Hey Blog! This week is all about two extremes: icy weather and trying to light fires!

You may remember last year I bought a sledge; subsequent snowy weather meant the week after we acquired it, it had its first use. Well, so far this year has failed us for sledging dreams, but we did have what Dad calls a “sugar frosting”: thin snowfall like the icing on a cake. It’s not enough to ride down a hill on, but enough to make it significantly cold! (well, not if you’ve lived at -40C° in Mongolia like Mum did…) As a result, there has been a cold period; we reckon colder than it has been while we have lived here! Luckily, we have the money to be able to heat the house, so we do have a nice warm house to come back to. Apparently, this winter the economy is going to crash, and combine that with a sharp drop in temperatures could prove disastrous for people, especially as the NHS has gone nuts and the strikes are proving that people are at the end of their tether…

All snowflakes have six sides. The reason behind this is that basically it’s the most efficient way to pack the water molecules – each with one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms – into a space. It’s also due to how they form (I could keep on all night at this) but let’s stop there. Snow itself is water that has been heated to take it up from the surface of the ocean in vaporous form – AKA evaporation; and then cooled so much in the sky it has turned to ice – firstly condensation then freezing/solidification; then, when heated again, melting. However, these changes run Liquid → Gas, Gas → Liquid, Liquid → Solid, Solid → Liquid; but there are another two changes – Gas → Solid, and Solid → Gas. They are deposition, and sublimation, respectively. We even witnessed the latter of these at Watch Group on Sunday last week, where we had a campfire.

This was the last watch group of the year, but surprisingly only one family other than the two who lead it (mine and another, Mum took the dad in this family on as a co-leader earlier this year) showed up. However, the small group size meant it was easier to run the fire. After the session two of us tried melting snow – and got a lot of water in the pan, but a small amount as there wasn’t much snow, and the density of ice is less than the density of water for the same volume (that means there are more atoms in a pan of water than atoms in snow in the same pan). However, putting snow directly on the fire showed ice transforming directly into water vapour – the sublimation from the last paragraph!

I hope you will join me this Christmas, to see what other antics I get up to!

Hey Blog! Fittingly for December, I’m going Christmassy!

The Christmas tree is one of the most iconic symbols of the season, but this was not always so. In last year’s Christmas Special edition, I wrote (albeit very briefly) about the revived mediaeval tradition of hanging up branches of Holly (and the Ivy, when they are both full grown, etc…) which we have decided to use instead of the tree. The tree is a German tradition, and only came over in the Victorian Era. Since then, it has spread across the world – a result of the British Empire, which was at its hight at that point in history.  Most households now have a tree every Christmas, but few are live ones. Have you ever stopped and thought of the cost that must have, both on the nature that surrounds the plantation and the climate cost that comes with releasing the carbon by chopping it down? Now imagine that, multiplied by the thousands of people who buy a tree like that, every year – not to mention that it completely kills the tree! Conifers are softwoods, a type of wood that is fast-growing and therefore has wide rings, meaning it’s easy to cut through with a saw. The other type are hardwoods, which generally grow more slowly, have thinner rings, and are harder to cut through. Though hardwoods can grow back if they are relatively young when cut, a process called coppicing, softwoods cannot.

Mum, who runs the Belper Home-Ed Eco Group, found out about the Cromford Mills Christmas Tree Exhibition, and applied for the group to enter a tree. We got a place, and some of the families who take part made decorations for the tree. This year’s theme is Sustainability, so all the decorations had to be made with sustainable materials. Most of the decorations were made in advance, but we did have a meeting in the morning on Decoration Day, (why does it sound like I’ve gone all poetical on you?) to get everything people had made together, and create the finishing touches. Included in the pile were pompoms; knitted/crocheted/paperclip-and-bell chains; cinnamon sticks; dried orange slices; angels made of pinecones, acorns, and silver wire; wooden discs with words and pictures on them in pyrography; sheep made of curtain rings and white wool; and lots more besides! As is usual at any group meeting in our community, we chat all the time – mostly about random totally unrelated stuff. However, by the end of the session we had a large mound of things fit for a tree.

We went to the mills in early afternoon (I took my Santa hat) and met with the two families who had volunteered to help decorate. We then piled the tree and looked around the others. There were quite a few, mostly indoors. Ours is outdoors, farthest down the row (please vote for ours!). Finally, after we had finished, we went and had hot chocolate in the café across the courtyard.

