Sep. 10, 1891. The Country
Very few consecutive days pass at Golden End without my contriving to get what I most enjoy in the form of exercise—a long, slow, solitary ride; severer activities are denied me. I have a strong, big-boned, amiable horse—strength is the one desideratum in a horse, in country where, to reach a point that appears to be a quarter of a mile away, it is often necessary to descend by a steep lane to a point two or three hundred feet below and to ascend a corresponding acclivity on the other side. Sometimes my ride has a definite object. I have to see a neighbouring farmer on business, or there is shopping to be done at Spyfield, or a distant call has to be paid—but it is best when there is no such scheme—and the result is that after a few years there is hardly a lane within a radius of five miles that I have not carefully explored and hardly a hamlet within ten miles that I have not visited.
The by-lanes are the most attractive feature.[177] You turn out of the high-road down a steep sandy track, with high banks overhung by hazel and spindlewood and oak-copse; the ground falls rapidly. Through gaps at the side you can see the high, sloping forest glades opposite, or look along lonely green rides which lead straight into the heart of silent woods. There has been as a rule no parsimonious policy of enclosure, and the result is that there are often wide grassy spaces beside the road, thick-set with furze or forest undergrowth, with here and there a tiny pool, or a little dingle where sandstone has been dug. Down at the base of the hill you find a stream running deep below a rustic white-railed bridge, through sandy cuttings, all richly embowered with alders, and murmuring pleasantly through tall water-plants. Here and there is a weather-tiled cottage, with a boarded gable and a huge brick chimney-stack, flanked by a monstrous yew. Suddenly the road strikes into a piece of common, a true English forest, with a few huge beeches, and thick covert of ferns and saplings; still higher and you are on open ground, with the fragrant air blowing off the heather; a clump of pines marks the summit, and in an instant the rolling[178] plain lies before you, rich in wood, rising in billowy ranges, with the smoke going up from a hundred hamlets, and the shadowy downs closing the horizon. Then you can ride a mile or two on soft white sand-paths winding in and out among the heather, while the sun goes slowly down among purple islands of cloud, with gilded promontories and fiords of rosy light, and the landscape grows more and more indistinct and romantic, suffused in a golden haze. At last it is time to turn homewards, and you wind down into a leafy dingle, where the air lies in cool strata across the sun-warmed path, and fragrant wood-smells, from the heart of winding ways and marshy streamlets, pour out of the green dusk. The whole day you have hardly seen a human being—an old labourer has looked out with a slow bovine stare from some field-c............