Back to the road for Wednesday's expedition, and it was another day of castles. My first stop, in fact, was just up the road from the cottage at Pembridge Castle, low, small, and still a private residence. My first thought was that it was a 19th-century folly, but no, though the building was extended and remodelled then a lot of it is genuinely medieval.
I intended to call in at Goodrich Castle, but I thought that I could squeeze in a short trip north to Ross-on-Wye, as it turned out a busy small town clambering around a rocky outcrop. The big parish church has a fantastic range of memorials including one from 1530 - about as late for these things as you can get - that incorporates a parade of stone saints including St Catherine herself. The castellations around the 'town walls' only date to a road-reconstruction scheme in the 1800s, but there is a genuine ruin, Wilton Castle, on the outskirts of the town - privately owned, but you can just glimpse it from the riverbank.
Goodrich Castle is a massive structure of red Herefordshire sandstone, except the keep, built before the rest in grey stone from Gloucestershire. It was rendered uninhabitable during the Civil War: in the courtyard you can marvel at Roaring Meg, the massive mortar devised by the Parliamentary forces to destroy one of the towers and bring the siege of the castle to an end.
Zooming through the Forest of Dean, I tried and failed to find Loquiers Well near Mitcheldean, marked on the map right by the main road but with nothing surviving visible at the site. So I went on to the very well-known St Anthony's Well in the woods above Mitcheldean. My friends Madame Morbidfrog and Mr Romeburns had been in the area a couple of weeks ahead of me, and - as wild-swimming enthusiasts - had been bold enough to go in it. I was definitely not, but although the photo below isn't all that impressive St Anthony's Well is in fact a very impressive place, the sound of gushing water mingling with the wind among the trees in the loneliness of the woods. Actually it's not that lonely at all, but it feels it.
I followed in my friends' footsteps again at my next stop, Puzzlewood in Coleford; in fact had they not posted photos from their visit on LiberFaciorum I would never have known about it. This strange woodland landscape is a former ironworking site: after the mines closed in the later 1800s its owner refashioned Puzzlewood as a kind of fantasy garden to amuse his children, and some decades later it was opened to the public. Now you traverse the damp woods along walkways and little bridges between rocks green with thick moss, looking at the weird shapes which look like the kind of towering monoliths you associate with parts of China on a miniature scale. I'm reminded a bit of the Cleft at Hawkstone Park, but Puzzlewood is a fairy landscape rather than a Gothic one. How Madame Morbidfrog managed to negotiate her way even a few yards in with her massive skirts and pixy boots I can't imagine.
St Briavels came next - a closed castle and St Bride's Well -
- and the next stop was Chepstow. Monday is the day the Museum is closed at Newport; Chepstow's has Wednesday off, so that was another I missed. I didn't have the energy to tackle the Castle, and was quite content to take a couple of photos from the outside. Chepstow Priory is grand and full of interesting features.
My last calling-point was Staunton, a village back over the Gloucestershire border. My aim there was seeing two more wells. St John the Baptist's Well is the better-known, though it still isn't one of the more celebrated sacred sites in this part of the country. The church is dedicated to All Saints, and the Baptist being the Well's patron suggests it might have been used for baptismal water, though no legend says so explicitly. Instead a little plaque by the well, very quietly sitting at the bottom of a track, informs us that it appears in a 14th-century document and was one of the village's main water-sources until 1931 when a piped supply arrived. 'Restored', says the sign, and looking at the overlooked and overgrown little Well now I doubt any of it is all that old. However, St John's Well looks positively cheerful compared to the other old village well, Brindsey's Well. This is buried in the bank along a lane on the other side of the main road. I had to pull away all the nettles and plants before I could see enough to take a photo, and it's the driest dry well I think I've ever seen.
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