Banburyshire Rambles Photo-Journal

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate the ‘feel’ of the landscape; how spending a lot of time walking in the countryside gives a different perspective on the topography, geology, and ecology of the land you pass through at a barely conscious level. I've always felt that this track from Stuchbury toward Halse ‘is meant to be’; it feels like the right place to walk across this landscape.

This route follows a particularly splendid ridge all the way into Brackley – albeit mucked around a bit near Radstone as it is relegated to footpath. It just ‘feels’ like the way to go.

I think that’s also why the realignment of this route to accommodate the passing of HS2 – quite apart from shaving off half of Halse Copse – feels wrong.

The psychogeography of routes like this, the reason for their being, was that long ago people travelled this way because this route offered the best journey (which is how many of our ancient trackways and ridge-routes were formed from the end of the last Ice Age). Even in this modern world, we can still appreciate those same sensations as we traverse the landscape on foot at three-and-a-bit mile-per-hour today – just as those passing this point at 225mph will not, given much of the landscape will just be a momentary blur viewed from a highly engineered envelope of technology.

The track wills me on towards the end of the walk, and the slow bus ride home. Will it still do the same when I have to walk out of my way to get around the obstruction that is to be laid in my path?