Hey Blog! Last Saturday I went on a walking weekend with Scouts so that’s what I’ll be talking about in today’s post!

In Home Ed on a Camp (September) I wrote about a typical camp – that is, one at the Derbyshire Scout centre Drum Hill, above Little Eaton. Though that particular camp was a full district camp, we did the more usual camp activities – not a two-day walk with a one night stop halfway between the places at start and end!  However, in the one last weekend, we did just that; walking from Bakewell to Curbar on Saturday and Curbar to Chatsworth on Sunday.

Preparation was more difficult. I’ve never talked about how I prepare for these events – it’s more boring than the events themselves – but I suppose you’d better know. Scouts sends out a list, we read it, and then everything needed (mostly clothes) gets laid out on the sofa with my rucksack next to it. Then Mum sorts out the things I’m unlikely to need and puts them at the bottom, then possibly need and puts them in next, then things I’m likely to need and puts them in at the top………… You get the idea. In the smaller bag goes little things, like torch, food, drink, compass, and glasses case. Then whatever I’m wearing goes on, I’m dropped off, and my parents vanish back to our hideout to do whatever machinations they are up to (occasionally painting the house – good; buying me presents – even better; or planning how to make me do the jobs – terrible!). This time, after I had been left in care of the Scout leaders at Belper bus station, we all took the bus up to Bakewell, home of the Bakewell Tart.

This famous pudding was created when a chef mixed a pie with the eggy stuff in with the floury stuff at the wrong time, creating one of the most characteristic tarts of all time. Unfortunately, we had to make a move on fast or we could not get to our destination before dark, so we had no time to test how good they are, though we did pass the Bakewell pudding shop on our way to the garderobes toilets. Continuing through Bakewell over the 700-year-old bridge, we turned up a hill and went on our way. At about noon the morning map-readers passed on to the afternoon map-readers, and we had lunch. Then we made our way on past Eyam, the village where its inhabitants isolated themselves to protect others from the plague, or Black Death, in 1666. From Eyam it was almost all downhill (literally, not metaphorically) to our destination of Curbar. It was at this point that two girls from another patrol started doing an improvisation of themselves. To note, the basic unit of Scouts is the troop, which has its own name, like mine – 1^st Belper; within the troop are Patrols, usually 3-4, made up of a small number of Scouts which you do most of your activities with – my patrol is Wolves.  This improvisation saw them as an old Scottish couple, one with some slightly… odd topics of conversation – all of which got everyone laughing their heads off!

The Curbar Scout hut is one I have been to before, but only in passing when Mum had a Derbyshire Scout Archaeology meeting at the hut. However, this time we stayed in it for quite a long time – long enough to have dinner (Spag Bol) and supper (Cheese & Crackers) and play a mad version of ping-pong. This took up most of the evening, and then we all went to bed. Unusually for a Scout camp, we got to bed in good time – 10 o’clock.

In the morning, we did not stay long at the hut, but set off early. We went up to the Edges, and walked along Baslow Edge, going past the Wellington and Nelson monuments and thence to a Trig Point. Just before this, we swapped maps again, and I took a turn. After carefully navigating around the hills, we came to the back of Chatsworth Park, and through it down to the carpark where our parents were picking us up. Though it might not have been the longest camp I have ever been on, it was the most distance covered in one, and I would like to do the walk again in the future.

Hey Blog! This post is about things you find in a small book on the top shelf, probably very dusty, and with a rather boring front cover (at least that’s the stereotypical view) but what’s inside are little gems: It’s poetry week!

I love poetry. It’s a way of putting feelings, moments, and anything else that interests you in a little bundle of words with some interesting devices. You may be of the view that a poem has to rhyme, like my Dad, or you could be of the view that anything in verses can be classed as a poem, like Mum. However, though I generally feel there is something missing from the non-rhymed ones, I feel that if there is no rhythm at all, the thing doesn’t really work as a proper poem. As may be supposed from this, I write my own poems mostly with rhyme, and always with rhythm.

