Hunting for the Holloway (1)

White Feather Walk – 30th July 2008

Robert Macfarlane mentions briefly in his book The Wild Places of a ‘holloway near Bury St Edmunds’ that would be part of an old pilgrim path.

A holloway is a sunken path or road that centuries of use has eroded until it has become deeper than the level of the surrounding land. Some are Iron Age; some were the boundary ditches of Saxon farms and settlements. None are less than 300 years old.

I want to find the one that Macfarlane mentions. I want to see if I can walk it or enter it.

It isn’t marked on any current OS map so I visit the Council’s archaeological offices behind St Mary’s churchyard and am told that the probable location would be in Grindle, a ward to the south of Bury which takes its name from the open cast mining that used to take place there. Mining of what? I am told the holloway wouldn’t necessarily have been a pilgrim route as there were no such recognised routes to Bury, pilgrims would have followed market roads etc. like any other traveller

The other possible location is at Stanton, 5 miles or so north east of the town.

Nothing appears on the web either. In fact there are no references to holloways in Suffolk at all as far as I can see.

Perhaps I should contact Mr Macfarlane and see where his information comes from? He seems to be suggesting that this particular holloway is relatively well known, even a feature of the region. But the tourist office has never heard of it.

A mystery then.
Good.

The only other way to try to find it is to walk the land. Hazard guesses in there, follow my instinct, replay pilgrimages from different directions. Much more appealing, much more pertinent, solvent. So taking a good look at the satellite images on Google I find two possible locations to start: Grindle Gardens off Southgate and, further south, Hardwick Heath.

I leave at 3.50pm. It is a hot afternoon. The air barely shifts and the sun fair blazes.

On the small lawn in the quad behind the Norman Tower near St Mary’s churchyard, I find a pristine white doves feather. A remnant of the bird I saw nesting in the niche on the front of the tower in May. I pick it up and run my fingers along its length. It is perfect, unblemished. I keep it. It is hopeful. A dusky-skinned young tourist couple frolic and take photos of each other in front of the tower, posing in mock-medieval ecumenical stances, austere and learned, laughing at their high jinks.

At the top end of Southgate I veer off my planned route, taking a signposted Public Footpath east which would, I assume, lead round the back of Grindle Gardens and may throw up something far more interesting than the maze of new-build properties which has taken over this side of the road and of which Grindle Gardens is part. In any case, I suspect that any sign of the past has long been subsumed by contractors: Grindle only in name. I am in the vicinity which may be enough. This isn’t an exact science, but an unfolding, a peeling back in blissful ignorance.

So, along a dark fenced-off narrow and to the right of me there is an unkempt area of scrubland sandwiched between two arms of the new estate. Blackberry bushes with their sinewy thorns and brambles have taken over the area, twining upward into the lower branches of the surrounding trees. A pair of starlings gorge themselves on the earliest ripe fruits; they burble and wheeze to each other in constant communication. Whining, oscillating through numinous squeaks, clicks and wheezes. A jay glides unwarily across the scrub and almost lands in the tree just above me before it realises I am there and flies upward to come to rest unseen in the upper parts.

At the end of the narrow, I follow a pristine tarmac path round the back of Grindle Gardens. I don’t like it there, coming too close to the A1032 already, so I retrace my steps and take a left down a slight incline and I see there are algae covered pools on the right hand side almost hidden beneath the trees. The algae have riddled the water to such an extent that it looks almost solid, the only give away of liquid beneath are the numerous trails mallards leave in their wake as they all suddenly gravitate toward me. The juveniles are very curious and surprisingly fearless, one or two leaving the safety of the water to check me out while the rest continue to dabble at the algae. They are occasionally bumped by clumsy young moorhens as they in turn dive beneath the surface in attempts to forage.

A young kestrel spots for prey in the roadside verges atop a streetlamp beside the A1032, craning her neck, feathers ruffled by the breeze. Tourmaline eyes penetrating the undergrowth, before something unsettles her and she lifts off and flies skittishly away southward.

