Much of the UK is peppered with ancient cart-ways of varying age. How old this one is, I don’t know, but in places has been strengthened with areas of stone cobbles. To the left is a drop of around 4 or 5 feet, the wired fence simply to keep cattle from getting into the adjoining wood.
—Stephen——
Your photos really bring the landscape into focus – and its soul too. This is so beautiful it seems familiar (…. maybe in some other life some other dimension I walked that path).
I’m sure that similar paths/tracks exist in all parts of the world – I just happened to photograph this one. I suspect that if I had been with someone else I may have passed through without taking a shot.
The scene looks so peaceful to me.
Actually, some enterprising individual was going hell for leather with a chainsaw in the adjoining wood!
Do you think the trees to the right look like they might have been a hedge at one time? A hawthorn hedge gone feral?
Oh, absolutely. A key diagnostic for old track ways is just this arrangement. Often there is evidence of ancient laying – in some rare cases the trees can be melded together.
I love this one Stephen…really excellent (and I have a feeling I have been there too but can’t place it)
Thanks!
‘Tis round the back of Ripley Castle, the track down from the Monk’s Cross. – But it’s similar to many other tracks.
Ah, not where I thought as I have never been there. A grand shot though
I feel one could become happily lost on a trail like this one.
🙂 – I’ve found the ‘mood’ of such trails very much about time of day, weather, and being on my own – (not ways wise in some places – but okay around my usual haunts.