DESCRIPTION:
Images from a three day walk in search of the Harrow Way.

http://thememoryband.com/
http://thememoryband.bandcamp.com/

As the writing and recording of On The Chalk (Our Navigation Of The Line Of The Downs) drew to a close it became clearer to me what exactly it was about The Harrow Way that had so fascinated me and which parts of it interested me most. I realised it was "lost" section of the mythical road between Farnham, near where I grew up, and Stonehenge which intrigued me. Although Hilaire Belloc theorized about the route of the old abandoned road though Hampshire and Wiltshire, he never searched for it there. This was where the theory became vague, here was where the narrative fell apart.

The landscape of the route is a strangely quiet zone. Belonging neither to Eastern edgelands of the seas and estuaries nor to the Arcadian heart of the West of England, it remains little written about and seldom visited. No one goes searching England here anymore. Therefore I decided that now that the Harrow Way theory was obsolete it would be the perfect time to go looking for the lost road anyway.

I used as my guide the route proposed in the 1965 book "Ancient Trackways Of Wessex" by H.W. Timperley & Edith Brill. A product of a lifetime of research and published after Timperley's death, the book proved very popular on its publication. However it immediately began to be criticised by archeologists and academics for its outdated ideas on the age and validity of the ancient chalk ridgeway tracks. It did however trigger a steady stream of further books which updated and clarified the history of our early roads.

So on May 20th, the day when On the Chalk (Our Navigation Of The Line Downs) was released, instead of undertaking any kind of promotional tour I set off on a three day walk to chart this "lost road". I walked the best part of sixty miles in those three days ending at Stonehenge, blistered and hobbled but elated. On a misty, cloudy but dry morning by good fortune, the very moment I crossed a road on the South-Western edge of the town of Farnham and stepped into a green field, I was greeted by the site of a deer standing at the other end of the field. Not wishing to to startle it I remained still and umoving looking at the deer, looking back at me until it decided to move on a few precious moments later. It was the first of several deer I would see that day, the first of three days spent walking a combination of bridleways, footpaths and minor metalled roads.