This is the perfect time to see bluebells carpeting the woods.
We started on the far side of the main ridge, in a shallow dry valley where I know a secluded place to park. Down there the breeze that bends highland grass is warm and gentle. Mews of buzzards carry through the air. Meanwhile bright sun reflects up off the track of beaten chalk. It's a hot still place.
It's strange to stop in a valley bottom that contains no watercourse. Probably no water has flowed here since the thaw at the end of the last ice age.
In tranquillity I prepared Brena. It took just a couple of minutes along a quiet lane to reach a historic drove road, the aptly named Old Street.
Probably this drove road fell into disuse when the great sheep fairs died out for which these hills once were famous. In part the trail remains as a great open swath of grass between the fields. But much of its length now bears many decades of woodland growth. Today's travellers enjoy a broad belt of trees, shady and pleasant, carpeted with bluebells each spring. It's a lovely place to ride.
In these parts abandoned roads are rare. Rather, roads tend to increase in size and develop ribbons of buildings. But this one died out. A map from the year 1940 shows this route simply as a path, the name Old Street shown in an archaic typeface reserved for ancient monuments. That would fit with the demise of the sheep fairs by the early 1930s.
Old railway routes contain relics of embankments, cuttings, bridges, tunnels and stations. In contract old roads leave little in the way of man-made structures, save in the mountains where heavier works may have been needed. (Back in Transylvania such upland routes, Habsburg relics, formed the backbone of my trails.) But Old Street contains not a building, not an inn, nothing.
Well, the route is short enough that a horseman could traverse it easily end to end in a day. Drovers alone, though moving more slowly and doubtless thirsty, being seasonal travellers could not sustain a hostelry.
So Old Street is a place to graze and picnic. Here one can stop and imagine a distant past. Rough-clad shepherds trudge by driving bleating flocks that snatch at every blade of grass. Heavily laden a creaking wain draws by, a pair of heavy horses straining and sweating. A tramp saunters by, stopping to ask for bread.
They must have been hot and thirsty in this warm April weather, and summer is not yet upon us. That must be the clue. What would they drink? There are no streams and few relics of dew ponds (I know but one). Whereas the villages to east and west have ponds still, wells and inns.
Old Street must have been the vagabonds' way. How ironic to ride up here on a fine mare, her thick white mane blowing about in the breeze.
Looking at the leisure walkers, cyclists and riders traversing the old drove road now, it seems to have come up in the world.
I do wish that old trails could tell tales. There would be some great stories from each of the ways through these hills. Those accounts would cover centuries and, in a few cases, millennia.
The grass and the thorn bushes, these would stand witness through the ages. So would a procession of horses, who have hauled and carried men and their goods through these hills since time immemorial.
On the other hand common tales may become tedious, involving what befell a farmer here and a shepherd there. Battles were few and far between, miracles too. This is the march of social history, for the most part, and not an epic.
So we have Tolkien, son of this county, and his epic. Names and places he borrowed. Nearby are the Barrow Downs, a little to the west lies Weathertop. The riders and steeds of Rohan would have thrived before the land was fenced. And then, adding to the given measure, my imagination is ready to create a magical mythical world to journey through.
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