I came across the first of these stuck in a gatepost near the village of Chedworth in the Cotswolds. Then I found another about a hundred yards away…and then another….and another. In fact, they occurred about every one or two hundred yards (paces) in an almost straight line all the way to Bourton-on-the-Water nearly fourteen miles to the East as the Crow flies!They certainly hadn’t been there long because none of them showed signs of withering and I always felt that whoever was doing it was never more than a couple of hours ahead of me….though I never saw them and I’ve never known who did it or why.They used a variety of flowers and leaves in various combinations and if there was any significance as to how they combined them, I’ve never been able to work it out….and believe me, I know about the cultural, historical, medicinal and dietary backgrounds to every one of them!This was in the Summer of 2005 and I’ve not seen its like since. I photographed each and every one of them and marked their positions on my map as I found them. Altogether, I counted more than two hundred and covered the distance in just under three hours….only stopping to photograph each one and mark it on the map.

Remember, this was across open and sometimes difficult terrain and if whoever was doing it was just a couple of miles ahead of me, then I’m impressed because walking is basically what I do for a living and fourteen miles is just an average day for me, but they weren’t just walking, they were finding the flowers and making these things as they went along….and that would take time….Too much time really!So why do it? There was certainly no guarantee that anyone would find any of them, given where they were, let alone that whoever found one would then decide to follow the rest for as far as they went! I only did it because I was curious and I was kind of heading in that direction anyway!It turned out that I’d actually picked up the trail near its beginning(I caught a bus back from Bourton later in the day to see how far they went the other way, but they only went about half a mile and appeared to stop at Chedworth) and I assumed that it was the beginning because they were always facing towards me as I walked towards Bourton.

Anyway, I guess I’ll never know the answer, but it did remind me of the time back in the 19th Century when a single, perfectly straight line of tracks, looking as though they’d been made by a pogo stick, appeared in freshly fallen snow during one Winter’s night and proceeded across open countryside for nearly eighty miles, avoiding the larger villages and conurbations, deviating drastically only for the largest buildings and obstacles along the way and always heading from West to East!Apart from wondering who did it, I also wonder just how long this sort of thing might have been going on, as well as where else and in what form?