To Build or Not to Build

A local town needs a bypass, it wants a bypass. The roads are gridlocked, growth is hindered. The issue has periodically raised it's head for a generation. In fact, in a letter to the local paper a resident points out that twenty years ago it got so bad they built a relief road, but it's now gridlocked.

And herein lies the problem. "Build it and they will come" applies to roads as much as circuses, and in twenty years the bypass will probably again be gridlocked. The road passes a station. It's a short walk to the town and there are good links with some, but not all, local towns - Dr Beeching saw to that.

The people who want the bypass say the gridlock puts people off coming to the town and drives away business. Perhaps while the cars are at a standstill the local council might survey the drivers, many of whom are alone in five seater vehicles, and establish how many are heading to the town and how many are just trying to get somewhere else? I wonder how many people are really put off by the traffic? Judging by the queues at local horse racing days traffic and boot fairs is rarely something that puts people off their journeys.

The favoured route for the bypass will punch through an ancient wood. When it was proposed to include this wood in the national park, the local county council referred to it as 'unremarkable.' The mainly Conservative council mentioned further on it's objection that, essentially, it's in the way of the bypass.

We must move faster, get there quicker, not have to wait. Time is money, and money is growth. We need a bypass to drive this growth, in the same way that we need to decimate even more countryside for a high speed rail link from Birmingham to London. We must shave off a few minutes. Time is money. We need the rail link because the motorway they built in recent memory is not enough, it's full. We can't expect people to get up earlier, only make necessary journeys, or travel together. We can't expect business men to use technology to have their meetings, via Skype and Videolink. No, it must be done face to face. The journey has to be made. Flesh has to be pressed.

The HGVs that pass the local town have to cross a rail bridge. Every few years it has to be strengthened. It's not up to the traffic. It crosses near the station, where the old goods yard is laid to waste and development land. We don't use the rail network for freight here. Even if it's use could be resurrected the network that once supported it is buried under such  development or is wasteland. The short-sightedness of our forebears has come to haunt us. Roads are the answer. The only answer. Build them we must. Until every inch of unremarkable landscape is buried under concrete.

A letter in the local paper says wildlife can thrive on verges. So the bypass could become a haven for wildlife. Those that would want to enjoy it, of course, would have to take their lives in their hands foraging on the verge while trucks rumble by at umpteen miles an hour. Of course, the vergeside environment would support a different ecology to that of the ancient woodland, with it's coppiced beeches, medieval ponds, and  historic oaks that would be lost by it's construction. 

The local council will again fight a costly battle to argue for the bypass, already rejected once on environmental grounds, protestors will take to the trees. The new planning laws may even support its approval. Then millions will be spent on its construction. The traffic will come, and it will increase, and in time this road too will fill with cars.

The long term view, to use the money to change habits, support improvements to rural public transport, is not something we are used to taking in this country, especially when it comes to transport policy.  What we need to do, for the greater good, for the benefit of the vocal minority - the business leaders, the corporations who's only link with the area it's to rumble blindly through - is build on anything unremarkable.

Until all that is left is the remarkable. Remarkable because it's still there.

Life in the Freezer

RSPB Pulborough Brooks

A feeble sun, risen barely above the horizon casts long shadows on hard frozen ground. On the south part of the brooks, in the lee of the wind there is such silence that every sound is amplified; from the blackbirds turning over leaves under almost ever hedgerow to the sound of the stoat tip-toeing along the bank of a frosty ditch.  I feel like I am the only person here.

A solitary cloud breaks up the endless ice blue of the sky, moving meekly along above a threadbare willow that creaks lazily in a gentle breeze. The ground is concrete hard, and most of the flooded meadows have succumbed to Jack Frost. Lapwings, driven from the water's edges, forage busily  in fields for insects, mingling with flocks of nervous wigeon, arrived from Russia, to whom the temperatures must seem positively balmy. Two snipe hunker down in a nearby ditch, before a tiff send one shuffling unhappily off to a less favourable spot. A shoveler looks on from the water's edge, unmoved.

