Moongazy

Further back than I care to remember, the 2nd Saturday of the month has always been when we run the LETS market in a church hall in town.  We don’t mind, most of the time, but knowing this Saturday is always booked can be quite restricting.

This week we were due to be working at a Taster Day for a local centre and someone else had agreed to take over the market.  All had been arranged and we were set for the tasters when we had a phone call on the Friday to say that no one had booked so we didn’t have to go.  What to do?!  The person taking over was quite happy and would have been there anyway so we decided to escape for the afternoon and do something different.  No decision was made on Friday night, but I woke up on Saturday with the thought of going to Brentor Church near Tavistock.   

We set off late morning and found our way fairly easily.  The church is on a prominent hill and can be seen from a long way off.  It is built on the plug of an ancient volcano and lava rocks can be seen all around, very different from the granite of the moor.  There are many stories of how it was built. One tells that the devil threw the building stones down the hill every night to stop progress until the parishioners prayed to St Michael.  He dropped a large rock onto the devil’s head and stopped his mischief.  The church was then dedicated to St Michael of the Rock.

The walk up can be steep or gentle depending on which path you take.  We went for the easy option, stopping to take in the panoramic views as we went around the hill.  You can see Kit Hill and some of the tors on Dartmoor.  The afternoon was very clear and warm.  There are a few gravestones around the church and two oaks like the ones you in Wistman’s Wood.  Seats are placed so that you can enjoy the peace and quiet up there.

The church itself is small and beautiful with a stained glass window of St Michael with his sword of truth and scales.  It is still used for worship.  We didn’t just visit for the tourist option though.  It is part of the ‘Michael Line’, a ley (energy) line that runs through St Michael’s Mount and the Cheeswring and onto Glastonbury Tor.  It is aligned with the May sunrise.  We had visited the Cheeswring last year and I had felt the energy of the line there and hoped to find it again.

We had forgotten to bring pendulums so just tried to feel the energy and we were confused as it seemed to be running in two directions.  Through the doors on either side and through the windows down the middle.  Not having a compass either we thought we would check which was correct when we came home.

We sat for a long while in the church enjoying the peace.  It had a very good atmosphere.  We ate our lunch on the hill outside looking at the view and the antics of the cows in the field below.  When we returned home and looked at the info on the web we found that the line passes about 3 metres from the church.  So we must have been feeling the energy of something else. They were plotted by Hamish Millar and Paul Broadhurst and chronicled in  the book ‘The Sun and the Serpent’.  The book is fascinating and has made me want to explore more of the line and maybe follow it from the bottom of Cornwall to Glastonbury Tor.  It was a great end to a great day.