 |
| The long and winding road… it was the first time we had ever seen grass growing in the middle of the road! |
Today’s Saturday Snapshot is a kind of follow-up on last week’s, because on the way back from Bigbury Beach and Burgh Island we took a wrong turning, and instead of driving along the’A’ road we wanted, we found ourselves on a single track country lane, with grass growing in the middle! Parts of it were so overgrown it was like being in an ancient hollow way.
 |
| This one is a bit blurred (it’s not easy taking pictures in a moving car, even if you are travelling very slowly, but you you can see how the land is built up at the side of the road |
Having landed us in seemingly uncharted territory, Voice of the SatNav became uncharacteristically silent – there was not even the standard message about re-computing our route. At this point my imagination got the better of me, and I began to wonder if our route finder was really a Discworld-style machine powered by two bad-tempered imps taking turn and turn about on an oversized bicycle (rather than a state-of-the-art, hi-tech gadget using a satellite to tell us the way). Right now, I decided, the imps had both stopped pedaling, and were searching through a pile of maps and reference books, whilst quarreling furiously over who was to blame – one of the, both of them, or us!
 |
| This shot is even more blurred, but it’s kind of arty, and I rather like it, because it gives a sense of the tunnel effect of the vegetation. |
Anyway, since the road was much too narrow to even think about turning round – let alone trying such a manoeuvre – we had no alternative but to follow instructions, and we crawled along very slowly, in a very low gear. Fortunately the few cars we encountered travelling in the opposte direction were equally cautious, and there were passing points, where the road was slightly wider on each side, and you could avoid hitting anyone by pulling into the hedge!
I took photos through the car window, as an experiment, to try and show what the road was like. When we got home I looked at a map, but I’m still not sure where we went! However, I do wonder of sections of the route could have been an old hollow way – a sunken lane, with trees and bushes growing on earth banks on each side, and forming an arch overhead, which makes it feel as if you are driving through a tunnel. Hollow ways (which I think are also known as green ways or green lanes) are ancient roadways and, apparently, there are a lot of them in Devon, so I like to think we were following a track established in the distant past.
For more Saturday Snapshots see Alice’s blog at http://athomewithbooks.net/
 |
| … And higher… |
 |
| The sides got higher… |
 |
| Back to normality! |
The Book Trunk 
Leave a reply to Meaghan Cancel reply