A walk-round Crowmarsh(?)

 I stumbled upon this leaflet at my in-laws place. You may remember from this post dating back to 2017 that I have been wanting to properly visit the village of Crowmarsh Gifford, or Crowmarsh for short. Just because I find the village's name so darn cool. I have only walked in Crowmarsh once and only briefly, when rain was pouring and visibility was thus not brilliant. Now maybe one day I could borrow that leaflet, which has a map and everything, and we could explore this place with a very evocative name.

Crowmarsh

There is something I love about England and it is the many great names one can find in the smallest places. You know how much I love the town of Wallingford. Well, I now discovered that the village opposite Wallingford, on the other side of the River Thames, is called Crowmarsh Gifford, or Crowmarsh for short. Now that is a name! Very much like Crowthorne, which I love a lot. it has crow, the dark and bird of bad omen, and it has marsh, a menacing and dangerous place, full of muddy water and eerie creatures. The name itself is very menacing and evocative. It belongs to a scary story or a D&Dr setting. Again, like Crowthorne. And just like Crowthorne, I have been through Crowmarsh a number of times without even stopping there. And until yesterday, I did not even know its name. Now I intend to correct this one day and visit the village.

Swamps and D&Dr

Of all the artists who did covers for Dragon Magazine and art for Dungeons & Dragons, Fred Fields is not my favourite, but I always loved this particular cover. Not so much because of the character, a bit too much like a Conan the Barbarian wannabe for my taste, all in muscles and facial hairs, but because of the ominous presence of the big lizard in the muddy water behind him. There is also some delicious irony here: the warrior is carelessly stepping on the nose of what is most likely a dragon, completely oblivious to the danger behind him. And look at these reptilian eyes staring at his prey with both hunger and contempt. I recently blogged about swamps. The surroundings in this image looks far more like the swamps I imagined, dark, menacing and full of dangers. I once mentioned on this blog that swamps became after woodlands the most important wilderness settings for our D&Dr games. Swamps have so much potential as a place of adventures and such great atmosphere, as this illustration... illustrates it.

Marsh or Swamp?

I took this picture yesterday, in the local park near the Thames. I should say at the edge of the park really. There is a walking path nearby, but I am not sure if it is still the park when we walk there. I am not certain if it is a marsh or a swamp. In French it is the same word: marais. Whatever the right term, this place is like a bit of wilderness so close to town, I always found it quite nice to look at. I once blogged that I found swamps sinister. Well, in the middle of a sunny day like this one, it does not look very sinister. Although danger and horror can happen in a sunny day, so maybe this amenable look is hiding a sinister nature. But I digress. Is it a marsh or a swamp? Either way, I love it.

Sinister Swamps

I am starting this post by a question: is it only me, or are swamps particularly sinister? I always thought so anyway. It is full of mold, wet, neither land nor water, with ghostly trees and all sorts of creepy critters. As far as I remember, I always found swamps scary, even before I read Scorpion Swamp, my very first Fighting Fantasy Gamebook. The book only confirmed my sinister fascination with eerie swamps. Maybe it is because of this, even more than the fact that it was my first gamebook, that I am so fond of it. It is supposed to be full of flaws, but I always found it full of atmosphere and in a great setting, where monsters abond. Scorpions, normal sized or giant ones, of course, but also giant spiders, giant toads, "normal" giants and that thing on the cover, Malevolent humans too, some thieves but especially wizards who made the Scorpion Swamp their home. But mainly, I love it for the swamp.

My brothers and I played of course plenty of make-belief games set in swamps, or indeed set in Scorpion Swamp or nearby (the town of Willowbend for instance). Years later, when we started playing Dungeons & Dragons, swamps became maybe the second most important wilderness setting after the forest. We had plenty of monsters in them, but not the same ones as in Scorpion Swamp: there were far more lizard men and hydras than scorpions. All the same, the book certainly influenced us. And it reminds me that swamps are, well, you know, beautifully eerie and deliciously sinister.