The Countryside

I’ve never been totally at home in the countryside. It is fraught with dangers. It contains far too many animals for a start, like the herd of over-inquisitive cows that ganged up on us as we made for the only gated escape route from their field. Then there was the horse that tried to bite my elbow when I had finally found the nerve to take a short cut across his patch at Tregaron [looking for red kites in the years before the red kites came to us]. Instead, he took a piece out of my jumper. Two potentially killer sheep once barred our way in a very confrontational manner on a hillside path just down the road from here.

Then there are insects. I was stung [or bitten?] twice in Spain by something that came straight at me, landed on the front of my tee shirt, fired a missile, then had the cheek to move a few inches to the left, have a second go and then fly off before I could even whack it away or identify it, leaving me with two very sore and raised incisions. It was a perfectly executed double whammy - a surgical strike.

There is also the problem of terrain. I don’t mind climbing a mountain, though it is more likely to be a hill these days. That is purposeful and I can add it to my list of summits conquered. Unfortunately, I have to come down again and then the knees start complaining big time.    

I am also fearful of straying from marked footpaths. I actually appear to have something of a flair for this. I’ve found that trespassing is easy to achieve, quite unintentionally. When the realisation dawns that we are undeniably off track, it’s at the back of my mind that we will be met round the next corner by a farmer with a scowl and probably a gun, too, to remind us that the concept of “right to roam” is sometimes just that - a concept, and one that has not yet reached his fiefdom. Part of me feels that we are always unwelcome guests anywhere near farmland and especially in those coveted pockets of woodland where they kill birds for fun.

The conclusion I’ve drawn is that the countryside is best viewed from a safe distance. My preferred mode of transport for such forays would always be the railway. The countryside looks prettier from a slight distance than when you are snagging your clothing on brambles or slipping on a wet patch and landing with your hands on some nettles. Railways provide the opportunity to enjoy rural landscapes in comfort and to be protected from rural uncertainties as well as the vagaries of the weather and over-crowded roads.

The mosaic of rural Britain is undeniably varied and beautiful, but that pattern - sculpted by nature and then fashioned by man for a further few thousand years to put the finishing touches - unfolds perfectly in the panorama provided by the carriage window.    

Railway posters have sometimes employed just such a technique by including the window frame in the design, a tactic also employed in the introduction to the Michael Portillo, Bradshaw inspired, TV programmes. 1950’s road traffic was clearly a lot busier than my rose-tinted recollections were suggesting.