Seeking the Grail

A Road Trip to Avalon

“She is not any common Earth, Water or wood or air, But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye, Where you and I will fare…”

On September 2nd of last year I flew to London. I had last been in England in February of 2024 after living there for seven months. The day before I left I travelled to Glastonbury to see the Abbey, drink from the holy wells, and climb the Tor. It was a fitting end that adventure.

18 months later, I was headed back to do it all again.

Gavin, a good friend of mine in London, had the idea to take a road trip pilgrimage across southwestern England, stopping at notable sites of Arthurian legend and other holy sites. Starting in London, we would travel down to the furthest extremity of Cornwall and then make our way east, ending at St. Michael’s tower atop Glastonbury Tor, at the legendary Isle of Avalon. Along the way we would stop at Tintagel Castle, St. Michael’s Mount, Dozmary Pool, and other sites made famous by the legends of King Arthur. The point of it all, beyond having a great time with the boys, was to try and connect with England’s Christian past and that hidden spirit that still lies beneath the decaying carcass of modern Britain- the spirit of Logres.

Beyond Arthurian myths we added more to the plan, and stumbled across even more by “chance”- exploring an abandoned mine, ley lines, wild camping in Dartmoor national park, ancient standing stones, and a pub or two.

And in the end it turned out to be something more than just a road-trip. We did indeed find ourselves in a more mythical world, and we may have played a small part in some sort of spiritual warfare. But that’s not because we’re anything special. We all live in the same world, a world of magic and faerie and enchantment, its just that many of us have forgotten about it. But that world is still out there, and there still true adventures to be had. I hope that this brief recollection of our quest may inspire you to go find your own.

Any good quest needs a fellowship, so we assembled one. Luckily, when you run an adventure fraternity you’re never left wanting for companions. Our fraternity is named Dark Forest Company. We’re a group of men seeking the heroic ideal, and we organize these sort of adventures all over the world. In the end we had a party of ten- five Londoners, one lad from Nottingham, one from Wiltshire, one from Cornwall, finally myself and one more American to keep things interesting.

I arrived to a London covered in gloom.

It was Gavin and I’s first time actually meeting in person. But I’ve been meeting internet friends in real life for years now, so this was nothing out of the ordinary. We hit it off right away, and we had time to kill while waiting for my American friend’s flight to arrive, so Gavin took me on a quick tour of the city to see some of the sights I hadn’t gotten around to my first time in the country.

It was a comically miserable day in London. Wet, dreary, depressing. Depressing for everyone we saw at least- Gavin and I were having a great time in spite of the atmosphere. We got some dirty looks on the underground tram for smiling and having friendly conversation. Maybe this behavior offended the local sensibility.

We walked past what remains of the Roman walls and the Tower of London before stopping into a little church that, unknown to us, housed the famous explorer Ernest Shackleton’s Crow’s Nest barrel, casually sitting out in the open. When you’re in a place as historic as London maybe this is nothing special, but to the American mind it is truly remarkable how satiated with history this little island is.

Underneath the church was a museum and the remants of a Knights Templar chapel. The usher of the church was a kind old man who offered to give us a tour. He was what you’d imagine as a classic Londoner, someone who grew up in a very different London than the one that exists today.

He began commenting to us about how London has changed and about our English heritage. He made a point to include me, an American, we he said “our” heritage. This man didn’t believe that to be English means to be a citizen of the United Kingdom. No, this man was talking about blood and folk. It was encouraging to meet someone like this in London, and a compliment to Gavin and I that he felt he could share his honest opinions with us. It makes me sad to think of this old man seeing his country change around him, and how unlikely it is that he will live to see things get better. But people like him are what keep the little flame burning.

Next was the London Stone. This is an odd story. This stone has been circulating in London since at least the 12th century and if legends be true, for much longer than that. The earliest legends say Brutus of Troy founded the city on this stone. Others say this is the very stone a young King Arthur pulled the sword from. It has been moved to many different locations in the city over the years, currently it resides behind a glass wall on a seemingly random street corner. Who knows the truth, but it was a good way to start our Arthurian adventure.

We walked on to St. Paul’s, which I was looking forward to, but in keeping with the miserable attitude of London that day, it was closed for renovations. They must have planned that just for me. At least I got my touristy photo with the phone booth.