Behind a hedgerow a large herd of black fallow deer gather, some lazy with sleep, others jumpy. I move downwind of them, and away from a chattering group of birders. As I expected the deer are driven further along and closer to me, so close I can see the long lashes of a doe above sad looking eyes. We watch each other for quite some time, before a far away dog barks and the startled herd flee away to the north. 

A goldcrest fusses acrobatically about the willows, watched by a curious squirrel. Somewhere nearby another calls, and then another. While the goldcrest flits from branch to branch a treecreeper, white breast flashing in the dappled light, contents himself with the grubs that have moved into the light on the trunk. 


Even the larger meadows are given over almost in their totality to ice, a freeze that seems to have happened so suddenly that ripples have frozen into the surface of the water. Far away a flock of greylag geese, with a few white fronted geese secreted among feed contentedly, ignoring the presence of a juvenile peregrine tiercel who preens himself on a molehill. There are few waterfowl for him to drive up, a solitary shelduck huddles up on a frosty bank, an injured wing folded awkwardly across his back. 



Everywhere groups of tits flit back and forth between trees, coal, blue, great and long tailed are much in evidence; as are numerous house sparrows. 

Above the fields to the north east a kestrel hunts, now hovering, now swooping, circling and hovering again.


On the path leading back south a cacophony of cackles erupt from a flock of fidgety crows, and the falcon peregrine is driven up and away at great speed; arcing round in a loop she flips upside down, a flash of black and white streaked underbelly, yellow talons as sharp as daggers lash out and she is gone behind the tree line. 






Breath forms clouds in the air, and the chill works its way into the bones. The cafe's bread pudding and warmth calls me inside.
 

The Enchanted Wood

Ebernoe Common

Heavy snow-laden clouds seem to be propped up by the tall  birch trees around the small Victorian red-brick church, and the occasional flurry of snow litters the car park with flecks of white.

To the east of the church a path runs south and then south east, made up in that ancient way of compacted rubble, slippery with mud, ice and beech mast. To the left is Furnace Field, in warmer times a favourite haunt of adders. Now, nervous fieldfares bolt out of hedges to snatch morsels from the iced-fingers of grass.

Further on, across a stream-bottomed valley there stands a restored brick kiln, a reminder that this which nature has reclaimed was once a centre of industry, where the sounds of hammers echoed for miles around, while ther forests flickered with fire.

More evidence of this industrial past lies south-west of the church where a frozen furnace pond supports a small flock of mournful looking mallards. The pond sparkles like glitter has been strewn across it surface, and each clumsy mallard footstep echoes from bank to bank.

Great clouds of blue, coal and great tits engage in what appears to be a competition to throw over the largest leaf as they forage among the beach mast. Suddenly an old English sheepdog appears and sits obediently at my side. For a while we stand together in silence watching the birds before the voice of an unseen mistress calls him away, and with a glance over his shoulder he is gone.

Bemused I turn back to find the tits have left, and a solitary grey squirrel sits where they foraged, clasping a beech nut. I hear what I initially take to be a jay mimicking a buzzard, as they are known to do, when the call rises in volume, incessant and repetitive.

I scan the skies, the squirrel scampers up the nearest tree, and above two common buzzards appear. One is noticeably smaller than the other, who calls constantly. They glide only for short periods and at a low altitude, the cold air probably lacking the thermals they need for their familiar soaring displays.

It is easy to see why in Scotland they are known as the 'tourist's Eagle' with their long fingery wings and gliding flight. After fifteen minutes or more of calling and circling they fly west into the weak sun and are lost over the beech trees.

Across the forest the repetitive beat of a drumming great spotted woodpecker sounds out, loud but unseen, pausing occasionally, waiting for an answer that never seems to come.

Paths criss-cross this ancient forest, tempting the explorer. They are the remnants of trackways that lead to the industrial sites that were once common here, some are hollow-ways, hundreds of years old. It is easy to get lost here, happy care-free lost of a child in an enchanted forest. Following any of the paths north leads to the church, or if not the road that leads to the church, where a welcome flask of soup waits in the car.