Cross the ring road and cut into the low-lying ground beyond, reeds and bulrushes and yet more brambles tower over me and the path is noticeably damp and muddy; below the water table then? I come out through the backs of yet more new-build housing, though this of a slightly older vintage than that at Grindle. I skirt through and find myself at an apex of three roads, one of which has an enormous and beautiful cedar tree at the corner, and the smell of humus-rich earth which I have to follow. The road has no footpath so I am forced to stop every few seconds as it is evidently a short-cut for traffic. In fact, I realise I haven’t yet met another walker out here. I reach a junction with a country lane that has a national speed limit sign tacked onto it which doesn’t bode well for further traverse by foot, particularly as the verge is too steep to access in a hurry in the face of oncoming traffic. I stop awhile determining what to do and rest on what remains of an old footbridge, the watercourse beneath it long since dried and gone, and overlooking a resplendent cornfield shimmering gold in the sun. Idyllic if it weren’t for the monotony of BMW’s and four-by-fours that suddenly seem to have erupted out of nowhere and all of whom are using this route out of Bury. I don’t really want to have to turn back. Besides I should be able, by my reckoning, to see my second destination, the Heath; and yet it remains elusive. I must have taken a wrong turn. I watch goldcrests and coal tits scurry around the upper branches of another cedar on the corner opposite. Cedar everywhere.

Wandering despondently back, negotiating the traffic and sleeping policemen. There is a road – Sharp Road – which leads off this arterial hell and I take it, geographically it is heading in the right direction for the Heath, so who knows. It winds through another estate, this time each house is large, ostentatious and utterly individual, evidently far more expensive than the others I’ve seen so far. At the far end I can see an open expanse of lush grazing field with sheep dotted here and there upon it, heads down and I am hopeful this is the Heath. Only to be let down as I get close and see there is a sign reading ‘Hardwick Manor Private Drive’. I rest on the fence, watching the sheep and trying to ascertain where the hell the heath is then, and when does this ownership of the land (both great and small) finally stop and give way to something approximating the countryside? Surely it hasn’t disappeared beneath building lots, or maybe the heath is owned by Lord or Lady of the manor and is not open to the public? When I turn to leave an overweight woman in her late thirties has come out of her house and is watching me suspiciously. When she sees me retracing my steps she scurries back into her house, head down. I feel like knocking on her door and asking what the hell she was watching me like that for? Did she think I was going to steal a sheep?

I make my way right back to the three road junction. Again that lovely, warm smell of cedar needles and must slowly rotting on the ground. Soft, delicate. But I’m feeling downhearted. I can’t even find the heath, let alone any sign of a possible location for the holloway and I’ve been walking for the better part of two hours. I take the only road left to me, the one of the three that I hadn’t already walked and pass in front of a hospital and take the first Public Footpath sign I see, which leads off alongside the hospital grounds and out onto the Heath! At last! But I’m disappointed. This isn’t the untouched southern breckland I was hoping for, but tended parkland with some wilder spaces – a football pitch, a fishing pond etc. the ubiquitous cedars. Even so, it holds some interest. There are twenty or so pied wagtails in the corner of the football field, chasing bugs and midges where the grass has been left to grow a little longer, they twitch and jump every so often or else sprint short distances to catch prey, and in amongst them there are goldfinch foraging for seed, their round fluting calls a giveaway.

I find a secluded and overgrown meadow set back away from the main drag and watch the sun go down through the long grass, teasels etc; shadows stretching beyond comprehension into the hedgerows and over tree boles. The smell in there is sweet and heady and for a moment I am lost. A spotted flycatcher darts from its perch on a crab apple tree. That’s enough, for now – what more could you want, in any case? I doze at the feet of three sister cedars, watch the sky, the high altitude gulls effortlessly cruising back to the sea for the night, the wood pigeons arcing and dive-bombing, the swifts showing off beautifully. Even so, I feel thwarted, let down by the fingers of development and man’s need to captivate the land, make it ready.

One thing to mention of note is that, from the heath, the cathedral (nee the Abbey in medieval times?) is clearly visible. If I were a pilgrim I’d be pleased at that.

Bury St Edmunds

Sightings

Blackcap – 2 Sedge Warbler – 2
Egyptian Goose – 3 Great Crested Grebe – 7
Pochard – 1 Tufted Duck – 20+
Shelduck – 10+ Long Tailed Tit – 7
Cormorant – 2 Reed Bunting – 1
Reed Warbler – 4 Common Sandpiper – 5
Lapwing – 2 Willow Warbler – 2
Robin – 4 Wren – 2
Heron – 4 Black Headed Gull – 20+
Grasshopper Warbler – 2 Chiffchaff – 1
Great Spotted Woodpecker – 1 Barnacle Goose – 1
Hobby – 2 Green Woodpecker – 1

Lackford Lakes, Suffolk 4/5/08

scree!