We strolled on through the gloom a while longer until it was time to get back to the airport and pick up our American companion to start the adventure proper. We picked up Daniel and hit the road in a very small British car (the British soul yearns for the American 4x4 pickup truck).

We were already breaking with the original road trip plan a bit. We were meant to begin in Cornwall, and Glastonbury was supposed to be the end of the quest. But Daniel was going to have to leave the trip a day early for work, and we couldn’t let him come all this way only to miss out on Avalon. So on our way down to Cornwall we decided we would stop to see the Tor early.

"Get in, we're going to Hyperborea."

We drove west into Wiltshire where we passed Stonehenge along the Highway. We didn’t stop, but there’s something very strange about seeing such a mysterious ancient site from a modern road.

Soon we crossed into Somerset. There’s something ethereal about this beautiful county, something that feels untouched. A piece of old England kept alive by unseen principalities, perhaps. As we neared the town of Glastonbury we saw the Tor rise above the treeline. Our Arthurian Quest had truly begun.

Glastonbury is a weird town. For two thousand years it has been the spiritual center of England. For a long time this was because Glastonbury Abbey was the largest and most powerful monastery on the island. But while the monastery has long lain in ruin, the town is still very much a spiritual center. The town is chockfull of New Age shops, druids, neo-pagans, witches and occultists. Something very real draws this sort of person to the town, and I think some of them are genuine seekers. Of course, they’re looking in all the wrong places, but the power they feel is real. Glastonbury is a Christian holy place and that power still pervades the ground.

First we walked the ruins of the great abbey. This island is littered with the ruin of the work of the Protestant Reformation and King Henry VIII. During King Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries the abbey fell into disrepair, and its last abbot was draw, quartered, and hanged on Glastonbury Tor in 1539. Glastonbury then ceased to be the center of Christianity in the isle, and the blood soaked into the ground has been crying out ever since. The ruins of the monastery are hauntingly beautiful. It is also the purported site of Arthur and Guinevere’s graves, although this is one legend that I think may have been fabricated in the Middle Ages.

The Abbey. The Holy Thorn. The Chalice Well.

On the abbey grounds still live the last of the Holy Thorns, the sacred trees that bloom on Christmas Day, that are said to have been brought to the isle of Avalon by St. Joseph of Arimathea. I’ve written about them before:

On our way up to the Tor we stopped to drink from the Chalice Well, also known as the Red Spring. There are two versions of the legend of this holy well. One claims that St. Joseph buried the Holy Grail inside the Tor, and from it sprang the well. The other claims that he buried two vials, one filled with Christ’s blood and the other with His tears, and from these sprang the Red and White Springs respectively, the White Spring being another holy well just across the street from the Chalice Well garden. Whatever the truth is, the water is full of iron and indeed tastes like blood. Inside the chalice well garden at the foot of the Tor we were met by another one of our companions, Jake, which seemed like a fitting and symbolic place to meet on a spiritual quest. Together we prayed and drank from the well, and then ascended the Tor together. As we began our ascent a rainbow broke out across the sky, crowning St. Michael’s Tower. As omens go, this seemed fortuitous.

We spent some time at the tower soaking in the power of the place. There is a unique quality around the Tor that is hard to explain to somehow who’s never been there. It’s an untouched piece of England, and there’s nothing but pastoral green in a panoramic view all around it. While standing at the tower you can’t help but feel that the legends are true, that this is the isle of Avalon and that King Arthur will one day return at this very spot to save Britain. We left the Tor satisfied but already ready to be back in four days’ time.

As the sun set we began our long drive down to Penzance in Cornwall. We arrived late in the night at a hostel outside of town where we met with two more of our friends, Aiden and our young Cornishman, Ross.

We had another day and a half to fill before the start of the planned Arthurian roadtrip. There would be four more Londoners in our final group, but they were not joining us until Friday evening. Luckily, our local guide Ross had plans for us.

Thursday morning we started with a very mid-tier Full English breakfast at the hostel, then we drove out to a local supply store. We all had to get outfitted in water proof pants, Wellington boots, and hardhats, because Ross was taking us down an abandoned mine.

