my walk along this remarkable route will reveal a mythical monarch romantic scribes and a fearsome dragon these are the paths our ancestors once followed the ancient tracks that we in britain can still walk today my journey begins in england on the shore at sedbury gloucestershire and the southern starting point of something quite remarkable this is the mighty river seven you've got wales over there england over there and since 1966 they've been linked by that beautiful elegant bridge and i actually feel quite at home here because i used to live just beyond that big stanchion there in bristol and i still support bristol city come on new reds but that isn't the boundary that we're interested in today just beyond that big cliff there is another boundary between england and wales one that's existed for over a thousand years and is full of myth and legend it's time to explore offers dyke [Music] offer was an 8th century king who ruled over a large part of the english midlands then known as the kingdom of mercia offers dyke stretches more than 80 miles dividing the two great nations of england and wales through centuries of tribal conflicts religious strife and local legends this ancient border has helped define what it means to be english and welsh [Music] i'm going to walk north from the seven estuary along the offers dyke path a modern reinstated version that follows the course of much of its ancient namesake [Music] on my trek i'll explore the borderlands between the ancient english and welsh kingdoms of mercia and palace finishing my walk as the dyke crosses the river seven again near welsh pool along the way i'll walk in the wake of romantic poet william wordsworth explore the subterranean resting place of king arthur confront wales's fearsome mythical emblem and ponder the priceless gold coin issued by king offer praise of allah offers dyke a massive ditch and bank structure has been around for more than 1200 years the earliest records of this formidable frontier come as early as the 9th century when the welsh monk assa wrote there was in mercia in fairly recent time a certain vigorous king called offer who had a great dyke built between wales and mercia from sea to sea a lot of people have never even heard of office dyke or have only got a vague idea where it is and indeed it is quite difficult to find in the landscape for many of its miles although when you climb up on a bit like this and get to the top you are at the top of one of the most important monuments in britain this took hundreds of man hours thousands of people in order to make it in fact it's such a great piece of ancient engineering that a lot of people compare it with the building of the pyramids but unlike the pyramids king offers extraordinary achievements have in recent times faded from view it wasn't always this way opera created this massive earthwork but he also created something else which is much smaller but is still remembered and it's this we've all got them floating around in our pockets haven't we the humble penny offer established the english penny which still exists over a thousand years later [Music] at the time of his death in 796 a.d the penny had pronounced offer rex anglorum king of the english but it actually represented this visionary rulers global ambitions when it came to currency and commerce i'll reveal more about this later [Music] few written records were kept at the dykes build though inevitably legends have flourished and the path over time has become an inspiration for an illustrious roll call of authors and artists before me that is who have walked its route [Music] at this next ominously named stop on my journey i've been promised a certain devilish sightseeing and a feast for the eyes of one of britain's most awe-inspiring views [Music] can you see that beautiful ruin over there that of course is tinton abbey and just below me down this rather hairy little path yep there it is that is the devil's pulpit this book was written in the 1880s by wurt sykes and he says near tinton abbey there is a jutting crag overhung by gloomy branches of the u called the devil's pulpit his eminence i.e the devil used in other days and wickeder days to preach atrocious morals or immorals to the white robed cistercian monks of the abbey from this rock pulpit in other words here he'd be looking down at the monks trying to seduce them into doing all sorts of disgusting things but they were good and holy and noble so they didn't get juiced up at all and in frustration he stamped his feet and you can still see the marks on the top of the pulpit whereas if he'd been a little bit more cool he could have enjoyed this spectacular view couldn't he for the rather more serious-minded william wordsworth the magnificent tin turn and the epic walking tour that would lead him there were inspirations for his poetry but it wasn't any old poem he wrote it in the meter of someone walking along so he was reminding himself of how he felt when he saw it i've got the first few lines on this postcard here it's actually called lines composed a few miles above tint and abby on revisiting the banks of the y during a tour not the punchiest of titles but i think you'll get what i mean about the rhythm of it five years have passed five summers with the length of five long winters and again i hear these waters rolling from their