QueerQuest #6

Streetview: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BhjhiPh5kQyfoZZHA
Geocache code: GCBE20X

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Gawain makes a deal with Lord Bertilak. Each day he stays at the lord’s castle, he will be sustained with the spoils of the lord’s hunt. In return, Gawain must give to Lord Bertilak what he has received that day.

Each day, Lady Bertilak kisses Gawain, and in the evenings, he passes these kisses on to Lord Bertilak in return for game.

Lady Bertilak’s kisses, exchanged daily and then playfully passed on, hint at forms of intimacy that challenge our rigid understandings of monogamy, desire and connection.

What are you more free to feel when you are in this ancient landscape, less bound by social norms or prying eyes?

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Artist statement: This piece has been hewn from gritstone which made its way into the artist’s pocket one very wet afternoon up The Roaches in October 2025! The inspiration for this artwork is a real declaration of love up on The Roaches (in better weather, I hope!) Big shout out to Ian Knapper stone masonry for his part in making this piece come together.

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Visitors to our Pride in the Moorlands stall shared their stories, and it became clear that the high ground and clear air of the Roaches makes it a place where deep truths are voiced. For one man, a campsite became a clearing for identity: “I was first camping on the Roaches with a friend when I told him who I really was—it was the first time I’d come out to anyone.” For a young lesbian couple, a hilltop walk became the genesis of connection: “We were standing on top of a hill on a walk at the Roaches when I first told her that I loved her.”

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“We had some sex education in our second year. It was entirely voluntary and the whole class turned up… “you will experiment with each other, there’s nothing strange about that. I’m quite sure that your parents would prefer that you are experimenting with each other than experimenting with girls…”

“I had a mid-life crisis in my 40s and then I came out and my mother said she blamed herself, and I said why do you say that mother and she said “because I protected you from ‘the rough boys” and I said “who were the rough boys, mother” and she named them, and I’d had sex with all of them. I said “no mother, I don’t think so”