Ross to Newent (2)
After such a morning, what could the afternoon produce? A struggle, was the answer.
The path started north-west of the pub at SO 656255 and was easy at first (#1). The trouble began when we got into a sloping field and found ourselves on the wrong side of a barbed wire fence. There was a stile, a high one. Once, long ago or with a bull after me, I could have leaped that … Anyway, we managed the stile and the wonky stone steps on the other side that led down to the river…then we saw a house that had to be the Lodge and finally, beneath the trees, Fording Farm.
After a look back at the arched stone bridge over the Rudhall brook we were soon on a charming but very narrow tarmac road offering no chance of herds getting past each other, I thought (#2). So, no drovers' road. Apparently this turnpike was abandoned in 1815 for being “inconvenient”, as Heather Hurley says in her book on The Old Roads of South Herefordshire.
Up to Fidlers Cross, quick turn right then left through a five-barred gate and it's fields all the way back to Bollitree. So – where's the road? If you look carefully, it's on your left; but only occasionally can you see it, sunken and behind barbed wire (#3). Every year more of that old road has been “adopted” (= absorbed) by the local farmer. It's a story many centuries old:
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods. (Rudyard Kipling)
Then we hit the mud, big-time (#4). The beautiful soil of Bollitree that Cobbett noticed was dry even when the heavens had just opened has been compacted, and compacted again, by giant farm machinery till it can breathe no longer.
It's an education, this walk.
* * * Next day we continued the walk along the Road from Linton eastwards towards Newent – another old turnpike (#5). But our chief interest was Kews Lane – spelt Cues on the first edition OS map. Cues meant ox-shoes, so here was a link to the droving trade….
