Chetterwood
Oct. 26th, 2025 04:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
puddleshark
I found my way into Chetterwood on this, my third attempt. And, perhaps more importantly, I also found my way out again. Chetterwood rewarded my patience with sunlight & bright beech leaves.
Late October, and the fields are full of pheasants, poor silly creatures, newly released from their pens, and wandering across the lanes with not the least survival instinct. But then, if they had any survival instinct, I suppose stockbrokers wouldn't be able to shoot them.
It's a slow drive down the narrow twisty lane through the Gussages anyway. You can maybe make it into third gear on the straighter stretches, but mostly it is creeping round blind bends in second gear, and having to stop as pheasants dillydally in front of you before finally deciding to move off the road into the hedge.
Once again, left the car at Gussage All Saints, and took the old Roman road, Ackling Dyke, southwards, up onto Sovell Down in the cold wind.
Once again across the ford, still dry, the Crichel Stream nothing but stones.
Mistletoe trees.
Ackling Dyke heads back off into the woods.
The Buildings. That's what it says on the map - "The Buildings" - and I suppose it is correct, if a little lacking in imagination. A row of twelve thatched cottages, late 18th century, with later additions on the front.
Ackling Dyke vanishes temporarily at this point, before re-appearing further on as a tarmac lane. But it was time for me to turn onto the lane to Manswood, anyway.
Hips and haws in the hedges.
I failed to find the bridleway to Chetterwood on my first pass through Manswood. (For future reference: the bridleway is down the unmarked driveway to Yew Tree Cottage, opposite a round mirror in the hedge.) But by cutting back through the little woods at Coutman's Croft, and then along a bridleway across the fields, I was able to sneak up on the bridleway to Chetterwood, by indirect means, before it could vanish again.
In Chetterwood!
I celebrated by sitting on a mossy log beneath the sunlit beeches, to drink coffee, but not so ensnared by beauty that I forgot to carefully note first the landmarks that had led me to that point. Just because you find your way to Chetterwood does not necessarily mean that you will find your way out. Because Chetterwood is full of paths, paths leading in all directions, and no guarantee that any path will take you where you mean to go.
I wandered on a little further, to where the beech woods changed to conifer woods, hoping to find the place marked on my map as Six Ways Cross. But there were so many places in the woods where ways crossed, I have no idea whether I found it or not.
I meant to take the bridleway that came out at Manswood Farm. Was instead lured onto a beautiful silent path through the conifers:
But it didn't play too many tricks on me, just brought me out by the same path I had used to enter the woods.
Hello, again, beeches.
Found my way out of the woods, the same way I came in, and retraced my steps along the lanes, and along Ackling Dyke.
The wind getting up, stirring the branches of the lime trees by the ford.
Where Ackling Dyke rises up onto the downs, four Red Kites seen - a kettle of Kites! - plus one very disgruntled and outnumbered Common Buzzard. I was surprised to see them in an area with so many pheasants. In the past, gamekeepers had no good reputation, poisoning and shooting birds of prey. Fingers crossed the gamekeepers here are more enlightened.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-26 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 05:14 pm (UTC)The 24-105 feels like very weighty beast indeed, compared to the little 18-55mm kit lens I used to use with my old camera whenever I was out walking. I think I'm starting to get used to it now.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 12:43 pm (UTC)I saw a couple trees filled with mistletoe on the way to Somerset on Saturday. Seems to be a lot of it about!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 05:16 pm (UTC)Beech woods are always so beautiful at this time of year, when we get the sunlight.
I was quite surprised to see so much mistletoe in the trees there. It's not something I see very often here when I'm out walking.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-27 05:17 pm (UTC)Yes, that combination of light and colour and slender elegant branches... Beech woods are just stunning at this time of year.