“This is for kids.” I detected a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Granted, the site has been made into an educational experience, but the fact remains that Castell Henllys is a real archaeological site and quite unique, for while it was being dug, it was also being reconstructed.

“And?”  Children we are, there are some things you are never too old for, regardless of years. It is a place where the imagination can step outside of time and range back over two thousand years and beyond to a moment when legends were born.

The hillfort, once home to members of the Demetae tribe, sits high on a rocky outcrop, a little way inland from the coast and would have been a superb lookout point as well as making the site easily defensible. I had been there once before and there was just something about the place that had stayed in memory. If I wanted to be thought any weirder than usual, I’d say it felt a bit like coming home. It was familiar in a way that is difficult to explain… an instance of genetic or far memory, perhaps.

The hillfort is hidden in the trees. Wild herbs, watercress and wild garlic still grow here, giving a clue to what those who called it home, some two thousand years ago, might have been able to find in the wooded slopes.

A wicker fish trap lies beside the stream, birds and herbs are plentiful and supplemented by a tended herb garden… and anyway, there was a robin. We always get a robin when we are in the right place. And it had a totem pole…

Image © Derek Voller CCL

It also had pigs, the old fashioned kind that would have been familiar to our ancestors. Two of them, rooting around in the earth, tilling it with their noses, oblivious to the watchers and the robin, which seemed to be following us.

Continue reading at France & Vincent