All the news lately seems horrible and sad and all about things that will kill people or have already done so, and I thought a few weeks ago that I could write a poem which was funny and serious about everything that’s going on in the world right now, as a record of autumn 2022 and a little thing I could do to tell people about what’s happening. This is the most recent poem I have done and was finished this evening, especially for this blog, and is as follows:

The News

By Kit Bailey

–

We’ve got a political future to fear,

This has been a three prime minister year,

Boggis, Liz, and Sunak too –

What is Westminster coming to!

–

Brexit didn’t work (Cough cough),

The gov’nment tried to fob us off,

The agreements STILL aren’t signed –

Do they think that we are blind!

–

Inflation’s put all prices up,

Count your pennies in a cup,

The cost of living’s sky-high now,

Another botch we won’t allow!

–

Climate change is more and more,

Greenhouse gasses heav’n to floor,

All activists are in a fit;

Soon world leaders will COP it!

–

Ukrainian army fights the Russians,

Around the world has repercussions,

Grain unsold, gas unbought,

Another source of energy sought.

–

What will happen in next year?

What will we so shortly fear?

Whate’re happens, don’t cry about it,

Find something to do about it!

Hey Blog! This time I’m talking about a meet I did quite a while ago which encompassed two things I care about the most – Archaeology and Scouts!

The Derbyshire Scout Archaeology Badge is new. It was set up a couple of years ago by Morgause Lomas, a former Scout with a passion for archaeology and a realization no badge existed for it. For archaeology bods enthusiasts like me, this is amazing, as I had previously suggested to my own Scout troop the idea of doing a session on it and they had thought it would be a bit difficult to do in the evenings! Finally there is an opportunity where you can learn about archaeology and be doing Scouts at the same time. But the badge would be no use without Scouts rating and suggesting activities and content for it; so the team set up the Youth Committee, to have just that extra bit of information to give just that extra bit of success. As my mum is Resource Coordinator, I have a sneaky inside view to how things are going, and therefore knew that they were setting up this. I signed up, and surprisingly not many other people did, so I got onto the panel. If you do live in Derbyshire, are in Scouting, and interested in archaeology, then you would be welcome to sign up; ask your scout leader for more information and the link to the application.

There were four of us at the first meeting, which took place at Cresswell Crags, on the Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire border. This is, or was, an important site in Ice Age Europe, as it was the Stone Age version of a motorway services when the ice was retreating back north. Hunters could stop off and rest in relative safety from the cold in the gorge, and the caves provided an amazing shelter too. The one trouble was these humans weren’t the only ones wanting a place in the caves – the Hyenas had got there first. And having a pack of large dog/wolf/cat/big bone-crunchers just a short passageway down behind you was not a good plan. This meant the caves were more frequently inhabited later, when most of the big carnivores had gone. This is the place with the oldest art in the UK; a magnificent collection of finds, enough to make any museum proud; and some apotropaic marks, informally known as “witch marks”; it’s a superb site with lots more than you would give it credit for!

Our first activity was to go into the caves to get to know them, and learn more about what was happening in the past. I have previously been to the one with the art, on the “dark side” of the gorge, as it’s known to employees from Derbyshire (the dark side, which is shadier, is the Nottinghamshire side), but this time we went to a light side cave, one where some Hyenas lived, as their bones have been found there. This cave, along with most of the others, was modified in the 19^th Century (thanks, Victorians…) which gave a passage down into an inner cavern – basically they blasted it out with gunpowder. They did this to a couple of other caves too, once to store their boats in a pre-existent cave. In this one, we learnt about the tools and lifestyles from the past. Then, we went back to the visitor centre and picked up a box of skins, real and fake, and some poles. The point was to construct a shelter.

I know how to do square lashings, so it didn’t take long to construct several right-angled arches. Then we had the genius idea of putting two of the tied poles on top of two other tied poles, at a right angle, and forming a four poled tipi. We copied this, and next I realised that the two small tipis could be connected by the final pole across them as a roof beam, before covering everything. It was just long enough! We draped the whole thing in the leather and made a beautiful shelter, but possibly not waterproof…

There are said to be 16 caves around the gorge, but we could only find 15 caves on our walk round. Maybe that’s because we counted only the ones with grills on, and one and a half for caves that joined up inside, or maybe we just didn’t find the last. Either way, it was a brilliant session, and I hope to continue to participate in more youth committee meetings in the future!

Hey Blog! This is a first for Home Ed in a Shed – I’m doing a film review!

It’s got a book review to go along with it too. Let’s start with that.

