25/09/2024
25th September 2024.
The path through the small wood has disappeared. When we first came here, over twenty years ago, it could easily be found when you stepped into the trees at the bend in the track. It wound through the tall firs planted close together and dark. In the Autumn the ground would be covered by hundreds of fruiting fungi, so white that in the darkness they seemed almost luminous.
This path lead to a stream just where it narrowed, a gravelly bank before it, and under-eaten when the stream flowed fast with storm water. Tracks could be seen here of badger, fox and deer in the silty sides. And here you could easily jump to the other side onto a grassy bank and path leading upwards and twisting past a blackthorn bush, a crab apple tree and mossy banks until it reached the old drover's road, a relic of a long by-gone age when cattle were driven through this cwm on their way to the markets in England.
When I went there last, fallen trees blocked the way, brought down by a gale many years ago which swept through the forest cutting a swathe of crashed and broken trunks and branches. Approached from the old drover's road the path also was near impassable. The thorn had spread and suckers had risen. Untrodden bracken had thrived and taken over. Brambles reached across challenging accessibility. Perhaps it could be found again by an intrepid searcher.
It had been one of my favourite walks, but few trod there and I did not go often enough, and time and wind and age have changed so much. Intentions to clear the path with saw and hedger's hook proved too daunting and came to naught, always other things to do. Now the path has disappeared and few, if any, will remember it.