mountain springs with a soft inland murmur once again do i behold these steep and lofty cliffs that on a wild secluded scene impress thoughts of more deep seclusion and connect the landscape with the quiet of the sky see what i mean [Music] i wonder if i like the tinternaby poem so much because i'm an actor and the the words in it are so muscular there's words with consciously recreating the way he walked in the meter of this perm yes because he wasn't a person who sat down at his desk and wrote this poem was written a few miles above tinton so very specifically and the dates prove that so we know that he was composing as he went along and wordsworth would dictate his poetry like milton used to do um so he wasn't a desk poet he was very much an action poet in the sense that he would be as he was walking he would use the rhythm of his walk he was a prodigious walker wasn't it yes he was i mean he was a very um athletic walker he walked a thousand miles across europe one summer on a kind of cheap uh grand tour um and he could walk 20 miles without thinking about it what would tinton abbey have been like in those days well the ruins would not have been as quiet as they were now for example i mean when were words with us here there were beggars living in the ruins of the abbey there poor people who he wouldn't have met if he hadn't just got out there on the road that's right on that note i think i will say goodbye now if i cross that bridge there am i still in england no i think that's the gateway into wales so i wish you uh no blisters and good weather lovely to see yeah nice to meet you cheers bye as i cross the border and take my first steps into wales i'm hungry for a close-up experience of this glorious vision of gothic architecture the quite stunning tinton abbey was founded in 1131 and nestles in a valley surrounded by misty green mountains its dramatic ruins never fail to provide travelers with an unforgettable [Music] spectacle [Music] is [Music] [Applause] willie wordsworth wasn't the only young artist to come here turner painted it and in the early 18th century a host of artistic young people flocked here when it was rediscovered as a sort of wild and magnificent cultural icon it's not difficult to see why they were drawn here we call them the romantics and if there's one thing this place is it's absurdly romantic like a beautiful dreamscape which they recreated in words and oils and poetry who wouldn't be inspired by tintanabe [Music] oh my gosh is britain's longest ancient monument and even after 1200 years is still walked by today's travelers wanting to explore the rich history of this ancient border between england and wales i'm now following the track back across the river and back into england this is the doward in herefordshire a limestone hill around which the river y has carved a steep-sided gorge i'm in search of yet another regal legend but this time it's king arthur not offer i see [Music] sometime around the end of the 17th century there was a poor elderly woman who lived near here and she'd lost her goat and eventually she came to a woodcutter's camp which was here she asked the woodcutters if they'd seen her goat and they said well we're not quite sure but there is a cave just here and we think we might have heard a bit of bleating from inside it and in those days it was really closed up and she said well i i can't see anything can you can you hack a bit of the cave down so they did [Music] but what they did find was a gigantic skeleton of a man about 12 foot long and i don't know whether or not they managed to find the goat but they carried the skeleton out and it became the talk of the local area and i would love to be able to show it to you but i can't because they eventually took it down to bristol gave it to a chap called mr pie who was just about to go off on his ship to the west indies and stupidly he took the skeleton with him and the ship founded and the skeleton was lost so there is no tangible evidence but everybody around here believes that skeleton did exist and it was the skeleton of king arthur now whether or not it really was i have no idea but i'm not on my own today i've got a friend with me sarah sarah peverly sarah hello do you reckon those bones could have been the bones of king arthur it would be amazing to think that they were wouldn't it it would be absolutely wonderful because there's so many connections in this area with the arthurian myth you can almost tangibly sense arthur here can't you yeah you can i mean the arthurian myth has a pull on our islands generally it crops up it gets rewritten lots and lots of times in moments of crises so whenever there's a big conflict in the country the arthurian myth flourishes again it's a way of reminding people that unification is important and of course sites like this are absolutely integral to keeping that myth alive because you've got that kind of other worldliness about it it certainly does feel very otherwise incredible isn't it i mean you can really imagine lancelot and gwenevere cantering through this environment absolutely i mean this place is just so evocative isn't it it's it's got that kind of liminal feel to it where you've got the supernatural and the the natural worlds colliding you can imagine a fairy or a dragon living in such a cave i love that word liminal you've got the