The View over Atlantis

[steepholm]

Like anyone who truly loves life (I presume), I spend exorbitant amounts of time thinking about my own demise and that of everyone I love. I suppose there are worse fates than becoming part of a mythical race of people who were once said to live in the Drowned Archipelago, but I can't feel altogether easy at the disappearance of every town and city I've ever lived in. Romsey, Englefield Green, York, Cambridge, Bristol... all pass into legend, or are more likely sunk in oblivion.

Perhaps we'll be rediscovered in due course. Bristol can be the new Doggerland. Up from the millennial slime a broken tower will stand revealed by some future tide, or a pedestrian crossing unsilt itself, like Borth's new wattle walkway. Perhaps the sea will fall away again, and we'll be discovered by rabbits, weed-wound iPhones in our bony fingers.

It's not such a bad way to go, and I'd rather the curse fell on this generation than on some future cohort of our guiltless children. But I do regret the loss of the line at Dawlish, that lovely stretch of Devonian littoral, passage along which (in a chariot drawn by herring gulls) was once our bucket-and-spade portal into Cornwall.

"Logres is before you," Merriman tells Barney when he and the other Drews disembark at St Austell in Over Sea, Under Stone. Perhaps, now, he would say Lyonesse.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Well, you know have I Breton ancestry:

Ys.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Ys was well protected, if only someone hadn't let the sea in. You can't say the same for much of Britain, alas!

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

I have a couple of Stivell's albums in my collection. Haven't played them for years - thanks for reminding me.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

This is kind of a beautifully written post. I like it.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I'm pleased you like it.

[larryhammer]

Surely Cambridge at least will pass into legend, if only as half of the fabled academic utopia, Oxbridge.

---L.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Y're welcome.

He's always worth a listen.

Le Savant Englouti...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

On certain days of the year, they do say you can hear F. R. Leavis expounding his views on the English novel...

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

This is why we moved from Windsor - on the Thames flood plain, to where we are now on top of the Chilterns. Well, that and the constant aircraft noise.

Although after today's hosing, I wonder if our house isn't going to slide off down the hill on its shallow foundations. That's a patio, not a fishpond!

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Oxford is definitely going under. It's already started.

Re: Le Savant Englouti...

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

like!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

What about the places you've been looking at up North?

Re: Le Savant Englouti...

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

Nice one!

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

'Now the most striking difference between the country as we know it and as it was known to the ancients is the existence of the great Lake in the centre of the island. From the Red Rocks (by the Severn) hither, the most direct route a galley can follow is considered to be about two hundred miles in length… At the eastern extremity the Lake narrows, and finally is lost in the vast marshes which cover the site of the ancient London.' - Richard Jefferies, After London, 1885

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Nice! However, if my map is to be believed, your author appears to have forgotten about the Berkshire Downs and the Chilterns, which require a diversion via East Anglia.

Re: Le Savant Englouti...

[larryhammer]

+1

Re: Le Savant Englouti...

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Accompanied by Drowned Queenie?

[wolfinthewood.livejournal.com]

I cut quite a lot. He envisages a navigable passage through the Vale of White Horse, or part of it:

'The Lake is also divided into two unequal portions by the straits of White Horse, where vessels are often weather-bound, and cannot make way against the wind, which sets a current through the narrow channel.'

I don't know whether that is plausible. Geography is not my strongest point.

Here is a link to the full description.

[sovay]

Perhaps we'll be rediscovered in due course. Bristol can be the new Doggerland. Up from the millennial slime a broken tower will stand revealed by some future tide, or a pedestrian crossing unsilt itself, like Borth's new wattle walkway. Perhaps the sea will fall away again, and we'll be discovered by rabbits, weed-wound iPhones in our bony fingers.

This is very nearly a short story.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I love the idea that the Thames "had become partially choked by the cloacae of the ancient city"!

Re: Le Savant Englouti...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

There's a fertility cult, right there!