Pilgrim
January
Petersfield to Liss
Stage two
I don’t know if poet Edward Thomas ever walked from Petersfield to Liss but it seems probable that he did. He was a dedicated walker, pacing the countryside to walk off gloom, exploring the woods, downs and streams from his home at Steep.
Walking is therapy for me too. It takes me out of my head and into the bigger world. The rhythm of the step, the rustle in the hedge, the light in the sky combine to extend my space.
Walking from the railway station at Petersfield it seems to take too long to break out of the streets. Even the heath with its Bronze Age tumuli and silver sky-mirror lake, feel too inhabited. The soil is sandy here after the flint and chalk of the downs, and there are birch trees and gorse with flickering yellow flowers, even in January.
I escape the streets and plunge into mud. These are the flood plains of the river Rother than snakes along the north side of the downs looking for a way south to the sea.
Across a fresh growth green field, boots toe-deep in clay, to walk towards the site of Durford Abbey. I make a poor pilgrim, just steps away from home and already complaining. The Abbey itself was hardly successful. It was founded in the 1100s, then robbed, burnt, inmates killed by plague, building struck by lightning and dissolved by Henry VIII. The nearby farm reused some of the stone and stands today.
Out of the mud on to the wide verge of the A272 where lichen has fallen from the oaks. I collect the seaweedy sprigs from the grass to boil up for ink. I wonder what colour they will make.
From Durleigh marsh farm climbing up a holloway cut deep into the clay. It is like being in a tunnel with bulging tree roots piercing the side and rooty curtains where the soil has been washed away.
Then out on the open again with views back south to the downs. Butser hill stands as a landmark with its tower. I feel I could navigate across country by the shapes of the downs. Piloting across the farmlands like a Viking mariner crossing the sea from John o’Groats to Orkney, then to Shetland, each island appearing over the horizon as the previous one disappears.
Into Durford wood where gnarled beech trunks make twisted sculptures and fallen oak leaves on the path look like the pieces of an impossible jigsaw jumbled from a box.
I emerge into the manicured rhododendron-rich lands of the big houses and their grounds. Walking along a private road and across the B2070 that I heard rumbling in Durford Wood. Along a deep and narrow lane to the tree factory of identical specimens grown ready for garden planners.
I’m too muddy for the café so I wait for a delayed train at Liss station, basking in the January sunshine.
This month’s book is Edward Thomas’ The South Country.
You can follow this walk. It’s walk five. http://www.lissparishcouncil.gov.uk/Liss_Walks_23187.aspx
