Thoughtful Walks and a Reflective Wait

There was an interesting road not far from where I grew up in Guildford. It started at the heavily trafficked London Road through the town and ran for about 500 yards, before abruptly turning through an apparently inexplicable right angle to become a different road. For those that knew the area though, it was at the right angle that the road became interesting, because the road didn’t really turn through a right angle. It carried straight on, but to follow the ‘real’ road, one had to abandon the tarmac and disappear onto an almost unnoticeable stony track under the trees.

If one did this, it led to the discovery that the track carried on almost arrow straight for several hundred yards more, as a stony path in the shady solace of the trees (albeit briefly interrupted by the need to cross the other main road running out of the town about halfway along). The end of the track then emerged onto a quiet road, that one could briefly dogleg across, to emerge blinking in the sunlight of the open downs above the town.

It was truly a fragment of ancient countryside, passing right through suburbia, that had somehow dodged being ‘upgraded’. I think it would have still been entirely familiar to a resident of the area from a couple of hundred years ago.

I never really understood the function this lane had served in the past. It seemed to cross between the three roads leading out of the side of town it was on, and that was it. I suppose it was the equivalent, in its day, of a short stretch of the M25, allowing one to dodge between the main routes without entering the hustle of the town centre. It seems a difficult metaphor to imagine though, peopled as it must have been by rustics on foot or horseback, or with lumbering waggons, rather than motorbikes, cars and lorries.

Nearly every walk, run and cycle ride that I took out from my house would start and end by passing up and down this old lane and I was most grateful to it, for allowing me to feel I had escaped town nearly half a mile earlier than I actually had. Many was the time on these excursions that I would find my mind wandering back to those of times past that had travelled the road; each with their own thoughts and reflections whilst engaged on the tasks of their day. The connection that I felt with them and the temporal perspective I gained on my own life was something I will always be grateful for.

It should, I suppose then, be no little surprise that the changing patterns of our transport infrastructure stretching back in time has continued to hold a deep fascination for me. I can’t help but notice wherever I go little signs of the presence of these older, different routes, patterns, or means of movement to those currently in use.

Sometimes it is just the minor realignment of a road that catches my attention. It was a revelation when it occurred to me that the word ‘layby’ in my assimilated vocabulary, might have originated from describing a little fragment of old road that had been ‘laid by’. Suddenly, I could see all the places where the road had been re-aligned from their original characteristic rolling forms. Previously, I had thought that all these little strips of tarmac had been deliberately put by the road for the convenience of motorists wishing to stop.

Another curious road kink I have recently noticed is in the A40 near here, in Carmarthenshire. This one is explained at a glance by the distinctive shape of an old Toll House in the kink, which in this case the road realignment has steered around, rather than flattened, as so many have been. Its presence there leads one mind straight to so many vignettes of the history that have probably played out around it.

Occasionally, one stumbles on the tiniest of indications of a whole, now completely lost piece of major transport infrastructure. Passing through a quiet, relatively high up wood, miles from any navigable river, in West Sussex, I once noticed the house name ‘Lock Cottage’. I could make no sense of this name in this location. Poring over my map that evening though, I realised that the old Wey and Arun canal had run through the wood, the only obvious remnant of it now being this old lock keeper’s cottage, high and dry amongst the trees. At some point, that quiet spot had been a traffic ‘highway’ of the time, carrying goods past, and from or to, many of the local farms.

To return to the area I live now and my nearest town, Llandeilo, I spotted when walking out south of the town the curious road name ‘Railway Terrace’, which is actually some distance from the existing rail line. A little research showed it to relate to the now lost Llandeilo to Carmarthen railway line and alerted me to the location of the now completely disappeared ‘Llandilo Bridge Station’ (sic) within yards of this road name sign.

I have passed the spot many times since, and a little part of my mind inevitably wanders back to imagining what it must have been like, so much so, in fact that I felt compelled to paint the scene in my mind’s eye. There I am, waiting on a deserted, rain soaked platform, which throws just a glimmer of light back up, under a brooding Towy Valley sky, whilst a little pannier tank approaches with the morning train against the distant hills.

Once again, as it did on that little fragment of ‘unlost’ lane in my youth, I find the past and present merging together in a particular kind of reflection that brings solace to the soul.