Literary Walking in Hampshire - A Slippy Slidey Affair

The affection I have for my adopted home county of Hampshire has grown steadily down the years, but an unanticipated new enthusiasm has recently taken hold as I slowly register its dense connections with the English literature I’ve belatedly engaged with and am learning to love. A simple walk out of Petersfield today, through the village of Steep and up onto the Ashford Hangers, and then down towards Hawkley had us (almost literally) falling over literary associations and resonances.

It was a cool murky start as we wound our way past Bedales school towards Steep, where the war memorial revealed the first surprise. I’ve cycled past this little pillar perhaps a hundred times in my life yet never stopped to read it; today we did and registered the inclusion on the roll of honour of one Edward Thomas, poet, writer, and literary critic. The countryside and country life were Thomas’s muse and his work some of the most evocative of southern England ever produced. He settled in Steep with his family in 1906, and walked and wrote prodigiously, although he only turned to poetry from his staple prose in 1914 with the encouragement of his close friend the American poet Robert Frost. As we strolled to the northern edge of the village we passed Thomas's first home, Berryfield Cottage, where it was good to see that it still seemed to be someone’s normal home, with no blue plaque or tourist paraphernalia in immediate evidence.

 

Then it was the stiff pull up through the wooded hangers, picking our way, initially alongside a clear spring-fed chalk stream, through sticky mud on slippy chalk, gradually aware of increasing height but tantalised by the characteristic view-blocking trees. On reaching the top of Shoulder of Mutton Hill a glorious, expansive view south east should have been ours, one of the finest in southern England and referred to in several of Thomas’s poems. But the murk hid it for now, so we pressed on along the ridge.

As we were about to descend northwards towards Oakshott two deafening quad bikes roared up, spraying mud everywhere as they turned sharply down the track we were also to follow. The peace was well and truly shattered and tranquillity was hard to re-establish as we slithered down the steepening quagmire of the track, deeply gouged by 4x4s and water run-off. The going became increasing difficult and exasperating in the claustrophobic tradition of many a Hampshire sunken lane, and sufficiently vertiginous to be a little like trying to down-climb an ice-covered gully. At a final absurd precarious friction-free giant step, with no sensible way forward, we made a more emotional literary connection. Nearly 200 years ago the indefatigable William Cobbett explored this area on horseback and railed regularly and heartily in his classic Rural Rides against the perilous muddy morasses he had to negotiate down its sunken lanes. What can I say except that my better half produced a sequence of suitably impressive expletives in classic Cobbett style (she formerly of William Cobbett Middle School, Farnham) as we struggled to accept we were just going to have to turn round and climb all the way back up through the mud to the ridge.

Looking north to the distant church tower of Hawkley, from Ashford Hanger

 

This we did in suitably dark mood, having had our route to Hawkley neatly curtailed. Nonetheless we somehow remained friendly towards a group of exaggeratedly polite off-road motorcylists who descended gingerly towards us, clearly aware that public acceptance of their blatantly destructive activity was on a perpetual knife-edge.

Regaining the ridge we claimed our recompense, for the mists were clearing rapidly and the sun beginning to energise all about. To quote Cobbett as he sat on horseback near this spot in 1822:

“…out we came, all in a moment, at the very edge of the hanger! And, never, in all my life, was I so surprised and so delighted! I pulled up my horse, and sat and looked; and it was like looking from the top of a castle down into the sea, except that the valley was land and not water.”

Looking south-east from Shoulder of Mutton Hill towards the distant South Downs

 We drank it all in as we had our lunch, equally amazed and inspired at the panorama of hills and woodland extending east and south, subtly lit, with the distant skyline of the South Downs the elegant backdrop. Far down below, directly at our feet, sat Berryfield Cottage, a sublime location – how did it take the troubled Thomas so long to turn to poetry here? (But then it was already largely there, his prose is often almost poetry, exemplified by the magnificent The South Country and In Pursuit of Spring).

 

Descending the open slope of the hill is a rare delight on the wooded Hangers, to be drawn out as much as possible, with the view initially widening as partially obscuring trees are passed, before compressing vertically as further height is lost – perhaps there is a sweet spot halfway down, not far below the Edward Thomas memorial stone. The simple octagonal plaque poignantly reminds us of Thomas’s tragic early demise aged 39, killed by the blast of a shell in the Battle of Arras, on Easter Monday 1917 only two months after arriving at the front. He refers to this hillside in a number of poems, notably in When First:

“When first I came here I had hope,
Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat
My heart at sight of the tall slope
Of grass and yews, as if my feet

Only by scaling its steps of chalk
Would see something no other hill
Ever disclosed...”

Looking down from Shoulder of Mutton Hill, Berryfield Cottage is the right hand building in the foreground

We ambled back towards Petersfield in the sunshine, stopping for contemplation in Steep churchyard, only forgoing the interior and its Edward Thomas memorial windows due to the calamitously muddy state of our boots (I hear Cobbett muttering!). A beautiful, annoying, frustrating, uplifting day with much to take away (and return to)…

In love with the South Downs, finally

Jammed onto a south coast train full of shoppers heading for Brighton last Saturday, the appeal of our days plan was not immediately apparent. Subsequently running the gauntlet of the pedestrian death-trap that is suburban Worthing (so many mini-roundabouts!) as we headed north from the station, things weren’t much better, until a rounded green hilly horizon hove into view. An hour from the station and it’s all change; we’re at the ancient hill top fort of Cissbury Ring, a peaceful elevated haven half a mile across, and the panorama is spectacular. The south coast from Beachy Head in the east to the Isle of Wight in the west is spread before us, with the sea all asparkle. To the north are the sensual rounded undulations of the gentle dip slope of the South Downs proper, whose inherent chalkiness means that that all farming impressions register clear and bright, the effect being extraordinarily, if unintentionally, creative and arresting to the eye. Tracks are etched in pure white, ploughing with the lie of the land results in bright brushstrokes in sweeps and patches, while crops are interspersed in abstract shapes. It’s almost as if the farmers are intent on some large scale piece of modern art. On the skyline some miles off is the distinctive tufted clump of trees of the sister hill fort of Chanctonbury Ring, our ultimate (i.e. lunch) and equally atmospheric destination on this walk.