E. Nesbit, author of Five children and It and The Railway Children was one of the great children’s authors of the last century. The latter of these two books is the one I’m focusing on today. It is one of the best stories that I have read. I don’t have a numerical rating for stories, instead I rate them OK, Good, Very Good, etc, until VGBOTHO, or Very Good Book of the Highest Order; I have no one favourite book, just for your information. The Railway Children, however, is also an emotional book, as it’s far more than a story about some children. Like all the best books, it has hope, despair, love, and an evil problem to conquer with good. Bobbie, Peter, and Phyllis have come away from London to Yorkshire after their father vanished suddenly, and have to “play at being poor for a bit”, while there are big issues going on in the family they do not understand. The three discover the amazing local railway, and make friends with the staff at the station, having adventures around it and once saving a train. The canal also features in the story. Then Bobbie discovers from a newspaper that their father has gone to prison, falsely accused, and so begins a hunt to get him back.

The film The Railway Children Return is set more than 30 years later, when Bobbie has grown up and had both children and grandchildren. I feel the timescale is conflicting, as in the book, when Bobbie is 12, it implies that the Tzar is gone, but she is a grandmother by WWII, which does not leave much time. However, a war mentioned ties the date of the book to 1905, so I really don’t know. However, by 1945, when siblings Lilly, Pattie and Ted are evacuated to the country, they arrive to a completely different world. Green fields, sheep; things that seem ordinary are completely new to them. Once again, the railway is the focal point of their adventures, but this time the mission is to save underage black American soldier Abe from his own white officers for racial abuse, none of which the children understand, and none of which is normal in the village; indeed the local pub refuses to accept the idea of discrimination. Does it work out? Well, you’ll have to watch the movie!

Both stories are excellent, and similar themes run through each – a missing father, writing on sheets with paint to alert the trains, help for an innocent, and both heroes and heroines. Who knows what could be next in the collection – The Railway Children Return Returns?!

Hey Blog! On the Thursday before Hallowe’en, we packed our bags and went to the privately run hostel in Shining Cliff Woods, one of the large woodlands near us!

It was Shining Cliff Woods, in fact, which made us live in this area. Dad started work in Derby at the beginning of 2017, and we stayed in a holiday cottage at the farm of Wiggonlea, which had a footpath going straight into the wood. In the two months we stayed there, I experienced snow for the first time since I was one, and got to know most of the wood. By the time we were moving out and looking for a house, our time in Shining Cliff had confirmed we were living walking distance from it. We actually live nearer to a different wood, but Shining Cliff still remains my favourite wood in Derbyshire!

My Mum runs an Eco Group, for Home-Ed kids, and sometimes we meet in the woods for a volunteer session, learning about woodland management and things like that. There’s usually s’mores to go along with it! The person who runs these days (you have to ask, but she’s happy to run them) manages the hostel – “The Hostel in the Woods”. So, for Hallowe’en, one of our friends’ Mum booked the hostel just for us!

I haven’t been to many Hallowe’en parties and don’t usually go trick-or-treating, though I have done it. There is a family up the street who, though not home-ed so I don’t often see them, have in the past have invited us to go round with them. This is always good, as it replenishes my sweety jar, which only gets an addition either when someone’s having a party or giving them away on Hallowe’en. I wish there was a witch on the street – a white witch, of course, who could give out magical sweets that made you breathe fire or lifted you into the air. I’d go round every week, not every year, then! However, we don’t.

Unfortunately, Thursday hadn’t gone as we planned, owing to builders who were laying the new floor (glad to say, the floor is now done and we have just finished painting the walls) so we only arrived when it was dark. By this time, someone had found a packet of glow sticks left over from another festival, and we were connecting them all together in a circle and sticking someone in the centre, then dancing around like mad. Yes, we are slightly insane – but in a good way. Sausage cobs/baps/rolls/whatever-you-call-thems (What do you call a sausage stuck in a bun?) followed, and then hot chocolate heaped with cream, and finally mega marshmallows (keep it up!). Eventually we got tired and went back to the hostel – but the fun didn’t stop there. Oh no. We managed to keep everyone awake until past ten, though I wasn’t in the room where people were on their phones till 11-odd.

On Friday morning we continued the rollicking, and had breakfast. We went home shortly afterwards, but it was still one of the best times with the friend group!

