Old roads

Geographically speaking, today's exploration took Brena and I along old roads. Once these were the thoroughfares between villages and farms, and the ways along which country folk travelle between the various mundane but necessary activities that made up their lives.

This was the road between the watercress-growing community of Letcombe and the twin villages of North and South Fawley, places featured in the works of Thomas Hardy.

Here is the same road, a little further south. It is nearly maintained by a farmer, grass cut and hedges trimmed. Perhaps this is what it looked like a century ago, only more populated by traditional rural traffic? Now it's strange after the rank vegetation that we passed through, neat like a parkland drive, but kept like this for whom?

 

Riding down this old thoroughfare all was quiet. No-one else was here. But in a neighbouring field grazing sheep bleated. That unmistakeable smell drifted by, a sheep pasture on a hot day, bringing back memories of crossing Transylvanian sheepfolds. But there was no shepherd, no wool-clad men emerging from a smoky hut happy to pass the time of day with visitors.

 

Further south still, these are the fields where Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure worked and was reprimanded for not keeping the birds from feeding upon the crop. Now these are large fields, worked but occasionally by huge and efficient machines. Little labour is needed, and it is rare to meet an agricultural worker. If one does, he will be cocooned in an insulated air-conditioned cab. And he won't belong to this land, for he will be an itinerant contractor.

So Brena and I rode on quietly, warm in the sun on an exposed ridge, looking for a place to stop for lunch.

 
I found a place where Brena could graze safely tied to a gate. She ate happily whilst I consumed my lunch - a pie from the farm shop - then lay in the long grass. Though the day was, for the most part, overcast it was warm and I did catch the sun somewhat. That should enhance my farmer's tan - face and arms below the elbow only. I dozed for half an hour, awakening to the realisation that I enjoyed guiding because it was an activity that allowed extraversion on familiar territory. It was nice to lie and think, not a worry in the world, just out there with my horse.

After lunch we set off westward, then turned north again to regain the truck. At one point a great herd of cattle in a field adjoining the trail came trotting and cantering (if one can describe that faster-than-a-trot pace of cattle as "canter") down towards us. Did they mistake us for the farmhand who feeds them? Brena was alarmed at a multitude of approaching bovines, and I had to hold her back from running. No, they are not dangerous, and it is not OK to run away from a hazard. So she snorted a few times and pranced away under a form of control.

 
Now we regained another abandoned rural road, one that led from the green expanse of the Lambourn valley (whose very name suggests sheep and water - the latter a rare stream in thw midst of this arid region) and the Letcombe villages with their stream springing straight from the foot of the chalk scarp. The mauve Willow Herb stands bright. This is a foreign plant brought to Britain by the railways, seeds lodged in freight wagons, then presumably brought here by goods hauled from the nearest station (Wantage Road, which operated from the 860s to the 1960s) to these villages. Thus quiet track, where I met one man and his dog, is rendered exotic by plants from afar.

We cantered a little on this track, where the ground was a little less unyielding. Then, on the Ridgeway, after I showed two hikers where on the map they were, we cantered again up a gentle rise. Brena was keen and broke into a gallop. I let her run, taking a forward seat, face down by her flying mane as she careered across the unpeopled grass. At the top, where Brena slowed to a canter then back to walk as she tired, I patted her neck and spoke warmly to her, for we had both enjoyed that bid for speed.

 

 

Comments

[The Equestrian Vagabond]

fun! i could feel her mane in my face on that gallop!