Tracks
…unsettled…We’ve got some more showery days to come first though, with further thundery downpours possible…
This is the starting point, an ordinary track leading up through the valley, bounded on one side by a solid wooden fence skirting the edge of the estate; in the rough ground Hawthorn, Elder, brambles, plants that colonise disturbed soil, garden escapees too, growing through nettle and Burdock. Horses graze the valley side sloping away to the industrial estate.
Flint breaking through chalk, the soil washed away by successive rains, roots exposed, the track accumulates detritus; plastic carrier bags snagged on bramble; a crumpled Cookie Bites cheese chip bag; field bindweed and nettle growing over two polycarbonate sheets, the remnants of a discarded greenhouse; a shredded bin bag, contents scattered across the track.
Same old, same old, familiar as all such tracks are, short cuts to somewhere else, forever changing with the seasons, weather. The chalk surface, slippery after rain, equally treacherous on cold winter mornings.
A narrow way, and so there’s need to occasionally let someone pass, with maybe the odd word, brief exchange. And then walking; this is where it begins, this is where I start following chalk tracks.