I have to mention that at this shop something happened which continued to happen the entire week. The cashier was baffled by us. Not just by the fact that we were going down a mine, but simply by a large group of young men hanging out like this at all. He wanted to know if we were a bachelor party, and seemed confused when we told him that we were just friends on a road trip. This happened in multiple restaurants and stores during the week. I’ve never experienced this attitude in the United States. It almost felt as if the British culture didn’t trust a group of young, in-shape white men banded together and having fun. Much to consider there.

We geared up and headed out to the Tywarnhayle mine, a copper and tin mine that was active in the 1800s. Long abandoned, they occasionally use it for training miners. Our friend Ross just happens to work in the mining industry, and is a spelunker and mine explorer in his free time.

He assured us that it was all perfectly safe, and down into the darkness we went.

It was perfectly safe as long as you ignored the arsenic and passages marked “bad air” on Ross’s (hand-drawn from memory) map. We had brought mead and fresh baked Cornish pasties which we ate at the bottom of the mine in the pitch blackness to get an authentic Cornish experience. Exiting the mine was simple, all you had to do was climb a few hundred feet up an ancient ladder. We had a few questions about Ross’ definition of “perfectly safe”, but no one died so we can’t complain too much. We’re just glad we made it out of Moria unscathed.

Later that afternoon, after we had washed all the grime off ourselves we drove out to Loe Bar on the coast. The freshwater lake called the “Loe” is only separated from the ocean by a very small strip of land (the “Bar”), which creates a really unique setting. And this beautiful little spot has some interesting lore attached to it.

The Loe is one of the lakes attested to be the place where Sir Bedivere returned Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, and Lord Alfred Tennyson chose it as such for his Idylls of the King. There is an ominous local legend that the Loe claims one life every seven years. I also found this tale (picture below) in a coffee table book of mysterious places, but have been unable to find a reference to it anywhere else.

We spent the evening at The Ship Inn in Portleven. Back at the hostel, the Brits introduced us Americans to a local concoction called “scrumpy” which incapacitated one of our merry men, who will remain unnamed.

Friday morning we drove out to Land’s End, the westernmost point of England. Ironically enough, the location of the sign that says “Land’s End” where everyone takes their tourist pictures (next to the gift shop) is not actually at the real westernmost point. It’s a much-maligned tourist attraction, and we had to practically drag our Cornish friend along.

But we managed to turn the pinnacle of British dullness into a fun time by completely ignoring all of that. We didn’t even stop by the tourist center, instead we walked straight down to the actual cliffside that marks the real Land’s End. There was an entire crowd of Brits looking down towards it where a rope barrier marked “danger”, and we got some dirty looks for ignoring this and climbing over it in jovial American fashion. It was actually quite serene along those jagged cliffs far from the tourists and commercialization of the place. For a few brief peaceful moments we were the westernmost men in England. Much to ponder about that.

As we made our way back up from Land’s End we stopped in at the little Church of St. Just, named after a local Cornish Saint who I had never heard of before. St. Just was along the way to one of the most interesting and mysterious stops of our journey- Mên-an-Tol.

Mên-an-tol is an odd little formation of standing stones. It consists of three stones in a straight line with the round middle stone being holed out. Local folklore says that passing through the middle stone can have all sort of strange effects, from increasing fertility to healing back pain and rickets. We crawled through for a laugh, but as far as I know none of us have sired any children since then, so the experiment remains inconclusive.

Mên-an-tol is located along “The Tinners Way”, an ancient trackway that has been in use since Neolithic times, and its also a meeting point for many Cornish ley lines. Ley lines became a notable part of our adventure, but I’ll get to that later.

After this stop our side-questing was over. Friday evening was the planned start to our official Arthurian road-trip, which meant it was time to go meet up with the rest of our party. We met our four Londoners at a pub in Penzance before driving up to where we’d be camping out.

It was a short trek out to a great campsite. Gavin had found an old “folly” called Roger’s Tower where we’d be able to camp with a great view of St. Michael’s Mount, our first big stop that we’d be hitting the next morning. For whatever reason the castle was lit up blue that night, and in the moonlight it looked like something mythical.

