The green and winding roads
Although they’re difficult to define, the charm of a green lane–be it a footpath, bridleway, byway or road–is its mystery and otherworldliness, says John Wright
The charm of a green lane is its mystery and other-worldliness, says John Wright
Hogg Cliff farm in west Dorset was my home for four years. i was newly married, highly impoverished and lacking transport, so a shopping expedition to our village involved a two-mile trek. Down the chalk-hill track, up again through the steep woodland path, across two fields and down, down the flinty and steeply banked Drift. returning home involved two hill climbs, so shopping was done with considerable care.
The Drift is an ancient drove-road that allowed stock to be brought to and from our long-lost village market—and it’s a green lane. green lanes defy precise definition and have no legal status. They can be a footpath, bridleway, byway or road; they can be public or private. They can run for scores of miles or just for a hundred yards. The general conception of them, however, is a rural trackway of some antiquity, which is unmetalled, often with high or overarching hedges and, on the less frequented lanes, sporting a sward— hence ‘green lane’.
Nearly every town possesses one somewhere, a memory of leafier times, although it may be in suburbia, next door to Coronation Street or on an industrial estate. There are, nevertheless, thousands of miles of green lanes largely untouched by the modern world and they are among the most enchanting and accessible delights of the countryside.
Knowledge of their origin is, however, often lost to us. Some will be iron age paths between fortifications, some a development of the deep, V-shaped boundary ditches between manors. The shorter ones may owe their existence to the necessity of accessing the ‘waste’ (the wild part of a manor left for the workers) for firewood and forageable plants. and then, of course, there are the drove-roads.
i know every inch of the Drift, from the riot of pink redcurrant flowers at the bottom, along elder, hawthorn, blackthorn and spindle, to the occasional stinkhorn fungus near the top. Halfway up is a gateway into a steeply sloping field and a green valley. Here, i always rest on the conveniently positioned and massively swollen stem of a once-laid hedging beech. on one late-night walk, we found fireflies illuminating the hawthorns like Christmas-tree lights.
‘Green lanes are among the most enchanting delights of the countryside’