England's green and pleasant land

I went this morning to a church men's breakfast at way-too-early o'clock and came back rather sleepy, so the prospect of sitting and reading or working for a while seemed rather unworkable. The day was cool and pleasant, the sun bright but not oppressive, the sky blue and fluffed about with clouds, so I decided to go for a walk. There is a nice little paved(ish) path around the housing complex I live in, between the houses and the wheat field, that I walk sometimes, but my pastor/landlord suggested that I could take walks a bit farther afield if I wanted.

In England, you see, they require public footpaths in and around even private fields and farmlands. Trespassing, unless you're actually in someone's house or damaging someone's property, is much less of an issue here. My pastor likens the way the English feel about the right to these public footpaths to the way Americans feel about the right to keep and bear arms.

There's a picturesque large red building visible from the housing complex, which apparently had some historical connection to Henry VIII or somebody important, and there's a nice circuit path that you can walk on to get there and back, so after my pastor showed it to me, I set off. These footpaths are not great large walkways; they're more like trails on a hike, except nearer to civilization. After walking through one of them, I came through a gap in a hedge (the kind that really don't look like you're allowed to go through them, but you are) onto a little paved road. It is one car wide. Not one car wide each way, one car wide period. On the other side of the road stretched a wide field of pea plants; on the hither side, and much wider than the road itself, was a broad, pleasant lane of grass shaded by trees.

At the end of the lane (and the road) was the building, and it was kind of disappointing: rather more ugly up close than from afar off, plus you also couldn't get right up close to it anyway, there was a gatehouse and things. I looked for the path back, and was startled to see that it was not some clearly-marked path, but rather a vanishingly narrow little lane squeezing between the old brick gatehouse and a clump of hedge. It looked quite forbidden until I looked through to see the public footpath stretching along between a nice brick wall and the wheat field, going directly back to the residential district.

After confirming that this was the way back, I looked to the other side of the road and saw a little arch of green plant, opening onto a tiny path winding between the pea field and its hedgerow border. I remembered my pastor saying that if I wanted a bit more adventure, I could go right when I got to the building rather than left to return home. I went right, on past the pea field.

The lane wandered for a while along the field, then opened to a slightly larger road, not paved but broad enough for a car. This road led on by a little green meadow speckled with tiny red-and-yellow flowers and the occasional scampering jackrabbit. Then several houses and buildings appeared. They looked like they had been built many years ago, much older than the new housing development where I live, and they were much more rural and quaint, but still large and handsome. The ground here was covered with a bunch of odd white fluff, which I could not tell whether it had come from plant or animal.

I thereupon met a puppy, which is to say a large dog came and barked at me, so I bore right so as not to trespass directly. I followed the road round past one of the largest houses and its adjoining plot of land. There was a large grass field where several men were practicing their putt, then a tree-covered plot hosting several great, fat hens with chicks in tow, a few roosters, and a goat. A goat! Who has a goat? Apparently these people do. On a bit further, same property, and there was a nice little man-made pond with a little hutch next two it and half a dozen ducks, presumably domesticated.

There is a little, very secret part of me that wishes to live on a farm somewhere and milk my own cow and churn my own butter and age my own cheese and gather my own eggs. It takes rather a lot to get that part of me to surface, but seeing this charming little estate managed it.

I continued on, wondering how far one could go along these paths. I wandered past another wheat field, saw a large gap in the hedge that looked over a field of much wilder-looking plants; I could not tell if it was deliberately cultivated or not, but no obivious path led through it, so I continued on by the field until I reached a larger, paved road. There were two proper lanes here and some large lorries (that's 'trucks' to you Yanks) came whizzing by, presumably to and from the quarry mentioned on a road sign hard by. I went on a bit down this road, past a striking field of something yellow, and eventually decided I should turn back before I got entirely lost.

As I returned from the larger road to the wheat field, I decided to take one last detour down a path with a sign calling it a 'bridleway.' It ran alongside the lorry road but was set off from it; a narrow lane tightly enclosed by large, spreading trees, looking for all the world like the secret way into the heart of a strange green world. It made for a lovely walk, broad enough for several to walk comfortably, but still close and cozy. It went along for a bit then emerged onto the lorry road again, at about the same point where I had turned around when I explored in the direction of the quarry before. In other words, the bridleway went nowhere! All it did was follow the road for a bit. In some ways that was the best part about it, that this little path served absolutely no purpose other than to provide a pleasant walking alternative to the side of the larger road.

On the way back through the bridleway, I saw a small sign pointing out another public footpath. This one rose over a little crest, through a gap in the greenery along the bridleway, and down a little slope into a wild-looking field, where the path continued so narrow and overgrown as almost to vanish. I didn't follow it today--time was ticking on, and while I knew the way back, I really had no idea where I actually was. But something about this further path excited me in a way utterly disproportional to the actual facts of the path, which was itself not very interesting.

At length I wound my way back around to the residential district and back to my house. The whole trip took maybe an hour and a half. I went without any water or supplies (other than my camera) and, perhaps foolishly, wore work/church clothes rather than adventure clothes, since I was not anticipating the trek to be nearly so long or so wild as I later chose to make it. Yet it was comfortable the entire way, cool and pleasant rather than hot and sticky like you'd expect on a hike in the states. In slacks and long sleeves I didn't even break a sweat.

All told, it was a very pleasant little diversion, and the sort of thing I couldn't even have imagined back in the states.

I was told at the breakfast this morning that Chelmsford is really not very nice. You could have fooled me.


** Most people will probably not recognize the literary reference in the title of this post, which is absolutely fine. Those who do recognize it will be amused to learn that there's a beer readily available over here, an English beer, called 'Satanic Mills.'