To celebrate the Summer Solstice we walked a new stone circle into existence. The West Midlands may not be as blessed with megalithic monuments as other parts of the country but we DO have an abundance of another type of ancient rock: the glacial erratics which travelled here from North Wales on an ice sheet.
Thanks to the mapping efforts of the Erratics Project we can see that several of these boulders can be joined up in a giant circle. In order to activate this newly discovered ancient monument (several hundred thousand years older than Stonehenge), we walked the entire 13 mile circuit, anointed each boulder and took turns reading aloud The Stone Monologues by Alyson Hallett. We were honoured to be joined by Alyson herself who took a detour on her journey back from Scotland to spend the day with us.
The walk started and finished at The Great Stone Inn in Northfield. This historic pub is custodian of not one but two erratic boulders and the landlady kindly granted us access to the 17th Century village pound which contains the titular Great Stone itself. Participants were asked to bring along a pocket-sized stone of their own and we opened proceedings by placing the stones at our feet, creating a miniature stone circle around the Great Stone erratic.
The walk took us close to the Bartley and Frankley Reservoirs, the home of Birmingham’s drinking water. This water also travels here from Wales, in this case from the colossal reservoirs of the Elan Valley. The water makes the 73 mile journey through a huge pipe called the Elan Aqueduct, powered only by gravity. Welsh tap water to anoint the Welsh stones.
The Stone Monologues is a ten part poem written from the perspective of an erratic boulder. Alyson Hallett wrote the monologues after encountering an erratic on Cader Idris and becoming obsessed with travelling stones. Since then she has taken five migrating stones on journeys around the world. The stones have a line of her poetry carved into them and are sited in Scotland, England, USA and Australia. A sixth stone is destined for Ukraine. On all her travels Alyson says she has never known anywhere so abundant with erratics as Birmingham.
Particles of myself ride the wind into homes and hands of strangers. Rain washes me into the earth and the earth’s fast running rivers. I record the touch of a hand, step of a fly, scud of clouds. I have small pockets that catch words from a walker’s lips, light from the moon’s bright lyre.
From “The Stone Monologues” © Alyson Hallett
We walked for seven and a half hours in the midsummer heat, arriving back at The Great Stone exactly as the church bell struck 6 o’clock. Pleasingly the final stone sits in the pub beer garden. By then we were ready for a pint. Alyson summed up the day nicely: “it was ceremonial, sacred, fun and I met amazing people. Days like this allow me to experience how poems can come into the communities of more-than-human beings and expand the cosmic soul. Happy Solstice to everyone.”
Pictures © Andy Howlett unless otherwise stated.
For our previous boulder walks see Wandering Rocks parts one and two.
Want to walk the South West Birmingham Erratic Stone Circle yourself? Get the route on the OS app.
Walkspace 