PAGAN PAPERS

The Romance of the Road

Among the many places of magic visited by Pantagruel and his company
during the progress of their famous voyage, few surpass that island
whose roads did literally ``go'' to places -- ``ou les chemins
cheminent, comme animaulx'': and would-be travellers, having inquired
of the road as to its destination, and received satisfactory reply,
``se guindans'' (as the old book hath it -- hoisting themselves up on)
``au chemin opportun, sans aultrement se poiner ou fatiguer, se
trouvoyent au lieu destiné.''

The best example I know of an approach to this excellent sort of
vitality in roads is the Ridgeway of the North Berkshire Downs. Join
it at Streatley, the point where it crosses the Thames; at once it
strikes you out and away from the habitable world in a splendid,
purposeful manner, running along the highest ridge of the Downs a
broad green ribbon of turf, with but a shade of difference from the
neighbouring grass, yet distinct for all that. No villages nor
homesteads tempt it aside or modify its course for a yard; should you
lose the track where it is blent with the bordering turf or merged in
and obliterated by criss-cross paths, you have only to walk straight
on, taking heed of no alternative to right or left; and in a minute
'tis with you again -- arisen out of the earth as it were. Or, if
still not quite assured, lift you your eyes, and there it runs over
the brow of the fronting hill. Where a railway crosses it, it
disappears indeed -- hiding Alpheus-like, from the ignominy of rubble
and brick-work; but a little way on it takes up the running again with
the same quiet persistence. Out on that almost trackless expanse of
billowy Downs such a track is in some sort humanly companionable: it
really seems to lead you by the hand.