#caractacus

It took me 8.5 hours and my watch measured 22.8 miles, which wasn't what I wanted, but generally explained by:

Going on a side quest to find Caractacus's Cave (and actually finding it this time due to finding and following the right contour line instead of trying to drop in from above and falling in a spring)

Taking an hour to help an injured hiker down off the Lawley (I had trekking poles and ibuprofen; they had an ankle that was swollen and non-weight-bearing but not noticeably deformed)

Drinking a lot of my water in the process out of sheer social anxiety and having to go on another side quest to find a stream for a refill (drought conditions meaning most of the water sources on the map were dry)

Getting mugged by a couple of horses who really didn't want to let me out of their field until they'd checked all my pockets, twice

Being absolutely delighted by a slow worm

Generally though the bits that went to plan were fine, and I had a good time. My bad knee mostly behaved. And I should get an iron-on patch out of it, and we all know I'll do anything for a nifty patch.

Other challenges in that area I want to tackle are the Gill Harris Round and the Longmynd Hike.

Photos (including slow worm - it's not a snake but it does look like one) under the cut.

April 10, 2024:

Strawberry Primary, Guardian, Cherub.

How different had been the behavior of her fellow Briton Caractacus, captured in A.D. 51, only eleven years earlier, by the Roman general Publius Ostorius. Taken to Rome in chains, Caractacus was displayed in a Triumph to all the citizens; and on reaching the imperial box he cravenly pleaded for his life: "My death would be followed by oblivion; but if you save my life, I shall be an everlasting memorial to your clemency." The soft-hearted Emperor Claudius forgave him but forbade his return to Britain; and Caractacus spent the remainder of his inglorious life a captive in Rome.

Tacitus records the amazement of the Romans when Caractacus, on this occasion, true to his Celtic upbringing, made his first obeisance to the empress and "did homage to Agrippina in the same language of praise and gratitude as he addressed the Emperor." It is interesting that Caractacus remains a heroic figure, a name to be reckoned with in world history, while the far braver and more noble Boadicea has been forgotten except as the "unnatural Virago," the “anomaly,” the "unfeminine freak" of early British history.

”(His statue) stands in the Comitium,

   Plain for all folk to see;

Horatius in his armour,

   halting upon one knee:

And underneath is written,

   In letters all of gold,

How valiantly he kept the bridge

   In the brave days of old.”

“And still his name sounds stirring

   Unto the men of Rome,

As the trumpet-blast that cries to them

   To charge the Volscian home;

And wives still pray to Juno

   For boys with hearts as bold

As his who kept the bridge so well

   In the brave days of old.”

Good old Horatius, and good old Macauley. The story of the lone hero who held off an army at the vital bridge is certainly indulgent, improbable pap, worthy of hollywood. It was similar fireside fairy-tales of bold heroes that inspired Warrior to seek adventure, and find his death.

But the heart-stirring heroic integrity of Horatius, utterly banishing False Sextus, the arch-rapist, from Roman society, speaks a better word than the small-minded, competence-worshipping, rape-mongering idiocy of Goblin Slayer. Macauley’s snobbish and mildly fascist poem has worthily endured almost 200 years, and it is a great comfort to me that Goblin Slayer will be unregarded in less than 50.

As for Warrior, he lives and breaths, and his hour will come. Shadowrunners are never dead when you think they are. And a hero with true greatness of heart can conquer death, even through ballads and fanfiction. And I believe I will remember in 50 years, if I still live, that the most popular anime of 2018 treated true, unsullied heroism infamously and honoured toxic filth.   

Fear not, oh gallant Warrior!

A deathless name is thine,

When power has left Mount Coelius,

And ruined Aventine.

And when the world remembers,

Time’s misty yesterday,

She’ll offer thee, Caractacus,

The Laurel and the Lay!

Yes, brilliant in the muster

Of the deathless in the grave,

Shines Caractacus the Briton,

“Why did I fall in love with this idiot?”

Oh Susan. For the same reason that Sir Harry Hotspur, Captain Scott, Caractacus, Spartacus, Crazy Horse, and the great avenger of rape, Queen Boudicea, will be heroes for as long as England preserves their memory. If they got their friends killed, they died with them; if they didn’t have the fortune they deserved they still tried on to the last.

To try to the end of strength, in a noble cause, is heroism.

Competence, Goblin Slayer’s defining quality apart from asininity, is not heroism.

Harry Percy Fawkes and Ilsa Tresckow are heroes.

Hugo Goldsmith and the Logan Rock near #Treen #Cornwall

Men Omborth, Cornish for balanced stone, sits about thirty metres above the sea on top of the Teryn Dinas cliffs at Treen in the far west of Cornwall, about three miles or so from Land’s End. Known as a Logan or logging stone from the Cornish word “logging” meaning rocking, it is one of several pieces of detached rock to be found in the county that are poised so finely on their base that they…