Arlington Reservoir

Crepuscular rays cut through net curtains of clouds like a golden rapier, a carrion crow, fingery wings silhouetted against the sun cackles by. Below, the water sparkles like a silver coin dropped in a downland hollow.

Flocks of common gull bicker like hormonal teenagers. The shrivelled remnants of rosehips attract clouds of chattering long tailed tits, and the occasional coal tit. Away to the south over the grey whaleback of the south downs rain heavy clouds rush by on a wintery westerly breeze.

On the reservoir wigeon  gossip happily among themselves, while a gravel voiced jay chases a straying squirrel from a small copse, before proudly preening himself on a sun streaked fencepost.

The sun is obscured and the waters turn the muddy brown of wealden clay, and the clouds lower and thicken with anger.

Coppiced woodland creaks and sways like the mast of ships port bound by woodland storms. Firle Beacon towers above, the highest point of the eastern end of the south downs, the northern escarpment shrinks away in shadow below the humped crown which kaleidoscopes from green to gold to grey and mauve.

A cormorant skims the surface of the waters, twisting and turning, feet inches above the choppy waves before rising off to the north and joining fifteen more forming a soldiery shoreside line behind a bemused corporal of a grey heron. They watch common and herring gulls wheeling in dogfights across the waters.

This place feels like what it is, forced and managed to the n'th degree, where signs welcome but guard against having too much fun. Algae and animals are out to harm us, and the mud is soft and dangerous, unless, it seems, one is angler or boatowner. In places black bags of dog shit decorate the branches of trees like the remains of some macabre Xmas celebration.

 As I leave a skein of canda geese honks its noisy arrival, and the sky comes alive with the fire of sunset

Cissbury Ring

Near the car park conspiratorial ravens chatter in electronic voices, mattock beaks silhouetted against the skyline . A magpie argues angrily with them before alighting in a conifer which flexes as he scolds me for too close an approach, I salute him theatrically and he turns his back in disgust.

As I toil up the steep slope night falls like a shroud slowly covering the sleeping land. Cobalt slides into slate into black.

Sulphur, magnesium and neon sparkle in the valley below, while to the north all is black, all is silent. Man is emasculated, stripped of a sense. The vulnerability of the apex hunter is absolute here. Darkness is everything.

Senses become muddled, the air tastes of spring; but smells of autumn. Smoke rises from backyard fires as christmas smoulders and drifts away on the breeze. A cloud of blue tits trills a lullaby from shrubs hard by the path, where sad posters beg for news of lost friends.

An woodland trackway lives with the sound of the night as feet slide in a muddy gravy, feeling for friction,  the incline increasing before giving way to springy downland turf. Here and there under skeletal trees a smattering of freshly dug chalk sparkles like fresh snow in the moonlight. A barn owl screeches as it wakes, ravenous, the sound is everywhere, without sight the ears are sharpened.

The only other sound is the breathless labour of ascent. 

Ancient ramparts rear up into the black, the prows of chalky ships against a black sea. In the northwest corner the remnants of flint mines sink into the earth, their shrubby hollows tempt unwary ankles to twist.

Once there was no turf on these ramparts, stripped bare the chalk would have shone like a beacon for miles around on nights like these; this capital of an ancient downland kingdom.

Far below downland sheep pick over a brown field, white felt on a children's playmat. On the horizon Chanctonbury's regal crown of beech crests the horizon. In a coombe below a solitary green woodpecker laughs manically at some hidden joke, before flying drunkenly into the nearby copse. A tawny owl welcomes the night with it's horror-movie call.

Suddeny, just below the rampart, Chalkpit Wood erupts as the owl wheels and stalls, hovers and plunges, bringing terror in a thrashing of feathers and fur, a slicing of dagger-talons, and then: silence.

A horse's head of cloud canters across a full moon, and trees become human, stalking in the night, with fingery roots grasping up intent on harm.

This is an old landscape, a place of ancestors, long since swept away on a tide of revolution, a place of life and industry, of loves and losses; now reclaimed by nature.

