Literary Walking in Hampshire - A Slippy Slidey Affair

The affection I have for my adopted home county of Hampshire has grown steadily down the years, but an unanticipated new enthusiasm has recently taken hold as I slowly register its dense connections with the English literature I’ve belatedly engaged with and am learning to love. A simple walk out of Petersfield today, through the village of Steep and up onto the Ashford Hangers, and then down towards Hawkley had us (almost literally) falling over literary associations and resonances.

It was a cool murky start as we wound our way past Bedales school towards Steep, where the war memorial revealed the first surprise. I’ve cycled past this little pillar perhaps a hundred times in my life yet never stopped to read it; today we did and registered the inclusion on the roll of honour of one Edward Thomas, poet, writer, and literary critic. The countryside and country life were Thomas’s muse and his work some of the most evocative of southern England ever produced. He settled in Steep with his family in 1906, and walked and wrote prodigiously, although he only turned to poetry from his staple prose in 1914 with the encouragement of his close friend the American poet Robert Frost. As we strolled to the northern edge of the village we passed Thomas's first home, Berryfield Cottage, where it was good to see that it still seemed to be someone’s normal home, with no blue plaque or tourist paraphernalia in immediate evidence.

 

Then it was the stiff pull up through the wooded hangers, picking our way, initially alongside a clear spring-fed chalk stream, through sticky mud on slippy chalk, gradually aware of increasing height but tantalised by the characteristic view-blocking trees. On reaching the top of Shoulder of Mutton Hill a glorious, expansive view south east should have been ours, one of the finest in southern England and referred to in several of Thomas’s poems. But the murk hid it for now, so we pressed on along the ridge.

As we were about to descend northwards towards Oakshott two deafening quad bikes roared up, spraying mud everywhere as they turned sharply down the track we were also to follow. The peace was well and truly shattered and tranquillity was hard to re-establish as we slithered down the steepening quagmire of the track, deeply gouged by 4x4s and water run-off. The going became increasing difficult and exasperating in the claustrophobic tradition of many a Hampshire sunken lane, and sufficiently vertiginous to be a little like trying to down-climb an ice-covered gully. At a final absurd precarious friction-free giant step, with no sensible way forward, we made a more emotional literary connection. Nearly 200 years ago the indefatigable William Cobbett explored this area on horseback and railed regularly and heartily in his classic Rural Rides against the perilous muddy morasses he had to negotiate down its sunken lanes. What can I say except that my better half produced a sequence of suitably impressive expletives in classic Cobbett style (she formerly of William Cobbett Middle School, Farnham) as we struggled to accept we were just going to have to turn round and climb all the way back up through the mud to the ridge.

Looking north to the distant church tower of Hawkley, from Ashford Hanger

 

This we did in suitably dark mood, having had our route to Hawkley neatly curtailed. Nonetheless we somehow remained friendly towards a group of exaggeratedly polite off-road motorcylists who descended gingerly towards us, clearly aware that public acceptance of their blatantly destructive activity was on a perpetual knife-edge.

Regaining the ridge we claimed our recompense, for the mists were clearing rapidly and the sun beginning to energise all about. To quote Cobbett as he sat on horseback near this spot in 1822:

“…out we came, all in a moment, at the very edge of the hanger! And, never, in all my life, was I so surprised and so delighted! I pulled up my horse, and sat and looked; and it was like looking from the top of a castle down into the sea, except that the valley was land and not water.”

Looking south-east from Shoulder of Mutton Hill towards the distant South Downs

 We drank it all in as we had our lunch, equally amazed and inspired at the panorama of hills and woodland extending east and south, subtly lit, with the distant skyline of the South Downs the elegant backdrop. Far down below, directly at our feet, sat Berryfield Cottage, a sublime location – how did it take the troubled Thomas so long to turn to poetry here? (But then it was already largely there, his prose is often almost poetry, exemplified by the magnificent The South Country and In Pursuit of Spring).

 

Descending the open slope of the hill is a rare delight on the wooded Hangers, to be drawn out as much as possible, with the view initially widening as partially obscuring trees are passed, before compressing vertically as further height is lost – perhaps there is a sweet spot halfway down, not far below the Edward Thomas memorial stone. The simple octagonal plaque poignantly reminds us of Thomas’s tragic early demise aged 39, killed by the blast of a shell in the Battle of Arras, on Easter Monday 1917 only two months after arriving at the front. He refers to this hillside in a number of poems, notably in When First:

“When first I came here I had hope,
Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat
My heart at sight of the tall slope
Of grass and yews, as if my feet

Only by scaling its steps of chalk
Would see something no other hill
Ever disclosed...”

Looking down from Shoulder of Mutton Hill, Berryfield Cottage is the right hand building in the foreground

We ambled back towards Petersfield in the sunshine, stopping for contemplation in Steep churchyard, only forgoing the interior and its Edward Thomas memorial windows due to the calamitously muddy state of our boots (I hear Cobbett muttering!). A beautiful, annoying, frustrating, uplifting day with much to take away (and return to)…