line between the mystery inside a cave and the reality of the outside you've got the two countries wales and england marked by that line of offers dike this area is quivering with liminality isn't this yes let's get out of here before we fall to pieces we may not have found king arthur in the cave that bears his name but there are bones hidden in its dark interior [Music] stone age people used these caves as shelter and flints used by hunters can be dated to more than ten thousand years ago it's these remnants of fantastic ancient beasts such as mammoths holy rhino the jawbone of a wolf and these extraordinary hyenas teeth that really fire the imagination but i want to know if there's any scientific evidence to back up claims of king arthur's existence i have a feeling that news of some archaeological discoveries in a cave up ahead may give me some answers there's a killer path this is so skinny it's only a few hundred feet down there but it must have taken me the best part of 20 minutes to get up here tim what are you doing mate trying to stand upright this is really extreme archaeology isn't it it certainly is yes it does look pretty spectacular it's an amazing cave are there any human beings associated with it yes there are lots and two in particular the remains of two male individuals that date from about 600 a.d 600 a.d well that's that's perfect time for us it is isn't it the romans have just left yes the saxons have yet to arrive yes and it's it's it's a period for herefordshire in the welsh borders about which we know very little so we were very very surprised when the date came back as 580 to 610 a.d now what might that be at your feet well these are some of the fines tony um just like a comedy bone it certainly is isn't it i mean it tells you how well preserved he was that's a femur it is that's a bit bigger than mine indefinitely he was over six foot in his socks wow this is most of his head um so again typical of the age um his teeth are very very worn wow you know when you've got your your teeth for 65 years plus and stone ground bread you're going to get through it that beautifully preserved well we may not have king arthur but we've got someone from the time of king arthur and that's good enough for me what an amazing find and yet more historical finds an ancient tales both real and imagined lie ahead and following the path north re-crossing the border into wales and traveling forward several centuries to discover the three castles built in the minnow valley as part of the norman conquest of south wales arthur built his eighth century dive to the marches the border country between england and wales but it was william the conqueror who resolved to add an extra impenetrable layer to office mighty dyke to sort out those lawless welsh once and for all when william the conqueror came to britain from france he upgraded off his defensive line by putting in a load of castles along the dyke he knew that their sheer bulk and height would prevent his norman soldiers from being hammered by the force of the mighty welsh bowman these deadly arrows tore through the air and chained mail to strike fear into the norman invaders i'm intrigued that such a seemingly primitive weapon could create so much carnage i know that the normans were terrified by the welsh bow and the welsh bowman but what was a welsh bow well if we put aside the starry eyed romanticism of the being a welsh longbow there isn't really a great difference in the in in the actual bow itself it's more from the material that it's made but more importantly the use of the bow how they were actually deployed by the welsh basically rebels guerrilla warfare fighting so this is a real guerrilla weapon yes it's not like king arthur's excalibur that unites the whole country this is like your ak-47 of its day it's not a precise sniper rifle but it does its job for a fight very quickly so are you going to have a pop at our little square bloke i think i can do that for you yes i'd like to see that okay [Music] the pose the battlements and the skirmishes along this border were indeed unrelenting in those lawless times walking off as dike today offers a sort of no-man's land a chance to meditate about ancient warring nations and the nature of borders and then anderson caddock's church at langate lingard which is in monmouthshire this beautiful whitewashed exterior may seem serene but within lurks yet another reminder of the bloodthirsty conflicts the return of another legendary warrior [Music] so all that white on the outside seems pretty authentic but inside it would have been a completely different kettle of fish you see this fresco which was discovered fairly recently all those reds and oranges i think in here it would have been a riot of color now that is saint george he sees a helmet and see the plume coming out of it which is called a panache which i think is pretty appropriate and he is treading just about make it out i think on the red dragon now whether that is simply a symbol of good triumphing over evil or whether it's the english stomping all over the world should i have absolutely no idea you can be the judge of that i'm not going there this is a hugely symbolic picture in so many ways it may be faded and lost but it's still extremely impressive and elaborate there's no denying how iconic the dragon is for wales as an