We had already been sidetracked by St Edwold’s tiny church, but we were definitely on our way home now. Except, we thought that as we were passing, it would be a pity not to visit the little village of Sutton Montis, the place where the ghostly knights that sleep beneath Cadbury Castle are said to bring their horses to drink. We had tried to visit on the first day of the workshop and taken a wrong turn somewhere. Perhaps we would have better luck this time.

So, sticking to the backroads as usual, we drove through the English countryside at its best. Small villages bedecked with flowers, vast swathes of vivid green against old, golden stone, tumbles of roses… and every so often, places we really wished we could have stopped.

The one place we had to pull over was the crossroads at Leigh, where an ancient carved cross stands on its steps, guarding the way. In 1905, the Reverend Dicker, Vicar of Piddletrenthide, wrote an account of the eight-hundred-year-old cross and from this we know that on two sides the carvings represented St. Christopher carrying the Christ and St. Michael slaying the dragon… two images that seem to follow us around.

Resisting the temptation to go in search of Leigh’s church, we continued to Sutton Montis and found the church where the spring is supposed to be, where Arthur and his knights water their horses.

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