We got an early start the following morning. First we got a few album cover shots at the folly, and then drove into town to tour the castle. To walk to the isle you have to wait for the tide to go out, so we watched the waters subside while we had one of the better Full English breakfasts of the trip. As a side note, after all the time I’ve spent in England I still can’t do the beans. As the tide went out the causeway slowly rose out of the water.

This is a good place to stop and talk about ley lines.

St. Michael’s Mount is notable for being the point where two famous ley lines associated with St. Michael intersect.

What exactly is a ley line? Know one knows for certain what their origin or purpose is. But a ley line is a series of three or more notable sites that lie in a perfectly straight line. They can be found all over the world, but Britain is absolutely covered in them. Some propose that they channel electro-magnetic earth energies, or that they mark astronomical lines. What is certain is that most of the sites on them go back to the Neolithic era if not even further. Most churches in Britain were built on sites that were already in use in pagan times, and so many of them fall on ley lines.

The two most famous ley line in the world perhaps are both associated with St. Michael. The one line runs cross England, while the other, sometimes called the “Sword of St. Michael” or the “Apollo-Michael Line”, connects sacred sites dedicated to St. Michael across all of Europe, from the Holy Land to Ireland. The English St. Michael line includes Glastonbury Tor, St. Michael’s Mount, Avebury, Burrow Mump, St. Michael’s Brentor, and Bury St. Edmund’s among other sites.

St. Michal’s Mount is where the two lines intersect, and it is where legends say that the giant Cormoran was killed by “Jack the Giant Killer” during the reign of King Arthur. Legend also states that St. Michael appeared on the island to some local fisherman.

What is so interesting about our trip is that Gavin planned it out without knowing anything about these ley lines, and yet he included three of the sites in our plan- Glastonbury Tor, St. Michael’s Mount, and St. Michael’s Brentor. I believe he did not even know at the time that the tower on Glastonbury Tor is dedicated to St. Michael. So while the trip was intended to focus on Arthurian legend, it ended up including a strong connection to ley lines and St. Michael as well, which will become important later.

But this was when the forces of darkness first began to work against our adventure. We walked all the way across the causeway to the island only to find that St. Michael’s Mount is closed on Saturdays. This was crushing, as this stop was meant to be one of the highlights of the trip and along with Glastonbury Tor is one of the most sacred sites associated with both St. Michael and Arthurian legend in all of England.

Despite the closed gates we knew we could not move on without at least stepping foot on this sacred isle, so we walked around the side and climbed up the stone walls for some quick photos on the grounds. We got yelled at by a resident for trespassing, but it was a small price to pay.

As we headed back to our caravan we stumbled across a Hobbit-like folk music performance.. It was a small thing, but it marks a good place to comment on Cornwall itself. Much like Somerset, Cornwall felt largely untouched by the ails of modern Britain. It appeared pastoral and safe, a bit of an island in dark waters. It’s naturally beautiful as well with a unique biome for Britain. I hope to return to get the full experience at St. Michael’s Mount another day.

Our next stop was St. Cuthbert’s Cave at Holywell. One local legend suggests that St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne’s relics (bones) were removed in the year 995 to prevent them from being stolen from Viking raiders. While the escaping monks were trying to sail to Ireland, their boat blew off course and ended up in Cornwall. When they left, it was said that Cuthbert’s holy remains touched the waters of the cave, giving them magical powers.

It was on the way here that the forces of darkness once again set out to derail our adventure. Our caravan of cars was split up and only half of us made it to the site. The well itself we found in a small cave tucked out of the way and only accessible at low tide. We got actually got caught by the incoming tide while exploring the cave and had to strip off our boots and socks as we made it out. The beaches were really beautiful, nothing like the average person’s mental image of Britain.

At this point our quest took its strongest Arthurian bent yet. We drove further north to Tintagel, the place King Arthur is believed to have been conceived by Uther Pendragon in disguise. Not much remains of the ancient castle, just a few ruins and the outline of some buildings. In that sense the site is frankly underwhelming. But the air of the place is has something mystic and ancient to it, and I suspect that is the real reason it draws such a large number of tourists.

