heathland – Page 2 – derrickjknight

The A31/M27

We found the password for BT Yahoo, so I was able to get direct access to the Internet on my Apple. This didn’t last. I kept being informed that the password was incorrect. It was perfectly adequate the first time.

So I went for a walk. Down to the village hall; right past Furzey Gardens; up to the remnants of Stoney Cross; under the A31; straight across heathland to a road junction; right to Fritham where Jackie met me.

The temperature had plummeted and a bitterly cold East wind was getting up. I really had to keep up a brisk pace and was regretting not having worn a topcoat when I stopped to talk to a sheep farmer. We stood for a while, each trying to rub life into our hands. Interestingly, he, too would warm up after half an hour. Unfortunately neither of us had yet done the required amount of exercise. After passing Furzey Gardens this road becomes very rough, full of holes, and usually muddy. This morning, like the criss-crossing trails of various hoofed animals on the other side of the A31, the mud was frozen and therefore much easier to negotiate. Iced over pools crackled underfoot.

The path across the heath was a wide cycle track broadened by the cropping of ponies whose aforementioned hoof prints made numerous patterns involving overlapping rings. I tried in vain to find a perfect Olympic symbol. There were plenty of droppings interspersed with the prints, but it was not until the track turned right on meeting its junction with the road to Fritham, that I actually met any animals. First I encountered Eyore, Winnie the Pooh’s assinine friend, who tore himself away from his gorse to stare at me gloomily, and was not prepared to budge from his advantageous position. This was quite unlike the pair of magpies that flew from their lofty perch at my approach. The terrain was cropped smooth and other donkeys and ponies were feasting on the prickly yellow-flowering shrubs. The wind up here, with no trees to take the edge off it, was fierce.

Lining either side of the road at Fritham were a number of the smallest ponies I have yet seen. One looked like a cuddly toy having curled itself into a ball, bounced out of its small owner’s bed, and rolled out into the open for a taste of freedom.

‘Where shall I meet you?’, Jackie had asked. ‘It’ll only be a small place’, I’d replied. ‘We’ll find each other. I’ll stand in the middle of the road if I have to.’ As I did, in fact, stand in the middle of the road at a junction into Fritham, bitterly (as in freezingly) regretting this statement, I began to wish I could have been more specific. What I hadn’t realised was that this was a much larger village than the few buildings nestled around me. Jackie had quite sensibly gone to the Royal Oak first. But, being quite accustomed to being a search party of one, she tracked me down, thawed me out, and drove me back to the pub where she enjoyed Peroni and I did Ringwood Best until time for lunch which was ham and barley broth, and mixed gammon and cheese ploughman’s respectively. This hostelry probably well deserved the Good Beer Guide’s award for Hampshire’s country pub of the year. Apart from the excellent ales and food there are some really good local oil paintings on the walls. There is far more seating outside than in, but today all the customers were inside as near as they could get to the log fires.

After lunch we travelled by car to Ringwood for shopping, then on to Helen and Bill’s for a brief celebratory visit on Helen’s birthday. Incredibly, we were unable to find strip lighting in Ringwood and had to go to Hedge End Home Base, in quite the opposite direction, to make our purchase of these.

We are so well sited alongside the A31 just before it joins the M27 going East, that it is easy to forget that it has cut the forest down the middle. This major east/west route enables us to cover distances in short spaces of time unheard of in London. The road to Fritham bears one reminder of the damage to communities that seems to have been the price. The signpost to Fritham also bears a sign to Stoney Cross. If you follow this you just come to the A31 onto which you must turn right and travel to the Cadnam roundabout before you can come all the way back to a few buildings which you could easily miss. There are signs in Minstead bearing the same legend. What I have, in my second paragraph, called the ‘remnants of Stoney Cross’ are a few houses, a garage, and a Little Chef, which is all I have been able to find. Maybe other properties were demolished to make way for the road. Cadnam, although a larger place, appears to have suffered the same fate. Nevertheless, we were able to drive backwards and forwards from Ringwood to Hedge end in search of a few strip lights. So how can I object?

This evening Jackie produced an excellent meal of stir fried chicken in chilli and black bean sauce; with egg fried rice; followed by bread and butter pudding and evaporated milk; and accompanied by a shared bottle of Lamberhurst Estate Bacchus Reserve 2011.