antagonist to england really is a place potent in myth and legend where these national identities unfold the frontier for the imagination captured in folklore and verse and further along offers dyke literary giants international artists and a fantastic forest will proclaim the enigmatic beauty of this enchanted land stretching up to an impressive 18 meters wide and three meters deep offers dyke is the immense eighth century frontier that divides england and wales as i walk the path that follows much of its course legendary and literary heroes weave stories that collectively define the relationship between these two proud nations and no place better celebrates this storytelling tradition my next stop i've reached hay bluff a prominent hill at the northern tip of the black mountains which straddles the border between england and south east wales i'm just coming down off hay bluff which is the highest point on the offers dyke path it's a bit of a slog but it's really worth it because you can see all over herefordshire great views and now i'm going down there to visit one of my favorite events certainly my favorite festival in the whole world the dyke has led me to hay on why the town of books half english half welsh and a modern mecca for lovers of the written word in a setting that has itself inspired so many wonderful writers could there be any more perfect place to celebrate this has got to be the biggest the most influential the the best organized literary festival in the whole world i've been coming here every year for years sometimes just as a punter sometimes to speak or perform but i always find it quite intoxicating in every tenth there's a philosopher a political thinker a writer it's an assertion of ideas of discourse of talking of freedom and hope really just as each step builds a journey each word comes together to create a story and there's one particular travel writer who held the spirit of this land close to his heart no matter where he rode [Music] i'm on a mission hey is all about book shops this one's wonderful it's like a bookshop of your dreams and i'm looking for travel writers as travel writers along here a b c yes there we go oh of course would be right up high wouldn't it bruce chatwin one of our greatest travel writers english but inspired by the history and heritage of wales bruce chatwin's award-winning 1982 novel on the black hill told the story of twin brothers living in a bleak welsh farmhouse straddling the english welsh border and chatwin's insatiable wanderlust inspired much of his writings he once said man's real house isn't his home it's the road and life itself is a journey to be walked on foot i couldn't agree more [Music] chadwind died aged just 48 having only published five books but his reputation as one of our finest writers was already secured and his literary influence continues to this day you've written about this place haven't you i have i wrote running for the hills and if i could have done i would have called it on the black hill but unfortunately someone got there before you bruce chatter would nick my title 20 years before yes and he dug up the dirt the stories the myths and the legends i have a whole swathe of hereford shown this side of poets and he takes it all and he puts it into on the black hill and it's wonderful in that it's the story of the place in terms of time which isn't linear but cyclical and goes with the seasons and that's how i experienced growing up here i think there is a deep truth there about how time happens in this region there must be loads of stories about this place it's thick with stories so we could start over there with the neolithic and we can move through the romans the normans second world war and right up to the current they're the best fields in the valley because there was an almighty battle between english and the welsh down there and of course the blood according to my godfather soaked into the soil and made it i'm so conflicted about alpha's diet on one hand it seems to me this very old ancient thing and on the other hand it's really quite young compared with an awful lot of british history isn't it uh it sounds old doesn't it the offer is it is old old english um yeah it sounds like a way back but then compared to around here i mean they we measured time in quite different ways i mean so this is old red devonian sandstone that we're standing on i think it's 365 million years old um and all this would have been a sort of shallow lake at one point in the player's scene so no he's really quite recent isn't the old offer where's the border the board is directly behind us so you can feel the weight of the mountain behind us but the border here is partly a functional geography and partly a function of the mind there's always something odd about borderlands isn't it it is it's uh like the edge of an island really it's a shore between two cultures and you know what if we'd been up here 2 000 years ago i bet someone like you would have been telling someone like me similar stories from the previous two and three thousand years it's a lovely thought as well as on the black hill borderlands also inspired bruce chatwin's seminal travel book in patagonia with its tales of welsh immigrants settled in the vast south american region that straddles chile and argentina and here on the crest of hergest ridge