Musings on walking in the countryside

Anyone travelling across Romney Marsh on the A259 from Rye to Hythe, via New Romney, is unlikely to see anything that might make distract them from their mobile, newspaper, or day–dreaming. Travelling by bus on this same ‘A’ road, I have myself thought how dull it can all look; and have struggled in vain to revive in my mind the unique atmosphere of the Marsh as I have experienced it over several decades of walking its ‘ravelled’ lanes and attempting to follow footpaths that might not have been used since the days when agricultural labourers had to walk to work.

Drainage channel near Brookland, Romney Marsh (sometimes called sewers: local usage)

A. N. Wilson in his The Victorians writes that it was, “...the curse of the internal combustion engine which [eventually] completed the destruction and ruination of England.” A bit extreme? I hardly think so, when – if awake in the small hours – I hear the never–ending sound of traffic on the motorways and dual–carriage roads that surround Cambridge.   It is the tyres that make the noise, and it sounds something like the sea. But alas, it is not! So it is that I am delighted to leave the tarmac and the car behind:

What is this life if, full of care, / We have no time to stand and stare. / No time to stand beneath the boughs / And stare as long as sheep or cows.

It is a pity that these lines of W. H. Davies have been so often quoted, because it’s difficult now to appreciate the fullness of their meaning. In principle, most people think that the sentiment expressed is a healthy one – as indeed it is – and yet I imagine that very few take any steps to make it a reality in their lives. The countryside cannot be truly appreciated from a car or bus. It can from a bicycle; but shanks’ pony is best. As a walker you can pace yourself, and adjust to wind or hills. You may find – on traversing the edges of a rain–sodden ploughed field – that the accumulation of clay has added threefold to the weight of your boots; a style may be so rickety that you need to be something of an acrobat to safely negotiate a structure as unpredictable in its movements as a weathervane; or it may be that you will have to make a hazardous leap across a ditch whose original wooden plank crossing has long since disintegrated.

“This is not what I expected.”

“But we are endeavouring to immerse ourselves in the countryside, are we not? After all, civilisation depends on agriculture – as much as it does on drainage and sewerage.”

“I’d rather be watching Man United playing Chelsea...”

(“I’m delighted to hear it, my friend, and may the football stadia continue to be packed!”)

There are several issues here. Urban dwellers ignorance of farming, allied to consumer demand for cheap food, and the supermarkets’ vested interests in supplying such, has in many cases been disastrous for farmers (leading in not a few cases to suicide). And yet, if football fans took to the footpaths in their thousands, it would result in ruination – both of the countryside and my pleasure.  So I have – to some extent selfishly – to cry “Vive le sport!”