Hey Blog! In this post we’re going back to Genesis; here comes Eden! (Project). And also, the Lost Gardens of Heligan, one of the best liked gardens in the country!

Last week I left off with Restormel castle. Well, shortly after that we arrived at one of the utmost top attractions, the Eden Project. This is an ongoing campaign to “create a movement to build relationships between people and the natural world to demonstrate the power of working together for the benefit of all living things”. Recently, the YHA have started a new youth hostel at the site, and it was there that we stayed. There is no building for the youth hostel, so we stayed in one of the ‘Land Pods’. If you are more than six foot (like my Dad…) then don’t chose a land pod; your feet and head will be hitting the ends – they’re not the roomiest of bedrooms!

Early in the morning next day, after a very nice dinner in a restaurant on the seaside the night before – not at the dinner tent for YHA – we went down the hill and entered the project. I felt it was very like coming back to Eden, as Eden kind of represents the purity of nature, and that is exactly what the project stands for. We entered, and almost immediately saw this:

Then we explored around.

We punctuated the day by going into the biomes, but I’m going to talk about outside and inside separately. Here goes…

The first thing we did was the Climate Zigzag. This highlights climate change and what we can do about it. It drives home the same message of the 2040 film – one of the best made, about what our Earth will be like in the year of the title, and how we have the skills and technologies enough to change it for the better, halt the climate crisis, and save the world. If you haven’t watched 2040, YOU NEED TO! as it shows so many of the innovations needed currently. We need a real-life superhero right now, and that superhero’s sidekick just might be the Eden Project? I don’t always think about climate change very hard, and just thinking about it normally doesn’t give me the same feeling, but when I get into the hard truth of it all it really scares me. This is a bigger challenge than any that civilization, even the human race, has ever faced – we will have a mass extinction event if we don’t sort the word out. In the words of Sir David Attenborough: “We are, after all, the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on earth” – so why don’t we do something about it!

Another thing outdoors was food. All our food, though sometimes indirectly, comes from plants or funghi. How are we going to feed Earth’s population when there are 9 billion people on it? Well, obviously more people are going to have to eat more plants. There was a section covering this outdoors too.

There are two so called ‘biomes’ at the Eden project. The first we went in was the Rainforest biome, which was hot – far hotter than I expected to feel it. I realised this was because I had got used to our cold climate, and if we went back to the tropics, where we used to live, I would have to reacclimatize. We were reminiscing about the plants that we had seen while there, and finding the interesting facts about the different ways plants live and are used. I especially liked the canopy walkway and bit where you run through the water vapour jets – they’re so cool! Later in the day, we went into the Mediterranean biome, which isn’t only about the Mediterranean; Australia, South Africa, California, they all have sections for them in the similar environment. You could clearly see the different landscapes by the different types of plant, but what impressed Mum the most was the large collection of chilli species! For your information, apparently chilli hotness is measured on the Scoville scale (cool name!) and the hottest chilli in the world is the Carolina Reaper. I didn’t see it at the Eden Project, but you never know…

Aside from these, elsewhere at the Eden Project there was a sculpture that blew out smoke rings, loads of other plants and exhibits on them, a really good ice cream place, and loads of other interesting information.

We had to leave the Eden Project the next day, but we have already been formulating plans that might get us back there, as the tickets last for a year. However, on our way down to Coverack (our next stop) we popped in to the Lost Gardens of Heligan to have a look.

It turned out that the Heligan project was started by the same person as did Eden. These gardens were lost after WWI made the gardeners go out to fight. Some didn’t return, and the owner died too, so the distant relative who inherited it only found it again about 30 years ago! Since then, a massive restoration project has taken place, and once again, though it is an ongoing process like all gardens, you can go and visit it. We first wandered round the kitchen gardens, and then the estate. I would definitely recommend it for enthusiasts in flora – if you haven’t already packed your bags to go to the Eden project!

Hey Blog! Carrying on from the last post, I will take up the story where I left off…

In Boscastle, the YHA building was right next to a Museum of Witchcraft – reputedly one of the best in the world. As we were staying there and it had such a good reputation – well, it would be rude not to consider! In the end we decided to visit.

