Road Trip | I remembered that the real world was wide...

 

A bench overlooking the ruins of a Roman Villa in North Leigh... If this place was at Oxford, it would definitely become one of my writing spots...

It's been a while since I've written here, and that's not because I didn't have anything to write about. I flew home for Christmas, flew back, and Hilary term was packed with far too much stuff, not all of which was particularly inspiring. But the beauty of Oxford terms is that after 8 action-packed weeks, there's always time to breath and get yourself together to prepare for the next one.  

Lately life had been feeling like that song in the opening of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Like it's stuck in second gear... In many ways... The world feels incredibly vast, and I... Well, I'm just me... I feel small... and loose in the world. Like I could be taken anywhere... Like I lost my connection to the ground. I feel like, if I jumped, the wind would blow me away and I would find myself in a completely new place, with no way of going back to where I've been. I guess it's not by accident that I made our dogs the background of my devices... But despite these feelings... Despite all of this, though... Despite the lingering sadness that seems to have made a home in my heart, this Easter break - which is only about halfway through at the time of my writing this - has proven to be the best break I had since I started my DPhil. 

Yesterday, I went on a road trip with a friend. He did the planning, which was cool, because it meant the trip was full of surprises. Just the the fact that I was with somebody was deliciously new, since, in the past, for most of my travels I've been alone, and apart from a couple of day trips to Paraguay (which I guess could sort of count as road trips), I had never really done anything quite like this.  

 

Ruins of the villa. Notice the train speeding by us in the distance...

 The first place we visited were the ruins of a Roman Villa in North Leigh. Seeing the ruins brought back memories from that chapter in Ørberg's Familia Romana, where he explains the parts of a traditional Villa. Guessing where the baths were was relatively straight forward, but then it was cool to imagine where the cubicula, the atrium, or the perystilum might be. Not that I managed to get any of it right... 

 

 We even got to see a portion of the mosaic floor through the glass, But as cool as the ruins were, just the scenery alone was worth the trip. The landscape was beautiful, with hills extending as far as the eyes could see. And then there were the little things, like trying to find the best dandelion leaves for my friend's rabbit, or trying to take a picture of the train as it raced by the tracks just beyond the boundaries of the Villa, or watching the horses in the distance and thinking, if only for a moment, of how cool it would be if we could ride them across those hills, for a little while... 

 

 

Later we went to see the Devils' Quoits, a neolithic circle of stones to the south of the village of Stanton Harcourt. According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know): "The name 'Devil's Quoits' is associated with a legend that states that the Devil once played quoits with a beggar for his soul and won by flinging the great stones." It's kind of like a simpler version of Stonehenge I guess... It made me think of Jean, because it's the kind of ancient, slightly linked to the Celts thing that he might have enjoyed. Though he would never have walked the path we walked to get there, believe you me... If I know my brother, he would have taken one look at the desolate area, the muddy path, the wilderness of the woods invading the path, the "keep out of the water" signs and went straight back to the car...

The Devil's Quoits

 Getting to the stones was an adventure in itself, and that's because the place doesn't really look like a tourist attraction, or a Historical site. After we parked, we had to walk a great deal across the slippery mud, just to get to the stones. We walked by what looked like a large lake, and there were several warnings of "Cold and deep waters" urging people not to go for a swim (and I have to say, at one point nearly at the end of the way, I could totally understand why someone might want to do that.  

Back at the villa, some groups of people showed up, before and after us, to visit the place. At the stones it was just us. Hanging out, circling the whole site, taking pictures, and seizing the day. Jacob said it would be a good place for a picnic. Personally I would have chosen something a lot less muddy, but who knows... with the proper picnic blanket, it might be fun.

You have no idea how many takes it took to get this flower (?) in focus...

 

Finally, when the day was over, we went to the village of Brill, and what do you know, that turned out to be the best part of the ride... For starters, Brill was absolutely gorgeous, everything you would expect a tiny little village in the English countryside to be. There was a mill, and once again, hills and trees extending for miles before our eyes. And after walking around taking pictures and searching for beauty, we got to sit at the top of one of those hills and just chill and talk and be together and exchange stories... We must have been there for about an hour, and given the chance, I would do it all again. In fact, I would gladly hang with him at that hill until the sun set on the horizon... 

 

 

 

 

The view from our spot in the hills... I was looking at this and listening to the best stories...

 

And just to our right, an infinity of hills...

That wasn't the end of the day, and I'm sure it won't be the end of our adventures together. In fact, as good as it was, I kind of like to think that the best is yet to come... But there was one further surprise that evening. After he had beaten me on yet another game of pool and I retreated to my room to look at the pictures from the day... Because I saw that when Jacob had the camera, he had taken some picture of me... I don't usually pose for photos, it is not by accident that there is barely any pictures of me on this blog... But I liked the pictures he took... There was something special about them... It was like... Kind of like seeing myself through his eyes, and it was just lovely... It is a feeling I won't soon forget. 

“I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre