StrongOak is expanding its trade routes these days. One day, a Longship arrived from Stormsham up the Ivel and pulled in to Beccel's Ford. It unloaded garnets, and was about to load up with cider, and we were discussing how trade with other parts of Camcairndryth was going. It seems that Master William is having problems down in Tintagel. Ships trying to trade keep running into those terribly dangerous cliffs and sinking. He always tries to rescue them, but sadly is often just too late, getting to the ship just after the crew have all drowned.
Now, we had been wondering what we could get Master William for his birthday present. Solving this trade problem for him would be a good present, we thought. So we asked Bjarni, the navigator of Thegn Astrid's longship what he reckoned was needed. It seems the problem is that the navigators aren't too sure just where the rocks are, down there. There aren't any nice obvious church towers or other landmarks showing where to beach the ship, so they keep getting it wrong. And of course if they try to land at night, things get even harder.
So, we thought, what we need to do is get William a nice tall object that ships can see even at night, so he can be sure that they'll land in the right place. And miss the rocks. Well, one of those two, anyway….
One of the new arrivals in Strongoak has his home quite close to a thing called the Ivinghoe Beacon. Apparently this has a fire on top so it can be seen from a long way away, and has been used quite recently to warn of the arrival of ships from abroad. [Armada] And we'd never heard of any ships sinking anywhere near it, so it was obviously doing a good job. Better head down south and take a look at this, we thought. And take the expert with us.
Now this is where we hit a problem. While Bjarni was quite willing to come with us and tell us if this Beacon would do the job, he wasn't at all keen on leaving his longship behind. And there just aren't any waterways in that direction that can take a longship. The Great North Road is muddy, but not that muddy, especially since we've been keeping it repaired.
Dafydd had an Idea. "Why not put the longship on wheels?" he said. He's always thought most things are improved by having wheels on, and for once he was right. Of course, he wasn't that pleased when we took the wheels off his chariot for the purpose, but where else did he think we were going to get them from?
So we hitched up the horses and headed off down the Great North Road.
Signs for Ivinghoe Beacon took us up a hill. A very big hill. A Huge hill. The horses started to get a bit peeved at all this, so we gave them some cider and carried on. There seemed to be a number of wild animals about [Next to Whipsnade zoo] , and the growls from the bushes encouraged them, too. We got to the top eventually, and there was this pile of stones. Not very impressive at all, after all we had heard. So we collared a local, and asked him where the Beacon was. Well, to cut a long story short, and missing the joke about "your finger you fool", it seems that the Beacon is the hill. Not very portable, we thought. Effective, mind you, but we couldn't quite see how to get it to Tintagel. So we carried on.
There at a crossroads was a gallows. More the right size. But it's made of wood: put a fire on top of that, you'll burn the whole thing. So we carried on, right down into London Town. And there we found it. A tall stone object: not flammable at all! Nicely decorated. And while I wasn't that keen on the Christian symbols, we thought William might like them. Better yet, it already had some inscription or other about Eleanor on it! So we got the ropes out, loaded it on board ship and headed west.
I'll spare you the details of that journey: another time, perhaps. We sailed as far as the March river, and headed upstream to visit Bournville and Muchmead on the way. But the last bit had to be done by land, because the new beacon wasn't in place yet, and we didn't want to run aground. Hauling a ship across Dartmoor is quite hard work even before you load a hefty chunk of stonework on it. We got there in the end, and William, when you get home, you'll find a nice new beacon installed on those dangerous rocks, right at the land's end.
[And at this point I showed the audience this picture: Astrid identified the Lighthouse as the Charing Cross Monument, the location of which determines the boundaries of Camcairndryth, and the Prince Bish and his lawyers had a mild panic.]