Overnight the skies over Bury St Edmunds have become home to the returning Swifts and their wild and playful calls fill the last Bank Holiday afternoon – dive bombing the brewery tap and the little pond at the edge of the brewery complex – it’s so much fun to hear and see them chaffing the edge of sanity with their twists and turns and scree-scree-scree. But then, if you’d just traversed the globe, migrating thousands of miles, wouldn’t you be whooping up and saying ‘hi hello, I’m back, whadda ya think? Pleased to see me? Either way, I’m damn glad to be here, don’t ya know.’ Reckon. For it gives me the springtime jitters n’ judders, the thrill of the burgeoning year right there in the ecstatic outpouring and unchecked aerobatics, and it makes me pleased to be alive – sentimentally or nay . . . go figure!

Bury St Edmunds, 4/5/08

Swallows

Out in the Norfolk edge we spot two swallows flirting with the dense tops of oil-seed rape, hedge-trimming their way across the land – it is late afternoon and there is a sense (despite the earlier hail) that spring is really and truly making it’s presence felt – another then spotted resting on telegraph wires above, preening its wings (those tired, post-migratory wings) – there is an acknowledgment that we are at last governed again by this great season . . .

Clutch

For over a week Missy (a female Mallard) has been waddling up our garden and hanging out close to the house, we fed her tidbits (mostly seed and bread) and she would sleep under the old leather chair or even in the porch, or wander off, head just visible above the lengthening lawn, to crawl under the fence into next door’s garden – her drake often watching her from the distance of the flat brewery roof at the far end with its frost melt puddles pooling in the centre, his occasional ‘quack’ a nod so she knew he wasn’t – and she became part of our daily routine, pretty much arriving at the same time every day – and I began to wonder if she was intending on nesting here and if so might that not be a little precarious for any duckling when hatched, being so far from any reachable expanse of water – but it seems she wasn’t so stupid (and sadly this is where the tale might be taking a downward turn) for she had found two old and faded Christmas trees in the theatre garden (next door, but opposite side) tucked away in a nook where pretty much nobody ever goes until the tech boys in there decided to throw the Christmas trees over the wall into our garden whilst clearing out and found a clutch of eggs beneath the trees – this was yesterday, we haven’t seen Missy since then . . .

Clocking On

In the slim gully marking the holdings of no man, between rivers Linnet and Lark, a line of beady reeds vibrate, oscillate in the trappings, where the first spring day breeze crosses the blades and so they shimmy, shadow hatched, counting time, knitting time with needle-fire, marking it with decisive tick-tocks. Some are shorn, others shaggy topped, bearskin wearing almost; all are skinny, akin to an extended family of lanky brothers and sisters who perform daily and bow to silent watchers. And hereabouts a female Kessie is flirting with the ensuing dusk, her limitless prowess governed by the radial arc of dog-walkers and ramblers footing out for the first long day, post-prandially, the clocks forward an hour offering extra walking and drinking time before lights out. The Kessie, she is hidden and bidden by the thin woodland that borders the oceanic A-road to the east, all huffy sighs and murmurs, a crashing tide of cargo-hauliers and mealy weekenders surfing for bargain PSP's and sofas (and wedding refits). The air is brittle with the new season, delicately running a borderline now in the late afternoon, as the Kessie flies clean and low over a furrowed field (the chunks of turned, exposed flint lined up like primeval dog skulls, ossified and shiny with weather wear) and she dallies round on the ground, picking at suggestions of food in the brown earth before rising again to observe the milling reeds from some sticky overhang. All fires the fire of spring; complimented by bells, vanquished only by night (and even then, really?). In the shadows, the suggested abbots and vagrants of another time are blinking, whispering adulations and wry jokes, their feet muddy and blistered with the winter's gone damage (trench foot before trenches); and their plainsong can be heard up the shared path toward the ivy and the spruces heavy laden with cones, where the tombs and the life markers are gently spilling over each other for space.

