I live in a valley, in one of the Victorian workers’ cottages that fill up the space between the small factories in which they worked. It’s a fold in the Chiltern Hills and unless you follow one of the rivers, upstream or down, you have to go up a hill to get anywhere.
So at the end of my street, I went south, past the traffic lights and up, till the road ends at a small nature reserve.
Looking back from the summit, I took a snap of the hill at the other side of the valley, towards the north.
Towards the east is a small valley, its slopes thoroughly built-up like those towards the north. The trees on the right are on the site of a prehistoric settlement, I believe a kind of hill fort. In those days, if an enemy approached, you would gather up your women, children, horses, dogs and sheep into this place, whose earthworks and palisades would be defensible.
On the other side of the nature reserve, you come to a large industrial estate. There amongst a myriad suppliers you will find the headquarters of Monodraught Ltd, which makes Sunpipe, a way to bring natural daylight into dark parts of buildings, and Windcatcher, which cools a building without consuming electricity.
Beside a large supermarket, invisible to the eye till you reach it, is a public footpath which takes you to a tunnel under the motorway. You can see it was built to accommodate a road, with its concrete surface and sidewalk, but it goes “nowhere”.
To the wayfarer it’s a highway to heaven, for in two minutes you are away from the sound of traffic and on an ancient trail, beside a cherry tree in full blossom.
And here is the blossom of whitethorn (I think) proffering its pollen to any passing bee.
After much wandering the lonely paths, not encountering a soul, I reach a mysterious gateway.
Within are two signs. I am stupefied by the stupas. Whoever erected them was not stupid.
“A stupa’s power to purify the energies of the planet cannot be measured.”
Yes. I think very few will disagree with that; though someone somewhere will probably try to design some measuring equipment for that very purpose.
“The blessing of an encounter with its form and the Merit of helping it to manifest is inconceivable and indestructible.”
Well, not quite inconceivable. At first I could not conceive why someone had “helped it to manifest”—i.e. built it. But now I can conceive it quite easily. For the Merit.
a wayfarer’s notes 
And the post abruptly ends, probably because you failed to find your way back home!
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Are those banners made from pages of the Voynich Manuscript? 🙂
Does the statue with the head full of swastikas pre-date WWII?
Nice pictures. Those houses look so close together. Very different world you have over there.
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That looks like quite a wonderful little nature reserve on the left at top of the hill.
Quite amazing that you have a Buddhist shrine in your neighborhood all complete with prayer flags.
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Yes, I think it ends abruptly because I wanted to prevent it morphing into its own sequel.
Yes, they are prayer-flags, I guess. As for the swastikas, it seems the constructor of the shrine has ignored the opinion of Wikipedia that
“Following a brief surge of popularity in Western culture, the swastika from the 1930s became strongly associated with its iconic usage by Nazi Germany, and it has hence become stigmatized and taboo in the Western world”.
I’m glad that such a taboo has not in this instance deterred the devotee from allowing his ancient symbol to be hijacked by debased modern usage and consequent proscription.
Ashok, nothing of the nature reserve can actually be seen in the first photo. Those are trees planted in people's gardens! The nature reserve is beyond the horizon and wouldn't look good in a photograph, since it consists of shrubs and low trees on a hillside intersected by paths. They are carefully preserving a wild habitat for certain species, I think, but they don't say what species.
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Vincent,
Probably some insect speices or rabbits and rats because one may not expect larger animals so close to populated areas. Perhpas some birds visit in various seasons.
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The makers of this shrine were careful to use left-facing swastikas, rather than the right-facing one used by Hitler in his design for a NSDAP symbol (after 1932, adopted as the German national flag).
Traditionally, the swastika can be found in both variants. Personally, I like the idea of the (left-facing) swastika symbolising the wheel of the sun moving through the heavens.
Arguably, the makers of such a shrine could get into trouble if they tried to build it in Germany; the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch § 86a) outlaws the use of Nazi symbols. While the English Wikipedia entry claims this does not apply to Hinduism or Buddhism, there is no source given and I haven't been able to find a German source of confirmation.
In a bizarre case a couple of years ago, a German public prosecutor started to investigate anti-Nazi groups for producing T-shirts and buttons featuring the international red circle with 45 degree diagonal symbol for prohibition superimposed on a black swastika. This was, in his view, a display of prohibited symbols! It took an appeal to the Supreme Court in 2007 to finally spike his guns.
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I've just looked up the Voynich manuscript, having never heard of it before. It reminds me of certain dreams one dating from 1962 – very memorable! Has it found its way into the Encyclopedia of Counted Sheep, Bryan?
Yes it is a different world here. These are the houses of the ordinary people, who see themselves as a cut above the street where I live.
Separated only by occasional alleyways to reach backyards, houses in my street are 12ft wide and all joined together. This is what we call terraced housing. Mine was built in the last year of Queen Victoria's reign, and I expect it to last longer than the ones in the photos.
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I don't think there is any law against the swastika here, Francis, whichever way round. When Max Mosley, Formula 1 boss and son of Sir Oswald Mosley the well-known British fascist and crony of Hitler, was discovered with prostitutes dressed as Nazis, the newspapers delighted in showing girls in sexy uniforms with Swastika armbands – for the whole thing is a joke here. Not to everyone of course. To some, painful memories will be provoked.
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What a fascinating walk. Suburbia hasn't quite drowned out delicious quiet corners and elements of nature.
Having read some of the comments, a number of my queries have been answered.
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Thanks for the walk! I used to have a spiritual abode of calm and peace within the bustle of life as well, a small Japanese garden sheltered from the rest of the world.
On a different note, apart from the swastika, the Nazis also destroyed the short moustache. I can't walk down the street with it without getting a strange look here and there.
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Now I want to see a photo of you with that mustache, Arash, preferably marching the goose-step or raising your arm in a Hitler salute.
ZACL, it can be hard to find those delicious corners, but one can be blessed and find them.
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