motorway picnic by katharine eastman
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a simple quickly-made ambient thing very similar to recent ones - but this one has even longer silences than ever in its early stages - e.g. the first five minutes is more silence than music
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For the walker who lives in the middle of Southampton there aren't many nice ways to get out - town's a crap place to be a cyclist, and it's even worse for the walker. Yes there is the brilliant Itchen Way - from my doorstep I need walk along virtually no busy roads and it's possible to get to Winchester or anywhere - across the Avenue, down to the Itchen, along it, over the Cobden Bridge, through Riverside Park all the way to the Motorway, under it, up the dry canal beside the airport, and there's Eastleigh .... etc.
It's a great walk. Recently absolutely eeeeveryone's been going on to me about a recent thingy by Chris Packham (?) about him walking along the Itchen Way - so that's that buggered - by the people who can only do things once they've seen someone else do them on TV - I'd never heard of Chris Packham before and I still don't know why he's famous.
Trying to get out of the heart of Southampton heading east is good in theory - down the Solent Way by the seashore to Hamble-le-Rice, either a ferry (rowing boat) or a trudge all the way back up to Bursledon and down the other side - it's all a great walk - but it's a helluva trudge to get not very far. If I wanted to go east I'd go up the Itchen Way to Shawford and then turn right and amble about in the South Downs all the way to Eastbourne and beyond. Which is something that I have done several times.
Trying to head west is the worst - it's walking along main roads until Totton and beyond - really till Ashurst I suppose. But I must admit I never mind walking along roads or being in built up areas.
I wanted a new way out - and the map shows an obvious one - but you never know how really-obvious it might be until you've actually tried it and today I did - off to Lidl near the Common to get lunch (cheese, raspberries, apple juice, cashew nuts, grapes), and then walk diagonally across the Common from bottom-right to top-left, to where Hill Lane crosses Winchester Road, up to the sports ground, through that a bit and then bear left and walk along the quiet road that runs between Lordswood and the sports ground, then into Lordswood (the actual wood) itself - and I'd never realised how easy/quick it is to get from the middle of town to a place that feels like the real countryside - well it is the real countryside - as much as countryside can be "real" in England nowadays.
Keep going in a straight line northwards and eventually there's a very quiet road and a bridge over the motorway with a picnic-place for one (pictured) right by it. I stopped here and had half of my lunch. Then over the motorway and into Chilworth - along the pavement beside the A27, into Old Chilworth, into the churchyard and this one gets brilliant marks for the number of seats and benches for the visitor.
The rest of my lunch. Along the quiet back-road kinda parallel with the A27, and then a bit of a trudge into North Baddesley. Then across the main road and down one of those narrow secretive easily-missed footpaths that runs straight and long and north over Emer Bog (not very boggy) all the way to Crampmoor.
By this point I'd made the point. I was already on a different map. And so close to Romsey that that is where I decided to go - the original plan had been to turn round at some stage and walk back home - but I love buses and all that stuff - so the bus home is what happened.
None of it took very long and I still felt oomphy and it should be easy next time to walk all the way to Broughton Down in one day, sleep there, then keep going north-west and on Day Two I could be deep-ish into Salisbury Plain.
I'm a walker and a driver and a cyclist and I love the first two things but would/could never cycle for pleasure - bikes are good for getting places in town in a hurry, and they're okay for coming back from some distant favourite garage where you've dropped off yr car. But bikes are the worst of both worlds, I think. You're as remote from your surroundings as you would be in a car, you're wet in the rain, you have nowhere to sleep overnight but you have something big that needs tucking away etc etc.
No it's walking or driving for me. And driving now is not so much pleasure anymore, whereas walking seems to have really made me very happy lately. So that's that. Now I don't need a map to get from here to Broughton Down.
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(recorded this evening, photo today, picnic table for one, where Chilworth Drove crosses the M27)
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