Bury St Edmunds

Moon Rise

Call it corporeal, fey even (though to be sure even Morgan herself may have been up there last night, what sorceress wouldn’t want to have been?) – the strident barrelling wind at the summit where the Cotswold escarpment bleeds its rock from the golf course and signalling position replete with transmission towers and the party line etched in the noise of fighter planes – where that lone Buzzard is mobbed in extremis by a gang of crows until it can finally trace it’s way out and away on the line of strong thermals a hundred yards out, head dipped, body tipped ever so slightly into the wind – carcasses of caddy trolleys and Victorian mangles, dark brown with rust, emerge half gorged by grasses, clambering zombie-like from the earthy basins at the foot of the escarpment face, itself orangey-red where exposed, pitted with the entrance holes of summer residents nests and other sources of primal erosion – the bleak woodland at the margins (lovely promise in the word ‘margin’) holds a million secrets fading with the light, the rustling and call of unseen creatures stirring or coming to rest for the night, fleeting motion in the shades; and the whole capped with an etched line, the sinewy forms of the newly naked branches (though further in, where less exposed, there are still trees bearing the effervescent gold and brown autumnal markings, a bloom of colour within) – the damp floor is littered with russet leaves or else scarred with fallen timber, silver grey, elephantine – a lone Fieldfare sits in a Hawthorn bush, his chest puffed out under his scowling stare, picking occasionally at the seedy red pods – finally, breaking the high horizon line above where the silhouettes of the land (and walkers) are strongest, the moon shows itself, smoky at first, a bright smudge –

Cleeve Hill, Gloucestershire 21/11/07

Sightings

Whimbrel – 1 Hobby – 2
Little Egret – 3 Grey Heron – 7
Lapwing – 40+ Mute Swan – 4
Ruff – 3 Green Sandpiper – 2
Wood Sandpiper – 1 Curlew Sandpiper – 1
Water Rail – 1 Whinchat – 1
Kestrel – 1

Rainham Marshes, RSPB Reserve 9/9/07

Sightings

Buzzard - 11 Kestrel - 4
Oystercatcher - 30+ Gannet - 11
Robin - 3 Peregrine Falcon - 4
Sparrowhawk - 4 Fulmar - 2 (adult & chick)
Linnet - 1 Wheatear - 5
Meadow Pipit -3 Rock Pipit - 2
Little Egret - 3 Whimbrel - 3
Redshank - 1

Cornwall 20 -25th August 2007

Thames Tide

Lunch break - the tide turns and the exposed mud and shale banks are rapidly disappearing - blink and you'll miss them - stranded artefacts there: the pipes and shells of another life and time stuck in the algae and muddy bottom.

And then an arrogant cormorant takes to the water with little effort, allowing the tide to lap its legs, belly, plumage for a moment before taking to the water and gently drawn upstream.

A gathering of Mute Swans hide their heads in the muddy shallows filtering out favourites, ambling in the heat. Then suddenly they attempt to take flight all together - eight or so swans running on the river's surface and flapping their wings trying to gain speed and lift and surprisingly sounding like horses cantering on hard earth - it's an amazing moment.

But what attracts me most of all is the frenetic pair of Grey Wagtails that twitch on the mud and at the edges of the tidal pools, constantly fluting and twittering to each other, always registering where the other is, never stopping, like some melodic sonar. Occassionally they unite on a lamp post or a barrier on the nearby riverside office development; only to part a moment later and return to their pitchy communication. It's a beautiful sound, and carries way above any nearby industrial and motor hum.

Battersea 5/6/2007

Eagle

Eagle, Cumbria

all images copyright JGBellorini 2007

Shaheen

From a bus or car you’d not notice the Falcon – a carved stone Victorian decoration on the gate post of what was once a mansion house (probably for the railway manager of nearby Clapham Junction way back when). It sits now almost entirely shrouded in the foliage of the unruly trees around it, its squat, broad shoulders and details of the face etched away by rain and pollution. Even so, there it sits as a reminder of the proud heritage it surveys; the lane beyond retaining the name ‘Falcon Mews’. I notice it passing by at street level, a blackbird watching it gingerly from a nearby branch. Even this stone falcon, this representation of the Arab ‘shaheen’ retains some powerful aspect of a living original. It’s in the eyes still, those acute organs that even here, though grey and unmoving, seem to be able to spot the tiniest detail, to follow the multitude of living things passing on the street before it in their buses and cars and decide for itself which one shall be its prey. As if to prove my flight of fancy, the blackbird scurries off sounding its rapid alarm. The falcon of course remains unmoved. After all, it has all the time in the world.