Tintagel is also the home of the famous Gallos statue. It’s often referred to as the King Arthur state, but it doesn’t actually depict King Arthur or any other specific figure. The statue’s name is Gallos, a named invented by the sculptor, and is meant to represent the spirit of the place. I think it succeeds in this. It stands at the highest point of Tintagel where the winds nearly knock you off your feet. The statue captures something of the Arthurian spirit but also something far older than that.

We all felt deeply affected by the soul of this place. I think we assumed this was going to be the highlight of our day, but there was a surprise in store for us.

But before we could get to that, the forces of darkness again attempted to sabotage our quest- one of our number had a hole in his tire when we got back to the Tintagel parking lot. Normally this wouldn’t be a big issue, but he did not have a spare and we were in the middle of nowhere, with no services to replace or fix the tire. This would have genuinely thrown a major wrench in our weekend, luckily our man Jacob was living up to the Dark Forest Company’s motto of being “Quest-Ready” and just so happened to have a full tire repair kit in his vehicle. This requires some context. Jake has been known to over-prepare and show up to adventures with comical amounts of gear. He has been the butt of plenty jokes for this, so this was his moment of vindication (and glory) and we genuinely have to hand it to him. Thanks to him the quest continued.

We drove further north to Bodmin Moor, and after dinner at an enormous pub that almost captured the feeling of a American country family restaurant we hiked out to our next Arthurian site- Dozmary Pool. Like Loe Bar, this is a site where legends say Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, and also where Sir Bedivere returned the sword at Arthur’s death.

Honestly we expected this stop would be one of the less interesting ones on our itinerary. When Gavin was planning the trip I think he saw this as a side attraction compared to Tintagel, or Glastonbury, or St. Michael’s Mount.

But there was something incredibly powerful about this place. I am finding it hard to put into words here, you really just had to be there to understand. As we stood there at the water it felt different than Loe Bar had. Loe Bar was a nice spot, but this was different. At Dozmary Pool one could not help but feel that this really was the place where the Lady of the Lake had appeared so many centuries ago. I don’t have any way to explain it, but after we had left the Pool and discussed it we found that many of us had privately experienced the same feeling.

And perhaps the Lady of the Lake was really there with us, because at the pool we also received a revelation about our quest. The next day, Sunday, was when we’d be returning to Glastonbury Tor for the climax of our adventure. It would be September 7th. As we sat at the Pool we remarked at how large and orange the moon was, which prompted us to look up which day the full moon would be. We found that not only was it going to be the next day, while we were on the Tor, but it was not just any full moon. September 7th was the date of the eclipse, the blood moon, which meant we’d be at one of the most important esoteric sites in England on the day of a rare astrological event. We had not planned the trip for this, so the coincidence felt providential, as if the quest was now leading up to something mysterious. Glastonbury is a hub in England for New Age activity, so we knew the atmosphere there on the Tor the next night would be unlike any other time we’ve visited.

That night we camped in an abandoned quarry in the famous Dartmoor National Park. The park is notable for being the only place in England or Wales where “wild camping” is technically allowed, or where the “right-to-roam” exists. Dartmoor is also the setting of many famous legends and the home turf of one of my favorite storytellers Martin Shaw, so it was fun to get to soak in a bit of the atmosphere. In the morning we got to jaunt around the abandoned quarry a bit, but since we were on such a fast-paced schedule we did not get to see much else of Dartmoor. One day I’ll return to really explore the place.

We drove on to our next stop along the St. Michael ley line, the church of St. Michael de Rupe at Brentor.

It’s a small, lonesome church atop a windy tor. The local legend is that the church was meant to be constructed at the bottom of the hill, but the “Devil” kept moving the stones to the top to thwart the builders. Undaunted, the villagers simply built the church at the top of the hill. Folk stories like this where some unknown force seems to influence the site of construction are actually commonplace with sacred and mysterious sites, especially on ley lines. Sites dedicated to St. Michael are usually found at the top of high places like this, so I am inclined to think blaming the devil rather than an angel for the church’s placement is perhaps a mistake. There was a strong masculine energy at the top of this windy, forlorn hill. I was struck by how much it felt like Glastonbury Tor in a spiritual sense. St. Michael seems to choose his strongholds well.

It was Sunday morning, so we took a moment to pray in this serene chapel before facing the end stage of our quest.

