Forgotten Footpaths
We are people of patterns. Routine. Set paths and commutes that see us travel solely from point A to point B. When we travel to work or to see friends and family we do so on familiar routes. There is little time to diverge on these paths around our hometowns and we seem to save our exploration for further afield, for the weekends and the holidays – a chance to explore and find something new. To conquer a little bit of the unknown for ourselves.
But there is unknown closer to our homes.
There are winding paths and back roads that skirt across parts of the place we grew up in, that we don’t bat an eyelid over. Quiet, country lanes that we don’t even know exist. It’s in these places that we can find a connection, whether that’s to our homes or to ourselves or to something more primitive – nature for example.
Some of these routes are overgrown, some entirely hidden, some only used by mud-coated tractors and those that live there, but they will all welcome our footfall should the chance be taken to find them.
In light of the recent lockdown I have found myself traipsing along all those roads I have passed by in the car and wondered at. I have followed the footpath signs that have stood quietly on corners, patiently pointing out the better, more scenic route to take.
I have tried to connect, with my feet, the villages that lie on the outskirts of my home, in that strange strip that lies between the New Forest and the built-up world. In doing so I’ve unlocked secrets of my hometown I never knew were there; deer grazing, a fox hunting, a meadow full of flowers.
The evenings have been my favourite time to head out and begin to piece the paths together. Less people, and the golden evening light gives everything a magical quality. It breathes life back into the old buildings; the dilapidated shed that stands under a hawthorn tree in the far corner of the field, or the old house with smashed windows. That evening glow lets them hint at their hay days, when their life was in full swing and the farmers that worked the land would bustle in and out of them.
In the harsher light of day, it is easy to forget that much of Totton was heavily rural. The surrounding places I’ve walked to: Old Calmore, Tatchbury, Netley Marsh and Winsor, all have rural bones. They just got encroached upon by buildings and people and frequently used roads. It wasn’t their fault that machinery overtook the plough, and cars the cart.
Those old bones are still there, you can see them in the ancient oaks that mark out old hedgerows – the trees that have witnessed all the changes and await more to come. You won’t see that in the midday sun though, the ghosts don’t appear until the sun is low and settling in for the night.
That’s not to say walking in the day isn’t a pleasure.
Along these quiet back lanes, the verges are plentiful, and through lush green grass fed by warm sunshine and showers the bright faces of greater stitchwort mingle with the last of the bluebells. The common vetch adds a bright pinky purple as it creeps along gateposts and the buttercups are a perfect replica of the high sun. A group of St Marks flies congregate around the frothing hawthorn as the tarmac from the road breathes out the heat its collected.
If it wasn’t for the distant hum of traffic and a few rooftops on the horizon you could convince yourself, you were in the middle of rural England. These hedgerows are often interrupted by trees, whose branches frame the vista of long grass meadows and grazing cattle perfectly.
On a normal day I would drive past these fields from the main road, barely paying them any attention, completely unaware of the footpath that winds its way through the shivering grass.
A buzzard appears in the sky above, wings spread she steadily rides the thermals until she is no more than a speck in a cloudless sky heading towards the old hill fort of Tatchbury Mount. My feet follow her lead and I head towards the hospital grounds, where I will pass the buildings and up onto the site of the old country house. Here I can see what was and what is. Those green fields stretch out with ease, hemmed in by clouds of tree-tops, shielding them from the cranes and docks, that sit like aliens on the horizon. Town and country together.
If I hadn’t walked here, I would never have seen this.
If I hadn’t taken the time to connect the pathways and ramble along roads that run alongside the main ones I would never have seen the fox that caught the rabbit in one swift motion, I would never have heard the story the old shed had to tell and I would never have seen how easily rural lives alongside urban.
When lockdown is lifted and I return to my normal routine, the commute that takes me directly where I need to be instead of meandering through it like a slow moving stream, I will look differently on the fields that run alongside the road. I will notice the trees and the old buildings, and I’ll nod, in thanks, at the footpath sign at the side of the road for showing me where it leads.