high up on the path there's a little piece of wales that will be forever well we shall see [Music] this is typical borders country isn't it really brisk wind blowing got these fantastic views as far as the eye can see nothing at all growing but bracken well not quite nothing actually because look at this you've got this absurd clump of monkey puzzle trees why well apparently about half a century ago there was a local gardener who realized that the winter temperature around here is very similar to the winter temperature in argentina which is where the monkey puzzle trees grow naturally so he planted them and they've certainly flourished so in this funny little oasis you're suddenly in patagonia i'm sure bruce chapman wouldn't really have approved [Music] leaving this puzzling patch of forest behind i'm in search of a section of the dyke regarded by many as the finest on the route both for views of the dyke and the surrounding spectacular landscape that leads to flan fair hill but before i get there i'm stopped in my tracks by a beautiful oasis a riot of color on an otherwise verdant landscape and the woman behind this stunning floral scene connects yet another distant land with offers dyke [Music] this gorgeous little cottage hello oh hello hello well it's fantastic how long have you lived here uh 30 years wow did you create this garden yourself yes uh yes i did with my family staggeringly beautiful thank you it's a bit wild oh the two things i i can see the dazzle of color and the big open sky wonderful open skies and i always say i live here because the earth meets the sky without interruption that's absolutely true were you born in england no i was actually born in uganda and i was ugandan refugee when i was a child so my family were kicked out of uganda and then i grew up in west london southall southall girl uh but i couldn't wait to get back to somewhere that was rural because we'd come from rural africa and tabay by the lake and so i just longed to go go somewhere that reminded me of home and was home sure one of many tell me where land for here at hill is how did i get uh down this track and down the hill hope you didn't mind me popping in no it's fantastic it's a bit unexpected though see ya thank you bye from uganda via london to offers dyke tahira has certainly come a long way to find her perfect home but the beautiful familiarity of the landscape belies the ambition of the man who gave the dyke its name king offer had a vision a desire to reach into the arab world and establish an alliance far beyond the borders of britain [Music] office dyke is a spectacular ancient earth work that splits the nations of england and wales many believe it's a defensive structure others a show of strength made by the king behind its name while the 8th century king offer led the english kingdom of mercier through a golden age this progressive ruler had ambitions to spread his mind as touch much further afield [Music] because we've got virtually nothing written down precisely who offer was and what he did remain a bit of a shadow but we do have two tangible pieces of evidence a dyke and a coin not the cute little penny which i showed you at the beginning of the program but an extraordinary gold one which is lodged at the british museum [Music] the gold coin of offer is a very significant object in the history of ancient britain the coin's design at first glance resembles the gold dinar but it is in fact not of arabic origin it was actually engraved struck and issued in england by king offer i'm enthralled about how this incredible centuries-old link with the arabic world came about you know of all the archaeological finds that i've handled over the years this is one of the two or three that when i saw about it my jaw absolutely dropped really i just think it's amazing and then what's written around the outside it says muhammad rasoolillah which basically means muhammad is the prophet of god that is so extraordinary 8th century and you've got this mercian king king of a third of england or whatever and he's got round his name on a coin that he's produced muhammad is the prophet of god yeah was he a convert to his love there's a theory that that happened but i think it's baseless really what do you think um if you wanted to trade with a civilization that controlled around you know the land around the mediterranean yeah you wouldn't need to use a gold coin so he thought well you know they use dinars possibly i can use one too so as far as awful was concerned looking across the english channel the muslim empire would have been massive wouldn't it well you're talking from portugal and spain south of france all the way across the top of africa middle east as we know it central asia all the way across to pakistan that's that's huge isn't it wonderful that you've got this tiny little window into offers life here we are standing on the dike and we now know that offer recognized that the muslim empire was out there and for some reason maybe a bit diplomatic he acknowledged it by writing about it on the outside of one of his coins exactly i think it's it's been lost in time it's it's a tragedy that we we don't know our past and our european history really now in the 21st century you know we still think muslims and islam is new but 1200 years ago it was there you know at the doorstep really and in