Looking to Chanctonbury Ring (left skyline) from Cissbury Ring. (3May14)

Unreservedly savouring the views and atmosphere of this day, I had to acknowledge that I have finally fallen unequivocally for the South Downs. I may have lived near them most of my adult life but as an evangelical devotee of wild and high mountain country, my walking visits to the Downs have too often been beset with the mindset of modest expectations and enthusiasm, i.e. it was the best I could do to mark time until my next fix of “real” hills.


South to the sea from Chanctonbury Ring. (Oct12)



My appreciation of the Downs has slowly built through frequent walks with my better half, who as always has a much less prejudiced take, and as a result of frequent cycling forays in the lanes around and through them; always a delight, even if climbing the steep northern scarp slopes is an often tough proposition! And I really must get into the whole mountain biking thing for which I have finally registered the Downs are tailor-made (hence all those happy mountain bikers I keep seeing enjoying themselves, doh!)

On the chalk and flint, approaching Glatting Beacon from the west, on a cold early spring day (1Apr13)

Another substantial influence has been the discovery and delight in various cultural connections. The beguiling shapes and patterns of the hills have excited many artists, and perhaps no one has done better justice to this than painter Eric Ravilious. His is work I can’t get enough of, in its sparing sweeping elegance that beautifully matches the nature of the Downs. Once familiar with his approach it’s hard to walk anywhere on the chalk without seeing echoes of his work everywhere you look, a case of nature imitating art, or is nature the true art and his paintings simply a  beautiful acknowledgement of that? Whatever, familiarity with Ravilious’s work simply adds substantially to my appreciation and enjoyment of the Downs.

Walking the chalk lanes near the Trundle, north of Chichester, in high summer (Jul10)

I also find the beautiful evocations of Edward Thomas’s The South Country rattling around in my head whenever I’m out on foot or awheel in the rural south east generally, but on the Downs particularly. Thomas used to walk long and often, and almost obsessively, to stave of the depressions that dogged him throughout his adult life, and although probably his most upbeat work, The South Country does still have a touch of melancholy about it. Indeed that melancholic tinge extends to both Thomas and Ravilious insofar as both were to die far too young, in the First and Second World Wars respectively, just a handful of years after producing the fine works that sustain myself and many others now and into the future. Perhaps paradoxically however, there can still be no more uplifting company than these two men when striding out on the Downs and taking in the sweeping forms and vistas.

Legacies of the perfect walking companions

 

Reaching for the Light - on the cusp of Spring in Gloucestershire

Munching our bacon butties and pouring our second cup of Lapsang Souchong from the flask, we’re managing to nicely stave off the worst effects of the cold drizzle as we wait on the bank of the River Severn, much to the envy of our fellow Bore watchers. We struck gold with our B&B this weekend; needing to get away too early for a full-on farmhouse breakfast we’re instead packed off two mornings in a row with a bag of butties and homemade flapjack for our riverside rendezvous. And here it comes, careering round the bend in the river…

Severn Bore near Minsterworth (3Mar14)

The Severn Bore is a strange thing, a wide fast quiet smooth ominous wave, a metre or more high, mostly audible due to its edges tearing along the banks. But more impressive still is registering that this is not an isolated lump moving rapidly up-river but rather the leading edge of a dramatic rise in river level, several metres in a matter of minutes and continuing to rise swiftly thereafter. And a complete reversal of a major river flow in seconds – from a fast flow towards the sea driven by rain sodden ground through the Midlands and Wales, to an even faster tide-driven “upstream” flow despite being tens of miles from anything that can be described as sea.

After all this excitement it was good to climb up to the local viewpoint of May Hill and get the wider perspective on the Severn down to the Bristol Channel. It was misty and atmospheric up there and the vista was stunning. And the sun also deigned to show itself eventually, joy!

Severn bends from May Hill (3Mar14)

Then it was on to Ross-on-Wye for lunch overlooking the river, and a subsequent stroll along the Wye. After chilling out in a fine café we pootled back to Gloucester to explore the renovated docks in the last light of the day, before a splendid pizza! A classic full day where a new spring light finally felt like it was emerging.

Chilling out in Ross-on-Wye (3Mar14)

 

Last light at Gloucester Docks (3Mar14)

This was reinforced the next morning, when we rose early to catch a second Bore, and opened the curtains to a glorious frosty sunny perfect morning. Sometimes the smallest things make all the difference; today it was heavy condensation on the inside of the bedroom window through which the rising sun shone fantastically. It created something magical that amplified enormously the wonderful morning light – we knew we were on a very special day. Today we walked a beautiful stretch of the Severn, and saw a smaller Bore, in brilliant sun, and all completely to ourselves. Such a perfect morning, in the new light, that after a briefer than planned stop in Chepstow we headed home, early, knowing we’d got what we came for...

Sunrise at Brawn Farm (4Mar14)

Sunrise at Brawn Farm (4Mar14)

Sunrise (Spring-rise?) at Brawn Farm (4Mar14)