This is the first in what will hopefully be a series of articles about places I have been to with a link to the show that has inspired this fanzine, namely Doctor Who. This is, possibly, not an original idea as, to date at least one book, Travels Without The TARDIS, has already been published. But, to redress any balance within the confines of the copyright laws, I do not own a copy myself! I once saw one in a second-hand bookshop and rue not lashing out the money to buy it as, at the time, I didn't think it would ever come in handy. However time and tide melts the snowman and circumstances change...
Today's chosen reminiscence harks back to the balmy days of early summer 1995. The University year had finished and, with two weeks of paid up rent to use, I stayed on. After a week and a half of doing all those things my friends and I had promised ourselves during the term, I started thinking about trundling off home. After two years of getting from A to B at the beginning and end of each term, I knew the route home, but like the Doctor I believe greatly in the maxim 'A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting!' And with this thought in mind and the help of my road atlas I started planning the homeward journey.
I was just about to fall off the bottom of page 30 when something caught my eye. Located bang on the dotted line defining the border between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire was one of those small symbols that you can never find in the key. Written below the little emblem in blue capital letters were the words 'ROLLRIGHT STONES'. You now have 30 seconds to remember the importance of this name...
Okay, time up. The Rollright Stones was the location setting for the Key To Time story Stones of Blood, one of my favourite Who novelisations for reading on dark Saturdays evenings with a plateful of Professor Rumford's cure-all, sausage sandwiches. At about the same time as my visit, BBC Video were also releasing the story on tape which allowed me to compare the site over the course of about 20 years.
Since I had nothing better to do with the day, a Wednesday, though the exact date escapes me, I decided to go for a peek. I wrote out a list of places to guide me on my journey, made some sandwiches (unfortunately not sausage), leapt into my trusty car, set off and proceeded to get thoroughly lost. For some reason, at least in my experience, what's written on maps seldom seems to actually correlate to the roads local governments build, and the more rural you go, the more the map doesn't tell you! Or, if I wanted to let my fancy fly, then perhaps it was a local coven trying to keep me from my destination. Maybe if I'd looked in the rear view mirror more often I might have seen road signs swinging back to indicate the correct route. After all, I can't be sure I didn't approach Devil's End at some point on my journey...
Finally, Witches and Wizards apart, after a pleasant drive through large amounts of Warwickshire countryside I started finding signposts towards the Stones. I suppose the first illusion I could break would be by saying that the Stones and the local Villages of Little and Greater Rollright are quite high up in the hills and slap-bang in the middle of England so no seaside cliffs for Romana to fall over here!
The Stones themselves are just off a narrow country lane that, for a while, runs along the county border. I knew I had arrived when I saw, what I later discovered was, the King Stone, a giant monolith a short distance north-east and the other side of the road to the main circle. I parked in a thoughtfully provided lay-bye and, munching my sandwiches, went to have a look at the King Stone. It is an 'outlier', such as the Heel Stone at Stonehenge and didn't actually feature in the story, though if it could have been made an Ogri then it would have been terrifying.
The approach to the main circle was guarded by an old lady who I found less easy to believe in than the Calleach and any number of Ogri. I had the definite feeling that she could easily have been there at the time the stones were put up, some 3500 years ago. Failing that, on quizzing her, I found that she certainly had been there in 1978 when shooting had taken place. She seemed rather annoyed at the fact that the BBC had brought their own Stones for filming, though I suspect she would have been even more peeved had they tried digging up the ones already there to use, especially if they had gone and thrown one into a quarry. Undaunted, I paid the demanded 30 pence admission fee and carried on towards the circle...
The only noticeable difference at first was the obvious lack of the Ogri, though perhaps they were out hunting... For those who haven't had the chance to see Stones of Blood then I shall describe the area. The circle itself is about 100 feet across with some 77 unhewn boulders varying in height from seven feet high down to ground level. Two sides have bushes along them, one against the road, the other hiding the little house the custodian was sat away in. The other two sides, those seen in the story, lead onto a field and into the trees that Romana plunges away into at the end of episode 2. The field, grass in 1978, was ploughed when I was there and the trees had grown quite noticeably as well. The only other difference was far more ephemeral; a surprising number of American tourists marvelling at the site. Knowing how out of the way it is I suppose I should have asked how they came across the site; perhaps it is more widely advertised than I realised. I briefly considered sacrificing one of them to the stones to see if I could find my own Ogri but thought better of it in the end!
The Stones are weathered into the most interesting shapes and it was great fun to try and work out if there was any logical order to the placings. Not being able to discern any particular sequence and not being able to see any hyperspace carriers from the ground I settled for the next best thing to do: count the stones. According to legend, and a little booklet sold to me by the custodian, the stones of the circle cannot be counted accurately so I had to spend a while wandering clockwise and anti-clockwise about the circle counting away. Maybe it was the A-Level in Maths that spoilt the legend, as on the third attempt I managed to get the same number going in both directions around the circle!
The final part of the Monument is The Whispering Knights, a group of five large stones leaning together quarter of a mile from the main circle. It is a burial mound that, interestingly enough, dates from around 2000 BC, the same time as a certain Cessair of Diplos has been recorded as arriving on Earth and they do bare more than just a passing resemblance to Ogri.
The legend behind the Rollright Stones even holds with our fable that the stones are more than just oolitic limestone. The first mention is in a 12th Century manuscript and almost all accounts since make mention of a story involving an ambitious king. He was marching northwards with his army and is said to have met a Witch who challenged him to advance seven strides:
The king took the seven strides, but a mound hid the village from view. The witch then went on:
And e'en now the king still stands there with his circle of soldiers behind him and, beyond them, five plotting knights...
The Rollright Stones are interesting both in the sense that you can go there and see a location used for filming Doctor Who, and purely in their own right. I would recommend it as a great day out; it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to get in and there is some lovely countryside to go walking in. At the time I went I didn't have my camera with me to take so, instead, I went to the small town of Chipping Norton a few miles away. There I found a couple of shops selling some, by the look of the style, aged picture postcards of the stones. It is a nice little town to wander about, though more to spend time in an idle and profitless way more than anything else!
The Stones should be marked on any good map and even a few bad ones. Look south-west of Banbury to find it. It's also, more or less, about 40 miles directly south of Coventry, which was where I started from. I think I shall have to return sometime, this time with a camera. And, if I can find it, my tracer. I know I had it here somewhere...
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