Every day on the path is a series of mini dramas. They flow into one another as part of the same linear narrative.
South of Castle Cary the land is scrubby. It looks like land near a newly made road which is being rewilded. It’s bumpy and uncomfortable to walk on. The path approaches the A359. Like many times before I lose the line of the path and its markers. I’m confident I’ll pick it up again. I just need to find a way onto the road.
I reach a small electric sub station surrounded by a tall fence and Keep Out signs. There is a gap between the corner of the fence and the hedge. I’m through and on the main road with traffic flying along in both directions.
The normal roadside detritus lines the way: crisp packets, CDs, cider cans with their colours bleached by the sun and the now ubiquitous face masks. What was once an object most of us had never seen let alone worn has now become the object we all know like the back of a hand. Last Summer I stopped beside the M5 in Devon. Alongside the grubby PPE just off the carriageway was the plastic piping used for a blood transfusion.
I’m on the road less than 5 minutes before I cross a stile and the land slopes gently South towards Galhampton. It’s early afternoon and hot. My eyes ache as do my legs and toes. The day feels like it’s been long. I stop in the shade of a hedge and take my shoes and socks off. My feet look creased and sore. It’s a relief to feel the fresh air on them. I pull the big toes forward and wiggle them from side to side. It relieves some of the pain.
The near world seems to doze in the heat of a Midsummer day.
Between Galhampton and Tarkington the path runs straight. It’s hot and dry. Suddenly the path dips into a holloway. The air is cooler, the light darker. It’s almost like slipping into cool water after walking along the down. The roots of trees curl out of the banks like the limbs of Ripley’s nemesis when she finds it curled up waiting for her at the end of the film ‘Alien’. Huge fronds and brackens reach out of the banks as if fanning me like I’m Cleopatra. A gentle whoosh of wind breathes through me. Above all there is a low and constant whine of hoverflies like mini drones shifting in the cool air.
I think of the constant line that beckons me on. It has become imprinted on my mind. The path can be a thin or wide path, a road, a drove or sometimes just a different coloured line in the land.
Lines of the way:
I cross the A303 at South Cadbury. The road is climbing up a hill. From a distance I can see a high sided hill. It looks like it has been sliced in two halfway. It is a flat table top of green that overlooks the Somerset levels.
A rough track leads up through old oaks to the grass rim. This is Cadbury Castle, the Iron Age fort. From here the vaulted sky is all I can see above me. Nothing else is higher. Everything worldly is below where I stand.
There are ramparts that drop down the side from the plateau. I try to lie down in one and imagine if I can sleep. It feels cold and damp. Something isn’t right. There is an instinctive sense of it being right or not.
The aura here is too dramatic, too stark. Part of me feels the fear of knowing I have to find somewhere. The gloaming is cloaking the world. Fields, road, path are now defined through pools of shadow.
It’s getting late.
Along the road a stile. A gap in the hedge. A meadow flat and lush. An apple tree my wardrobe. The yellow carpet my bed. I have found my next place of rest.
The Slow Walker 