puddleshark

On Sunday it was supposed to rain but didn't. But the sky was grey, and, whenever the wind got up, a shower of hard green acorns fell from the wayside oaks, making me wish I'd worn a hard hat on my walk.

On the ridge of heathland above the Piddle Valley, the Forestry Commission has a couple of small car parks at the heart of a network of paths leading off in all directions: south over the heath towards T.E. Lawrence's cottage at Clouds Hill, or north through the woods and fields, down into the Piddle Valley.

I headed north.

From the woods, onto a sunken way leading down into the valley.

The bridleway emerges in the village of Affpuddle, by the church.

St Laurence's, which is a lovely old church, though somewhat dwarfed by its neighbours: an old brick vicarage and a tin barn.

A rain of red fuchsias round the door of a white cottage.

A handful of old thatched cottages, but these days Affpuddle is mostly 1970s bungalows, named things like [Species of Tree] Cottage, or [Local Feature] View. (Also, one literary outlier, named after a Thomas Hardy character - one of the less tragic ones. Not to tempt fate.)

At the west end of the village, onto another bridleway leading back up through brown cattle pasture, devoid of both cattle and grass, and through striped yellow stubble-fields, where jackdaws and rooks fight turf wars with the gulls.

Where the fertile arable land stops, the heath, planted with conifers, lurks on the horizon.

Last glimpse of the fields before entering the woods...

Into the deep, dark woods...

And, as if the woods weren't mysterious enough, beside the way there are strange holes in the earth:

There are swallow holes, or dolines, all along this ridge of heathland, where underground water has caused the sandy heathland soil to drain away as if in an eggtimer, leaving a conical depression, where the trees gather as if at a moot. Some of the more impressive swallow holes, like Cul-pepper's Dish, are deeper than the trees are tall.

Made my way back to the car park by random paths. Not lost lost. I knew roughly which direction I needed to go. But there are so many paths and tracks in these woods - bridleways and grassy rides and unofficial paths and logging paths - that I lost the bridleway. And these woods are so quiet: nothing but the wind in the trees and the finches calling. No sound of traffic to tell you where the roads are.

Came across an area where the four-wheel drive fraternity had left the byway, where they are permitted to drive, and trespassed in the woods, cutting deep ruts into the slopes and the bridleways, leaving rusted bits of vehicles in swallow holes.

But it was old damage, I think. When I finally found my way back onto the gravel byway, I found nice new concrete tank traps blocking vehicle access to all the smaller tracks.