Protected now, preserved forever, no-one will punch a high-speed rail line through here, destroying all that matters for the benefit of the few who chose to live far away from their employment, to the detriment of those that chose the simplicity of a slower life.

Far away someone ignores a car alarm.  In this moment I live forever.

24.12.2011

Waltham Brooks

The fire still rages behind the Downs, the sky burns the orange of an early winter sunset.

A walk along the flood bank to a further field brings the solitude of a lone tree. Rushes abound on a small island, just south of the canal entrance, and a distraction here spoils a photgraphic opportunity when I rise over the bank to disturb a large male short eared owl with a water vole firmly grasped in his talons.

He rises up and scolds me as he seeks the cover of the shrubs 500 metres west. Clouds cover the sun and the colours change to tired greys.

The trouble with owls is that they are the colour of bark, and hide in trees.

I glass the length of the shrubbery for a  few minutes unsuccessfully before one, then a second, takes to the air. They dogfight over some imagined slight before one retreats, wisely chooing a hawthorn further west as his perch. Battle is spectacular, with twists and turns, screeching and aerobatics; all bluff and bluster, neither wishing to retire hurt on such fertile hunting grounds.

The kestrel keeps his solitary distance, drifting south, and higher, watching all the time.

 
Just before four the sun sets and the winds drag the clouds to the east. The sky burns again, and the fields empty towards homes with mince pies waiting for intrepid explorers.

14.12.2011

Wiggonholt Common

Fingers of smoke and mist creeps between the trees on Wiggonholt Common, which smells of bonfires from where clearance works are taking place in Northpark Wood, just over the road to Greatham.

A trio of great spotted woodpeckers swarm over the rotting corpse of an alder, the slightest noise driving them onto the opposite side of the trunk. A bounding Labrador finally flushes them into the canopy and away. 

Crossbills, brick red against the grey mist, chatter nosily as they acrobatically feed from the cones in the evergreen clump. Here and there a robin announces his presence with his whistling song, a melodic warning to others that this was most definitely his territory. It's struggling to rain, and by the first hour of the afternoon it already felt like dusk was coming. 

Waltham Brooks  is drenched in grey, the rain pools on already soaking watermeadow. This is be no day to see the short eared owls that have recently arrived here, and that I watched just a few days ago. The wind and rain a hinderance to creatures that hunt by sound. This is a grey day, a day to be indoors with a log fire, and a glass of something Scottish.

I edge along the riverbank, dropping down to walk at about halfway up the steep slope, the better to disguise my silhouette. A peregrine watches me from a power line across on the other bank. I glass him, and his head tilts inquisitively as we watch each other; the watcher watched.

Falcons never fly when you're watching them.

I look down momentarily and he's gone, slipping effortlessly away into the steel grey sky, his departure belied by the cloud of starlings he sends up to the south.

A grey heron rises with slow, languid, almost thoughtful flight and puts down again in the reeds on the far bank, only his head peering curiously back at me. His expression one of annoyance as if I had disturbed some long awaited table at Michelin starred restaurant.

I try to use the cover of some autumn-stripped branches to approach, but a crack of a branch and a splosh of a boot in a puddle and he's away again, another 300 yards south, and into deeper reeds. He croaks his sore-throated anger at me, and disappears from view.

I climb back up to the flood bank, where the old canal lock used to allow the barques onto the river, and pick up a kestrel, low behind the leafless shrubs that form the shore of the flooded part of the meadows, he rises, hovers, shifts east then west slightly, drops, hovers then plummets from the sky and I lose sight.

Beneath my feet, a pile of neatly plucked moorhen  feathers and a few bones glisten in the rain. A falcon has fed here recently.

I start to retrace my footsteps, tiring of the rain, and he's there again. I see the peregrine glide into the tree, and turn to watch me. He hops along sideways, then stiffens. I seek a tree to break up my shape and watch, and wait.

He rises, and heads straight for the flood waters, climbing slowly, sending up great clouds of waders and ducks, before circling higher into the slate-grey sky and disappearing. After I while I turn back to glass his tree and he's there; as if he'd run the ducks just for fun. I left him sat there, fluffed up against the rainy..