I found a road

I found a road to walk along. This is it:

To be fair, I’ve known about this road for ages. It is called Heath Ride, and it is a road I cycle on my way to work, almost every time I take this option rather than driving or lift-sharing. It extends in a nice straight line from near my house to Crowthorne Train Station, and links to a nice, traffic-free commute down tracks and across golf courses.

It is a road that Kim and I have walked often too. We love it. It is one of those roads in which all the houses are impressive, and have names rather than numbers. More than once Kim and I have been asked by a lost-looking, crawling motorist whether we “know where the house called Tree Tops is?” If we had the money, I’m sure we’d dream of living on this road. That is how nice the houses are. We’d need more money to even dream.

We are lucky to live somewhere that, while suburban in character, offers ‘five minutes to the country’ in most directions. This road serves as the launchpad for a number of our favourite walks locally. Whether headed to our closest pub, the woods we like to explore in the summer, our favourite cafe, or further afield - we often start here. It mimics the countryside in its resistance to connectivity too. There is a wonderful ‘passing of time’ scene in the film Hot Fuzz when the protagonist, moving to his new home in a remote village, watches in horror as the reception bars drain from his phone with each passing minute; I think of this scene whenever I go to Heath Ride.

I’ve been thinking hard about what on earth to write about alongside Beata’s stories, not having (like Beata) the obvious wonder of a trip around the world and all its discovery to spark my imagination. Perhaps my assertion that travel is not necessary to expand the mind (useful, but not necessary) is harder to demonstrate than I had thought. While Beata extols the virtues of living fast and slow on her boat and in port, and informs us all of the importance of keeping our bottoms clean(!) I’ve been struggling to find even a starting point. This road is a natural choice though, for the reasons noted.

A glance at the map reveals the road’s location and locale. A straight line through the enviable assortment of houses, and some woods. Red crosses show entry and exit at each end.

(Image: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright)

There’s plenty to see here. I’ve never paid as much attention before, but if I look, there is a lot to spark thought. The most obvious point of interest might be its joining at one end to Wellingtonia Avenue, which itself is lined with over one hundred Giant Sequoia trees, reportedly planted in the 1860s as a memorial to the Duke of Wellington. I’ll likely talk about that in the next blog.

Oh, and there’s a nudist colony; that might be worth considering too.

For now I’ll reflect on the fact that while Beata sits somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, disconnected pretty much completely until her next stop in a couple of weeks (in Santa Cruz), I too will struggle with connectivity on my walks along Heath Ride, albeit on a much shorter timeline.

Shaun Helman, early March 2023.