The Wild Rover_ A Blistering Journey Along Britain_s Footpaths - Mike Parker [3]
Where better to start an inventory of the state of our rights of way than on your home patch? I sat by the fire one winter’s night and gazed at the local Explorer map, mentally totting up the little green dashed lines that wriggled and wormed their way across it, picturing the routes and their views that I knew as I followed the map. There were so many – but just as many again that I didn’t know. Whole footpaths and bridleways that I’d never once tried, of which I had no visual image or memory. As the fire crackled and spat, I resolved to draw a circle on the map, centred on my house, and to walk every single right of way – or at least, attempt to walk every one – within it. I pictured myself sallying forth from the doorstep like an ocean-going liner down the slip-way, plunging with a happy splash into the fields, forests and hills that surround me. I would conduct a thorough audit of my own back yard.
I started by drawing a five-mile circle around where I live, and swiftly realised that it presented a little too much of a challenge, one that looked as if it would take many months to complete. I pulled the circle in a little, taking a three-mile radius instead. Three miles sounds nothing. It is nothing: I habitually walk four-and-a-bit miles into town, and it’s a doddle, taking only a shave over an hour if I go at a decent lick. But looking at the six-mile-wide circle on the map was really quite disorienting. Within it, there were whole valleys, farms and woods that I’d never been near, whose names I’d never even consciously digested. I had no idea who lived there, what their lives were like, who they were related to or were friends with and – most pressingly – whether they’d welcome a map-wielding rambler or set their dogs on me.
Every day for the first week of my audit, I set off on foot in a different direction, and found footpaths and bridleways that I’d never seen before. I still can’t quite believe it, for I’ve been in this house for nearly a decade, and have been out walking almost every single day (the lot of the dog owner: so bloody what if it’s lashing with rain). Yet, here were old holloways and green lanes, paths bumping down through woods and tell-tale darker lines of grass winding their way across fields that I’d never clapped eyes on before. It was nothing short of thrilling.
Then the snows came, and stayed. This perked up the experience even more, for I was clearly able to see from the footprints just how many other creatures, human and otherwise, were sharing the paths. All kinds of birds, rabbits galore, a few hares, dogs, foxes, cats and some that were intriguingly difficult to pin down. Ever since I’ve lived here, there have been occasional rumoured sightings of big cats. A few years back, the mutters swelled to a climax one spring, and whispered second- and third-hand sightings were a regular topic of almost every conversation. One day during that time, a friend and I were walking in the forest when a black shape shot across the path, paused and then vanished into the undergrowth some hundred yards ahead. We both inhaled sharply and squealed, ‘What was that?’ It hadn’t much looked like a puma or panther to me, rather a wild boar, and I said so. ‘Oh thank God,’ my friend said. ‘That’s exactly what I thought, but I thought it sounded mad to say so.’ Scrutinising the snowy paw- and hoof-prints, I’ve not been able to make any out that are distinctly porcine, but there were plenty that looked thrillingly mysterious.
This being rural Wales, the cloven footprints of sheep were to be seen everywhere. Sheep paths are always a useful way of traversing rough ground, for the animals follow each other with such dependability that a groove is soon worn into a hillside or through a wood, enough to take a careful walker.