Tall tales and true: of Yorkshire moors and the byways of Surrey: Before Boadicea

Today we went hunting two villages, where, in recent years archeologists have discovered and excavated astonishing chariot burials in Yorkshire. Some two hundred years ago, in the Iron Age, before Boadicea attacked the Romans in her chariot, glorious chariots rolled along rutted paths and fields here in Yorkshire, in war and in peace. A decorated horse-drawn chariot or two on the roads these days would make a welcome break from the non-stop cars and lorries. We cannot believe the traffic. The A roads are even faster and more furious than when we last here, so we attempt to stay away from the motorways and the A routes, whenever we can, and follow the duck signs for peace and pleasure.

Again, we passed Hockney trees and Hockney haystacks, that deserve painting in Hockney style and colour. Added to which were purple borage fields thick with hovering bees, and more picturesque Saxon clay-lined village ponds to photograph, along with pretty villages themselves, some even wearing thatch, which is not so typical here in the wolds.

Though thatch likely would have been used around 500 BC when these burials took place. Pocklington, one of the villages we visited today, has the most recent and most sensational chariot burials in all of England, to date. A housing estate just near the cricket club was about to be developed, but archeologists were called in to examine what was appearing from beneath the earth. They struck gold in these Pocklington fields. Elsewhere in England some 26 chariot burials have already been uncovered and archeologists have learned a lot but here, one of these amazing Pocklington graves revealed not only the body of the charioteer along with his chariot, but his horses buried with him as well. This has added another dimension for Iron Age archeologists to puzzle over, attempting to understand what this means about this culture, at this time and in this place. Well before the Romans.

The next village visited was Wetwang. Wetwang frequently finds itself on lists of towns with the funniest names in England, but it is located on a crossroads, and was therefore likely "a meeting place" and the Viking word for meeting place, which likely explains its origins, is vertvanger. The odd thing is once you start saying the village name the Viking way, you cannot stop. It just seems so right.

But, even before the Vikings, this area was a settlement for Iron Age folk who may have once had their beginnings across the waters east of Paris. The Arras culture they are called, here. Among the finds at Wetwang is that of a woman, labelled a Warrior Queen. She, too, was buried with her chariot. She was lying on her side, her arms around a banquet of pigs left for her feasting. All the wood from the chariot buried with her, and beneath her, had disintegrated, but much of the iron remained of the chariot wheels and bronze horse fittings. And, amazingly, a pin, a face mirror, and a decorated iron box attached to a chain. To the archeologists, these were signs of a bigh status individual and to confirm that she would have been someone of importance they cconstructed a decorated chariot using the dimensions from the grave material and discovered that as well as working in peace time across rutted fields, this chariot was brilliantly designed and equipped to fight in battles. So, it is believed, Wetwang has revealed Britains' earliest Warrior Queen to date.