One of the objectives of this year’s fieldwork is to identify those caves used by monks as hermitages in the medieval period, especially those that might be fruitfully excavated in future years. Although it isn’t necessary to identify them all this year, it would be good to identify all of the ones that we need special climbing expertise to examine, as this is the year we have the climbing team of Francesca and Tiago to do this. Tiago will join us in a few days, so Francesca is keen to identify all the possible hermit’s caves that will need her climbing expertise before Tiago arrives, so on Sunday we went looking for some that had been brought to our attention by Brother Jens, one of the monks of the monastery. He said it was just in the next valley, and we should easily get to it after a 4:00 pm start, and return by the beginning of the evenings services at 7:30. So we set off in pursuit of distant potential hermitages.
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| Br. Jens (left) and me. |
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| Francesca looking across the Syrian desert |
We found three caves worth excavating not far from the monastery, but did not record them properly as this was a reconnoiter expedition, and the objective was to get to “the next valley”. We eventually did get to this valley, and were rewarded by some truly stunning topography, rather reminiscent of the Grand Canyon on a smaller scale. It was certainly an area of outstanding natural beauty, and well worth the trip, but there were really not that many caves except some that still seem to be regularly occupied by goatherds. However, what started to be of some concern is that we were still some distance away from the monastery, and the sun was going down. I had a vague idea where we were, and knew it was still pretty far. It was pretty evident that Jens had greatly underestimated the distance and the time it would take us. We have cause to give thanks, however, as the sun did not go down until we were out of the mountains, and there was a moon that was almost full. However it still took us a further hour or so of walking over the stony plain below the mountain, entirely by moonlight, to get back to the monastery, over 5 hours after we had left. We all had torches (flashlights?), and so were never in any danger, but the moon was powerful enough that we could see quite clearly by that. I think Jens was feeling rather contrite, and I was rather worried about my foot, which I had broken two months before (I had been out of the cast for just over two weeks), but for Francesca it was just a fun hike.
Robert