NB 'shaheen' is an Arabic word for a falcon

London, 17/5/07

Cormorant Island

The River Thames at Battersea – brown and fast moving here, the current carrying lines of mucky rubbish and jetsam upstream: plastic bottles, Coke cans and a variety of driftwood and other matter hinting at the life downstream; from the sandbars of Southend or the pier walkers of Kent – who knows? Amid this tidal drift stands an old wooden wharf, lost now from the shore by decay, green with algae and weathered to a sheen, but still standing mid-stream, where Cormorants and a pair of Canada Geese pass the time, preening and watching the river traffic in the lee of the London Heliport. The birds may even have nested there, its hard to tell from my viewpoint on the shore; one of the Cormorants sits on the far lip of the wooden structure, its beak in the air, slightly arrogant in fact, whilst the others stand sentinel nearby airing their wings, stretching their lithe bodies and wagging their heads. Whilst I return to the daily grind of a computer screen their faces appear to be constantly smiling, a spark in their eyes and the sly upturn at the corner of their beaks, like they’ve been let in on some cosmic joke.

Battersea, London 16/5/07

Sightings

Heron – 5 Lapwing – 1
Great Crested Grebe – 4 Reed Bunting – 2
Redshank – 1 Little Ringed Plover – 1
Teal – 2 Chaffinch – 2
Reed Warbler – 2

Waterhay, Ashford Keynes, Wiltshire 18/4/07

Drover's Edge

Rising early, finding nothing out there at first but the bracken and the cold wind coming in from the west, howling between the granite and pushing my bones sideways into the landscape – catching tantalising calls, from where? – gone before any chance of a sighting – I am up here in the Dark Peaks looking for Ring Ouzel though I suspect it is too early still for them to be here yet – even so each squeak or chant from either side of me is an invitation to freeze, scan the broken heather and the weather-beaten rocks below Stanage Edge for any tell-tale sign of the secretive bird – when the wind changes direction I get some feeling back in my fingers and the silence is extreme, the constant rush in my ears now gone I feel closer to this place, one sense closer of course.

I angle my way crossways from the edge, where the rocks fall dramatically away toward the road below, where hikers are beginning to ruminate on their day’s trek and cheap mountaineers come up for practice (I note, disrupting the very habitats they’ve been asked not to on various signs in the area) - from the south, in the shallow vale behind the edge, gazing back toward the mirage of Sheffield I spot two forms moving low over the heather, weaving fast and their blemished blue-grey plumage is a giveaway – a pair of Peregrine Falcons beating down the wind headlong, head on (no other bird can fight it – grim, harsh - this morning, only these aerodynamic beauties) toward the furthest outcrop of rock that I can see; the lead male scoots himself up in an almost vertical climb, the wind pushing him back at an acute angle, he turns so that it is then tailing him and he plummets fast out of sight, closely followed by the female whose path is less accurate and she simply wings her way over the edge and disappears there. The air grows warmer – I chant into my solitude some awed thanks.

Stanage Edge, Derbyshire 9th March 2007

Drawing Hares

With sinew that might span bridges; the madness in the eyes you get to know well. Nothing stops in them. Ever. The report of a rifle, the sigh of December fog, they hear before it occurs, before even the thought of it. With one leg to stand on, one leg to divide the sun, one leg to fight, one leg to guide the night and hide.

Keswick, Cumbria 13/1/07

Wildlife

Linnet – 4 Robin – 6
Lapwing – 60+ Peregrine Falcon – 2
Goosander – 2 (m & f) Dipper – 1
Treecreeper – 2 Nuthatch – 1
Great Spotted Woodpecker – 2 Buzzard – 6
Sparrowhawk – 1 Red Squirrel - 2

Multiple Locations, Cumbria 12/06

From A Window 2

Skiddaw is alone in shroud, the cloud cover nowhere else to be seen except in that one location.

At last the rains have abated and we have clean, clear skies – vivid, crystalline. All except the heights of Skiddaw which, if one were to believe the old adage, is being fought over by a berber and a devil having a smoking contest with briar pipes each the size of a car whilst all around returns to calm, clarity, and thankful dryness. Thermal air makes the waspish edge of the cloud cover spiral out and up, but other than that it does not move, stuck fast to the peaks.

I am hoping this change will allow some opportunity to make contact with the land again. After all, the recent weather has caged everyone in: sandbags up against doorways, the rushing activity to remove possessions from vulnerable places. I have felt increasingly in flight from this land rather than proving some existence among it. Watching it from arms length, through windows, with the briefest of forays out, head down in the driving wind and rain wondering when the flood will come.

Now the higher altitude winds start to shift the clouds up there, at some speed; and Dodd, the western edge of Skiddaw’s collection of companion hills, is lit by the rising sun, a golden russet swatch of land. The thick, blue-grey nimbus peeled back and away. Warmed by the sun and no longer indestructible.

Keswick, Cumbria 17/12/06

Aira Force 2, Cumbria

 

Aira Force, Cumbria