Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Stoned in Buckinghamshire


I do love to discover and read about the bonkers traditions this country has sometimes. 

I noticed this little story on the BBC site today, it's about a boulder (as in large rock) sitting in the middle of the road in a village called Soulbury, Buckinghamshire (see Google Earth picture above). Apparently the road was built around the boulder which has been on this spot for 11,000 years (its not clear how villagers know this?) The problem is, for obvious reasons, a car has recently crashed into the boulder and the driver is suing the council. The council now want to look at removing it (health and safety etc.) and as a result of this proposal, the locals are getting very hot under the collar; threatening to chain themselves to the rock in protest. In a statement to the BBC conservative councillor Mark Shaw said that it was "absolute madness" to even discuss moving the stone, strong words, so, perhaps it would seem petty of me to point out that the reason the rock is venerated is because local legend says that the rock appeared after villagers fought with the "devil" and cut off his foot, clearly a completely sane and reasonable reason for putting up with a dangerous glacial erratic. (bah humbug! :)

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