It was very good. To any visitors, I would say if you’re even remotely interested in anything connected, it’s well worth a visit; both from magical, historical, spiritual, and even just “because it’s a museum” point of view, though you may want to skip certain bits, depending on what you think is too far. However, these bits are very few. It may surprise you to know witchcraft is still going on, just in a modern-day form. However, I’m going with the old stuff, to be honest.

In the museum we learnt that there were some rock carvings in a valley nearby. These enigmatic marks were in a labyrinth design, the same as a carving on the continent. As I’m interested in rock art and prehistory stuff, we decided they were well worth going to look. We eventually found them right next to a mill halfway up (or halfway down) the valley. They were certainly intriguing, and we later recognised the same design right across Cornwall, from Boscastle to Eden Project (my next instalment) to Land’s End peninsular.

Going on to Friday, unfortunately we had to leave Boscastle, so we spent the day racing around finding standing stones and interesting carvings on them. Here are the highlights:

Hurlers stone circles – the three circles in a row is unique.

A “Quoit”. In other parts of the UK they are known as ‘dolmens’ and are basically several big stones supporting an even bigger one, called a capstone. This capstone is usually directly above where it was found in the ground, which makes sense, as who would want to transport a multi-tonne stone for any distance! They would have been covered with earth, possibly with the capstone showing.

Restormel Castle! This castle, run by English Heritage, is a very fine example of a shell keep, a castle design very simple, very beautiful, and very effective in battle. It consists of an old motte-and-bailey where you build a circular stone curtain wall around the outside of the motte, then build the buildings needed like kitchen, great hall, chapel, storehouse, and bedrooms on the wall inside. The circular design means a wide firing angle, and the size means you could house the entire population of the bailey and surrounding villages in case of attack. This particular specimen shows very good preservation and is a must-see for history enthusiasts visiting the area.

The story will continue…

Hey Blog! This week is a first for Home Ed In A Shed – as the post was written in CORNWALL!

Yes, we’re on holiday, and in this post I will document our time here so far. I’ve already started a diary of our time here, which helps me remember what we’ve done, as so much is crammed in I forget what happened two days ago! Hang on, that’s wrong. I can remember what happened two days ago, as we went to a place I’ve wanted to go to since I heard about King Arthur!

Tintagel castle is “a place where legends are made”. I can’t remember the Cornish translation except for “legend” – Henhwedhel. It sounds like something Tolkien made up! That’s not surprising – he studied languages extensively, and one of his elvish languages (more on magic in a later post) Sindarin, was inspired by Welsh, which is the closest language to Cornish. The reason for this is that when the Saxons came over the sea they pushed the native Romano-British people to the western extremities – Wales and Cornwall, the latter of which was known as west Wales. Cornish people prospered in the Dark Ages, building a settlement on a promontory known as Dintagel, which became one of the most important ports in the western seaways. The deep harbour next to it is a perfect place for ships, which meant that a booming trade industry built up. At that point Dintagel had around a hundred houses, and thereby a larger population than that day’s London!

It was in these days that the great warrior Arturus first emerged. Possibly conceived at Dintagel, we don’t know much about him, but we do know that bards and troubadours were telling “henhwedhel”s about a certain Arthur by the 1200s, as it was then that Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote down Historia regum Britanniae, better known as A History of the Kings of Britain. Someone needs to write an updated version, but in the first edition Geoff wrote about Arthur, the High King (strange that the post ‘High King of Ireland’ existed until at least the 1400s – any connections?) of Britain, trueborn son of Uther Pendragon and victor of the British, unfortunately (myth-buster and spoiler alert) most of which is ‘Uther’ rubbish. There’s no factual backing up, or any evidence whatsoever, of a round table and group of knights, or the ‘Golden Age’ the land supposedly enjoyed, or even that Joseph of Arimathea came here to leave the Holy Grail. Sorry. Either way, Arthur was supposedly conceived at Dintagel, which is the same as what The Always King, which I covered in my first book review, says. Immediately after his birth, the great magician Merlin (see my last post) spirited him away to the manor of a nearby knight. This family brought Arthur up until he pulled the sword from the stone (either a ceremonial sword or Excalibur, depending on the stories). Though I am a firm supporter of the old myths and legends, this was likely exaggerated – perhaps he was fighting and dropped his weapon, was about to be killed and snagged a random sword from the floor, saving himself. Either way, when the castle now standing on Tintagel Island was built, the location was chosen to link with the old myths and local folklore.