It was finally time to return to Glastonbury. I can’t speak for all the members of our party, but at least myself and couple of the others had a sense of something close to apprehension of being on the Tor during the blood moon. Not that we were worried about anything tangible, but we shared a feeling that we were headed for something strange.

The next few hours were spent driving from Dartmoor back to the green vales of Somerset. Immediately upon arriving back in Glastonbury we could tell something was off. The whole place was buzzing and was it packed full of people compared to a few days prior. Specifically it was packed with New-Age and Neo-pagan hippie types.

Upon arriving we realized something. The “Avalon Now” mural, which I’ve always liked, is just opposite the parking lot where we arrived. I think it is intended to depict the Sun setting over the Tor, but we were struck by how it could also be interpreted as the impending blood moon. That we were there to witness the scene from this mural that I’ve appreciated for years struck us as strangely fortuitous.

The members of our group that hadn’t been there on Wednesday went to see the Abbey while the rest of us perused some of the bookshops. Most of the shops are full of interesting esoteric and mythic materials, on everything from Arthurian legend to ley lines to pre-flood civilizations. But at least one shop we stumbled into was carrying genuinely dark and disturbing books that I can only describe as black magic. And it was the kind that appeared quite real, rather than the sort of silly performative witchy or Wiccan stuff that you might usually expect to find.

But this was only the beginning of the darkness we came across in Glastonbury that day. Some of our crew had already climbed the Tor, so myself, Gavin, and Daniel were set to climb it together again just like earlier in the week. But first we went to make our customary stop to drink at the Chalice Spring. We could hardly find a place to park anywhere near the Tor that day, but eventually we found our way to the base of the hill. The usually serene well was surrounded by hippies and Wiccans playing drums, smoking weed, dancing, clearly preparing to observe the Blood Moon in some way. My friends and I walked straight through the crowd to the well, where to our great annoyance someone had put an icon of the Hindu god Kali on top of the holy well. I threw it down before my friends and I drank. I think we got some glares, but no one challenged us as we walked back through the crowd to ascend the Tor. We felt that we were headed to a meaningful end to our adventure, but we had no idea how.

As we approached the Tower we were approached by a figure I can only call a Puck. He was dressed in a clown mask and costume, singing and dancing in a spritely and unwholesome way.

As he danced down towards us he called out,

“Have you completed your spiritual Quest?”

I thought this was odd considering the nature of our adventure and the nature of the astronomical event that would soon be taking place.

I answered him simply as best I could,

“Not yet.”

We walked on and found the rest of our friends at the top of the Tor.

Funnily enough, we learned that the reason Puck had been heading down the hill was that he had just gotten into an altercation with one of our friends who sent him packing. Apparently Puck had been sperging out about the gnostic gospels and how the Rothschilds are poisoning the ley lines (this part may be true, who knows) while approaching people with his dancing and generally annoying behavior. Our friend had told him to stop being effeminate and weird and just be a normal Christian, which is probably the best advice the guy could have gotten.

The Sun was setting in the west. We spent some time together at the tower before our Londoners and our friend from Nottingham had to say their goodbyes and begin their journeys home.

Our band was down to the original five, and the Blood Moon was rising soon.

The place began to fill up with people. At first it was mostly normal-looking people like us, people that were probably just there to watch the Blood Moon rise over the eastern hills.

It was an incredible night on the Tor. The setting sun against the clouds made for a stunning panoramic view over the countryside. For those that are interested in astronomical symbolism, the sun was setting in the constellation of Leo, and the Blood Moon was set to rise out of the constellation of Aquarius and right next to the planet Saturn. Interesting to say the least.

But as it got darker things began to get weird. There were hippies with drums, Neo-pagans with staffs and crazed eyes in Celtic costumes, an Irish guy with a Palestinian flag (?), shamans in black cloaks, and our friend Puck who must have quietly returned. Most disturbingly of all, a young couple with dark eyes dressed ragged cloaks. They were walking in circles around the tower holding an open flame, chanting, and the woman was missing an arm. When she looked at me I thought of Morgan Le Fay.

We were getting closer and closer to the time the Blood Moon was set to rise, and all of the New Agers and Neo-pagans crowded into the tower and started beating drums and chanting and screeching. It turned into something truly unsettling and we could not even approach the tower. It was incredibly frustrating to see a Christian site taken over in this way.