inside europe right here on this dike they were aware of it that's right amazing one of the annoying things about doing a long walk like this is that the whole procedure does tend to get a bit insular you're constantly being confronted by the things close to you and even the horizon looks like you're looking at the whole world so it was really reassuring to come face to face with office coin and know that the man who built this dyke wasn't only thinking about this area but was in some way engaging with rome the far side of the mediterranean and maybe even baghdad and beyond the idea is tantalizing offers gold coin connects cultures across continents in an age twelve hundred years ago when such an achievement might be thought improbable think what little we know of this enigmatic ruler if only his story had been written down but it wasn't and i must satisfy my curiosity with a walk along the great dyke that honors his name what lies ahead is a link that honors a much more modern monarch northwest of the town of knighton in central palace county named after the ancient welsh kingdom i approach the vantage point of beacon ring and i have time at last to reflect on this beautiful fertile land and my journey along offers dyke my intriguing final destination lies ahead at first glance this hill is just a dense circular wood flanked by jarring modern-day transmitter masts but there's more to it than that this would have been an amazing strategic viewing point in the old days but you've got england laid out in front of you there then you've got the border and you've got wales all the way along there it's called beacon ring but there's something rather curious about it it's an old hill fort but it wasn't just used in the iron age it's crammed full of history the britons fought the northumbrians here it was used in the war of the roses but look it's jam-packed full of trees you've got beaches you've got conifers what is a forest doing in the middle of an iron age hillthought and as i'm about to find out from a custodian of this beautiful welsh landscape this peculiar juxtaposition of the old with the new crowns this elevation in more ways than one paul i'm sorry to uh to disturb your work but this does seem a bit odd to me i've seen hill forts with one or two trees in but you've got you've got a whole cops in here haven't you well it's actually a plantation that was put here in 1953 and partly to commemorate the coronation of the majority of the queen and what would it have looked like well it's a combination of spruce and beech trees and the monogram e2r is picked out so you can see that from the air you said it could be seen from the air but it just looks like a great big mound of trees now well it does from here and it's slightly overgrown um they've reached maturity and our program over the next few years is to try and uh remove them gradually as we have done here with the with the vegetation on the ramparts and return it to its natural grassland state it's intriguing isn't it we've got a bold statement by one monarch in the dike and then we've got a bold statement about another one on the hill fort which you're about to whip out we're going to gradually return it to its earlier natural state i think that's how i put it have you mentioned it to the palace i'm afraid not no i should okay i mean i really should on the ground the effect is invisible from the air it's remarkable enjoy this unique view while it lasts [Music] trees spell out e 2 r for elizabeth regina [Music] these trees are mere saplings when compared with offers dyke's amazing 1200 year history as i've discovered on my walk this ancient route defines the very essence of what it means to be english and welsh and will no doubt continue to do so for many generations to come this impressive frontier may have been built to draw a line between england's sword-wielding patron saints and the fiery red dragon of wales but over the centuries it served to strengthen the national pride and cultural identities of both these border peoples and allowed us step by step to truly celebrate this historic boundary i'm finishing my journey here where the flow of history meets the flow of a river unlike the ancient dyke a slow-moving river meanders between both countries blissfully oblivious to any modern border i'm at the end of my journey now this is welsh pool and over here is the largest sheep market in the whole of europe it doesn't look much at the moment but it's sunday so it's closed over here is the river seven i've walked 90 miles or so and ironically i've ended up by the side of the same river as the one where i started this walk has been about trying to discover something about this strange border country that we call the marches and also to learn a bit more about king offer have i succeeded well as winston churchill once said in studying offer we're rather like a geologist who instead of finding a fossil finds only a hollow shape in which a creature of unusual strength and size undoubtedly resided

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 44,205

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, tony robinson, ancient tracks, king arthur, british kings, archaeology, wales, welsh history, welsh mythological creatures

Id: nO_1T44T-0Q

Length: 46min 31sec (2791 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020