Step into a Legend

Learn the strange and wonderful myths of our islands, urges Amy Jeffs, and when you explore our ancient landscapes, saints and giants will walk with you

- By Amy Jeffs. Photographs by Oliver Edwards, Getty and Amy Jeffs

Glastonbury Tor at sunrise. Across the great, flat plains of the Somerset Levels, the low sun illuminates a network of rhynes - the man-made waterways that drain these former marshes. They burn like the channels of a matrix filling with molten gold.

The hill on which I stand and the landscape I now survey are rich in legend and lore, something Glastonbury has not forgotten. In the town below, to which I soon descend for breakfast, the bookshops prickle with the occult. Crystals glitter from window displays.

This is a world of flared cuffs, vibrant coats and patches of patterned cloth. Belief in the mystical flourishes here. A man kneels on the pavement reciting mystic verses and passersby rush to toss change into his hat. I watch them as I eat, having settled at The George and Pilgrims, a 15th-century courtyard inn built for the medieval wayfarers who once came to the town in search of spiritual succour.

Between the Tor and the gemstones lies a story of medieval Glastonbury, an age in which the town's legendary associations with King Arthur, the Holy Grail, and even with Jesus himself, crystallised.

ARTHUR'S RESTING PLACE?

When it comes to British myth, a crucial medieval text to explore is the 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is a Latin yarn starting with Britain's founding father, a Trojan called Brutus, and running up to the arrival of the Saxons, who would become the English. In between, it covers the reigns of monarchs, including Lear, Cordelia, Cymbeline and Arthur. Providing the first full account of Arthur's life, Geoffrey tells us that in the year 542 CE, the wounded Arthur was taken to a place called Avalon – “the isle of apple trees” - where his injuries would receive care.