I Didn’t Get Lost

It was very murky in the New Forest today when I took the Fritham walk from the AA book. Rain drizzled all day. Jackie drove me there and went off to do her own thing whilst I did mine. She had been indicating in good time that she wanted to leave the A31 via a slip-road on her left, when another car came zooming up on her inside making it impossible for her to leave the major road at that point. She was forced to go on to the next opportunity.

Soon after leaving Fritham, ‘a hidden hamlet’, I ventured into Eyeworth Wood, which presented the townie with another woodcraft lesson. The half-mile long path was even more difficult than those I had taken last week. There were no dry sections at all. The mud had even stronger suction, and several fallen branches had to be negotiated. At least the direction was clear, although I was forced into the bracken at times in search of surer footing. Each of my shoes, at different times, was sucked into the muddy maw of the quagmire. It was here I met a couple sporting green wellies. They told me that was what I needed. I’m clearly going to have to get a pair. Before I do this again.

I came to ‘a tree-studded heath, with far-reaching views’. On a different day this was probably an accurate description. Today, visibility was about 500 yards. Thereafter I was required to ‘walk through a shallow valley to a car park at Telegraph Hill’. The bottom of the valley was a pool deep enough to wash some of the mud off my shoes. The only animals I saw were a few cattle near the car park. Ponies and deer were keeping well out of the way. A long, wide, path through heathland leading south past a tumulus to Ashley Cross was virtually all large pools, some of which harboured pond weed. I gave up trying to avoid them, contenting myself with the knowledge that my feet were dry and my shoes getting washed. It is amazing that my feet felt dry, for I had got my socks very soggy and muddy when I lost my shoes. I bought the socks with the walking shoes. They bear the legend ‘Smart Wool’. They certainly are pretty clever. As soon as I returned to The Firs I took off my shoes and socks and proceeded to wring out my muddy socks which still had pieces of holly adhering to them, before inserting them into the washing machine. When she was told the story of the shoes Elizabeth called me a stick in the mud.

In the last section through the forest trees were being felled, the logs being piled up around Gorley Bushes. As I watched the men in the trees working with their power tools I thought of those ancestors of theirs, in the early centuries after Henry VIII had the forest planted, who, with only manual equipment felled and dressed this timber for the building of ships for the defence of the realm. Trees then were even trained to grow in the right shapes for specific parts of the ships. It took a long time to build a ship in early times.

Rather like the Bolton Marathon (posted 11th. August), the last stretch of this walk is uphill. Having ascended the slope I arrived back at the Royal Oak pub forty minutes ahead of the allocated time for the walk. The fact that, for the first time, I didn’t extend both distance and time in an AA walk, is because I didn’t get lost. I tracked Jackie down in the pub and we returned to The Firs for a left-overs lunch. As we drove out of Fritham four bedraggled donkeys filed miserably past the car.

For the last few days we have been puzzled by telltale heaps of pigeon feathers on the lawn. We had attributed these to raiding foxes. We were wrong. Jackie witnessed the demise of one this afternoon. The poor unsuspecting bird was, as usual, foraging for pickings under the bird feeders; for seeds dropped by lighter, more agile avians who could perch above. Suddenly, ‘thwack’, in the flash of an eye a predator struck. As Jackie moved to see what was happening, the sparrowhawk made off with its prey. It reminded me of a crow in Morden Park a couple of days ago which had fled its comrades with a large white object in its beak. Later, as we set off for Sainsburys to return the party glasses, we saw a squirrel scaling a telegraph pole at the end of Beacon Road with a biscuit held in its jaws.

From Sainsburys we proceeded to Jessops where it had been my intention to get the staff to show me how to read how many photographs I had left on my memory card, and, if necessary, to buy another. The camera seized up in the shop and has to be returned to Canon for investigation and repair. I was most upset. Fortunately Elizabeth has an earlier model and has lent it to me for the two to three weeks it will take for mine to be returned to me.

This evening we took Danni and her mother to see the building Danni had found for us and to dine in the Trusty Servant. Danni regrets giving us the flat, thinking she should have kept it for herself. We all enjoyed our meals. Jackie drank Budweiser and the rest of us shared two different red wines.