The Doward Caves, Herefordshire rate highly among my top ten favourite places on planet Earth. They may not be as exciting or filled with cave art as are those at Chauvet-Pont D' Arc but there is just something about them which holds a fascination for me, almost to the point that I feel loath to pay them too much attention on this web site for fear of an influx of visitors. The fact that they are not easy to get to and impossible to drive to does however comfort me somewhat.

King Arthur's Cave is the most well known of the caverns. It was occupied by man during the upper Palaeolithic and possibly prior to that, though it is currently occupied by bats, spiders and other small furry animals. I have taken literally hundreds of photographs both in and outside of King Arthur's Cave, day and night and one particular rock formation just inside the entrance, whenever photographed using flash, to my eye always seems to look like the figure of a knight with long hair and a beard. Without wishing to label myself with the image of 'train spotter,' I wonder if this may have been seen in the dim and distant past, hence the cave's name. Does anybody know the origin of the name? I would be pleased to hear from you if you do.

Most times I visit the area of the caves nothing seems out of the ordinary and I explore the woods looking for deer and photograph rock formations above and below ground, sometimes alone and at other times with Tina or my children. On the odd occasion however the woods have an 'eerie' feel to them. At the beginning of October 2002 I was there with Tina and my son, Chris but had wandered off alone to explore an area by myself. On this particular day I felt we were not alone. There had been a strangely strong smell of incense in the woods, though I put this down to two other people I had seen on my travels. I could hear Chris and Tina speaking to one another, so I was not far from them when I found myself on a tree lined cliff edge with a sheer drop of several hundred feet to the River Wye below. It was getting dark and I wanted to take a photograph to record my location, so I used flash. As I took the photo, I saw two bright objects in the trees which quickly lit up and then vanished. There was no way that they were man made as there was nowhere in the trees for anybody, other than those with the ability to hover dangerously in mid air above a cliff face, to hide. Almost immediately after my taking the photograph, Chris called me and I went off to find him, forgetting about the bright objects almost immediately. It was only on my returning home and printing the photographs that I realized I had caught one of the phenomena on the image. There were definitely two of them, a split second apart yet the camera had only captured one. I put this down to the shutter speed being faster than the duration of the flash. The resulting image is shown just above this text. I realize it looks like a camera apparition but I know it is not as I saw it, plus the other one with my own eyes. The camera is not a cheap digital of the type which is known not to fill all pixels of the image when using flash - it's an extremely high, professional quality Olympus E-10 SLR type. Looking at the right hand of the two images above, which is not an enlargement but a crop from the original and is actually reduced from the original image size, the trees are sharply in focus yet the object appears to be moving. I am totally baffled as to what it is. Any ideas? If so, please e-mail. Alan

I would like to stress here that I may be a little eccentric in appearance and deed, and I may have an odd sense of humour plus a cynical outlook on life which manifests itself on this web site occasionally, but I am not a ghost hunting, flying saucer spotting believer in crop circles or ghostly orbs!

Feedback Received - A Possible Explanation
I would like to thank those who have taken the time to provided feedback on the above photograph WN0034. Among others, I received two emails, four months apart which stand out and seem to add up. The first was from Mark Jones in the USA who suggested that the lights 'look like fireflies he has seen in the past'. I wondered about this suggestion but was a little unsure as to whether fireflies exist in England. Today however I received an email from Emlyn Miles who explained that during an A-Level Geography field trip, the leader had remarked on passing a densely wooded area of the Doward that it is possible to see many fireflies in the woods during the Spring and Summer months.

Thank you both. I will try to make further investigation during the course of this summer by looking out for fireflies during my frequent visits to the caves. It is good to find a possible explanation which has a scientific base. More recently, I took another unexpectedly strange photograph in the dungeon of Goodrich Castle. Can anybody explain this one please?

2004 Update

• E & I Williams Concrete Products
• Wye Valley View Self Catering
• Walnut Tree Cottage B & B
• Trecilla Farm B & B
• The Rock B & B
• Wyeavon Self Catering
• Tump Farm Self Catering
• Wyedean Canoe & Adventure
• Buckhouse Self Catering
• Wheelwrights Cottage
• Penny Royal Cottage

• Colgarron Lodge
• The Saracen's Head Inn
• The Wye Knot Inn
• Treetops B & B
• Old Court Farm Self Catering
• Kerne Cottage Self Catering
• Broome Farm
• The Old Court Hotel
• Watson's Cottage
• The Inn on the Wye
• About Time Cottage

• Norton House B & B
• Norton Cottages Self Catering
• Thatch Close B & B
• Portland House Guest House
• Holly Tree House
• Rose Cottage B & B
• Royal Hotel on the River Wye
• The Old Pump House
• 4, Wye Rapids Cottage
• Farr Cottages Self Catering
• Garth Cottage Guest House