It was cloudy in the east, and at the official time of moonrise nothing could be seen. The chanting and screeching became even more frantic and wild, I guess they were trying to manifest the event. I walked in a circle around the tower and said my own prayers as a sort of counter to whatever the sorcerer couple had been doing.

A few more minutes went by and myself and my friends were stood in our own little circle watching the eastern horizon, sharing our thoughts with one another. At this point the sun had set, it was getting darker, and we were past the time of moonrise. We were all convinced that there was something spiritual about the situation even if we did not know exactly what it meant. We thought we had come to watch the Blood Moon rise over the Tor like in the mural, but now we all began to hope that the moon would not show at all. We did not want these heathens to get whatever it was they were praying for. We began to feel like the mural was not depicting an interesting sight but rather a reality that we wanted to avoid or even fight against. It almost felt like our entire journey had led us here to this moment for the purpose of standing against something, somehow.

It felt as if the all these screaming heathens and the rising Blood Moon represented something about the spiritual state of Britain, something about its rot and decay. And somehow we were on the side of the setting Sun in the west, if you will pardon my romanticism.

But what could we do? That’s the hard thing about spiritual warfare, it doesn’t look for us like it looks in a fairy-tale. We were just a regular group of guys on a road trip. Sure, we had intended for it to be somewhat of a pilgrimage, but we are neither wizards nor great saints. There we stood, a little circle of Christians surrounded by the screams of heathens. Of course, these weren’t “real” witches or sorcerers in the same way we are not real Knights of the Round Table. And yet, symbolism has an odd way of playing out in real life.

So in the end we did the only thing we could do, we prayed. First we prayed the famous prayer called St. Patrick’s breastplate which invokes the Trinity, Christ, the saints and angels and the heavenly powers, the powers of nature, and protection against sorcery and demonic powers.

Then we said the traditional prayer to St. Michael the Archangel- we were on his ley line and at his tower after all, and our whole trip had ended up involving him in a way Gavin had not originally intended. I had to wonder if he had been leading us to this moment the whole trip, including us in some small way in his battle against the darkness.

Between the two prayers it felt like we had done whatever small part we could, against something that we did not fully understand.

The Blood Moon never shone through the clouds.

We are not under any impression that we “stopped” something from occurring. That would be silly. And yet it would be just as silly to think our prayers and actions have no weight, that God does not use human beings for His purposes. I think it would be unwise to try and explain the ending to our adventure atop Glastonbury Tor. None of us fully understood it, we just knew we had experienced something special.

After our prayers and the absence of the Blood Moon we all knew that the quest was finished. We knew it was time to leave the Tor. The druids and hippies were still chanting and screaming for the Moon to show, and yet somehow they had lost all of their dread. It had turned to empty noise. We somehow knew they were chanting in vain and there was no longer any chance of their success.

We walked down the Tor in the twilight and said goodbye to Avalon.

We finished our night in Bath at a pub named the Crystal Palace, one of my old hangouts from when I was living near the city. Spirits were high. That night after a stroll through the streets of Bath we said goodbye to Gavin, who had to get back to London. The remaining four of us were staying the night in Bath. The true quest was over, but we had one last Arthurian site to pay homage to.

Only three of us would make it there, because early in the morning our Cornish friend had to head home as well. So myself, Daniel, and Jake made our way up Badon Hill, the site of Arthur’s first battle. From here you can get a great view of the city of Bath, and we spent some time there talking over the adventure we’d just been on together, pondering King Arthur, and Logres, and St. Michael, and the future of England.

But now the adventure was coming to its close. We drove Daniel to Heathrow airport. I spent one last night in England exploring London with my friend Jake before I too flew back home.

In the end this is the story of a simple road trip, but to us it meant so much more than that. Walking in the steps of the legends that mean so much to us and mean so much for the spirit of Britain. Connecting with the true spirit of England that lies beneath the rot. Paying homage to the great Christian sites that give power and identity to this little island. We had gone to Avalon and back again, and God had used us for some purpose that we may never understand, and we’re okay with that. It’s not our role to fully understand the deep mysteries of the world, only to play our parts as best we can.

Christ takes care of the rest.

   Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Ev'n to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.