DESCRIPTION:
On The Chalk (Our Navigation Of The Line Of The Downs)
available now on Static Caravan (VAN 257)
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In Search Of The Harrow Way

"Of these primal things the least obvious but the most important is The Road... it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and the most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest pioneers of our race. It was the most imperative and the first of our necessities. It is older than building and older than wells ; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day ; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made."

Hilaire Belloc - The Old Road 1911

All but one of these clips spliced together were filmed on a single afternoon walk using a simple compact digital camera with relatively limited memory and battery life. On my three day walk in May one of the places which left a great impression upon me was a stretch of road between the Golden Pot inn and Sutton Common a few miles North of Alton. In May, when stopping to admire the view from the ridge road across Swaines Hill and the broad vista of the country to the North and West, a passing cyclist called out to me "Glorious view isn't it? you should see it on a sunny day!" I decided then to heed his words and return later in the summer. So on the 1st of July, a fine sunny day I caught a train to Alton, walked through Holybourne and up the hill towards the ridge. At one point I found myself surrounded by a field of poppies.

"Perhaps the greatest problem in the understanding of roads lies in the minds of those who wish to unravel their history. The fascination of roads and tracks, and the excitement that the process of tracing them onwards across country gives, have all too often in the past resulted in complete mental blocks or visual blindness"

Christopher Taylor - Road and Tracks of Britain 1979

"The use of old paths to navigate terraans both real and imagined has attracted a rabble of delusionists, bigots and other unlovely maniacs. I've read with distaste the work of multi-purpose misanthropes, of nationalists peddling wrong-headed theories of race, and of nostalgists who demonstrate a preference for the biddable dead over the awkward living"

Robert Macfarlane - Old Ways 2012

Up the hill there were magnificent views facing south and east across a landscape which I had learned recently was where generations of my maternal ancestors had once laboured upon the land. Since beginning my research into The Harrow Way I had been made conscious throughout by the inevitable tendency to construct narratives, both personal and general, from the material I was discovering and the places I was visiting. In making the music for the album a key point had been when I realised I needed to step away from imposing too much of a structure or theme to the album and allowing it simply to be a self-contained work of music. After all the field recordings, researching of local folk songs and customs and the hours of reading it was only when I stepped away from all of it and let the music be itself did it all come together.

Joining the bridleway coming from Bentworth, it took me on to the road coming east from the Golden Pot. A very short walk through woods brought me to the place I'd decided to revisit. To the north I could see the line of the Summer Way which I had walked on the summer solstice and further on you could make out the great heath which stretches all the way to Bagshot. To the West were the higher hills I had walked in May.

I then spent the afternoon walking back towards Hampshire border, in the opposite direction to which I had taken back in May, stopping occasionally to film what I could see and record the changes of light and shadow. I proceeded through three copses: Highnam, Sheephouse and Hangers Hyle towards where the two branches of the Harrow Way met, east of the village of Well. I headed up the nearest hill to watch the sunset and was rewarded with some quite incredible cloud formations.