Narnia, Probably

I used to live on a different stretch of the river, one that's a little bit hidden from the road and, consequently, a bit of a treasure.

You get to it several ways, and this is one of them – an unassuming little path flanked by old and young trees.

Now, we've already established in previous posts that I've basically sat on my bum for the past several years. When you do that, you tend to start forgetting things, and the only way to jog your memory is to start moving again, and so I have done. I had no memory of most of the areas we covered in our walk today, so it was delightful to discover Narnia with Matthew. I was surprised they let me back in, but it's a clear sign that I've never grown up because only children are allowed into Narnia.

It was these fallen trees that I remembered first – the ones that looked like they'd been split asunder by the White Queen in one of her tantrums. There are lots of them, all writhing and pained.

They've been like this for years, continuing to grow at odd angles, with their limbs all twisted and wrong. Poor things.

Some of them have suffered new injuries. 

I've run out of literary things to say about them, but I just kept taking photos because they were so mysterious and beautiful and sad.

But this was the one that really brought the whole place back to life for me. This was definitely a bit of Narnia. And once I'd realised it, everywhere I looked was a little more Narnia-ish. Matthew knew as well, and once he'd agreed we were definitely here, we started looking around for talking animals. We didn't see any, but I guess they were just testing us this time to make sure we were trustworthy. 

I guess we're not, though, because here I am blabbing about it on the internet. Does Aslan have Wi-Fi? I doubt it ... but then he is omniscient, so I doubt I'll get away with it.

We did see this, which I think is a beaver dam – I actually have no idea if it is, but it did have little holes in it where I think some creature has crawled in and out. No beavers around, but if they were checking us out for Aslan we wouldn't see them, would we?

When you do make it out of the woods, there's an island in the middle of the river. I've been over there a few times – I can't believe I was a teenager here and didn't spend my whole life on that island. What was I thinking?! It's wonderful. 

I say it's wonderful, but it's possibly home to a bunch of unsavoury types – it might even be a dogging site that's twinned with the one down the end of our street.

Further on, we could've crossed to the island, but once I'd convinced myself it was a place of hypodermic needles and other things, I didn't much feel like it. Also, the iPhone has played tricks again because it was actually getting quite dark by this point.

See? The sun was going down, and it was too muddy to get across anyway – much muddier than the Hest Bank mud the other day.

You might have guessed, since this is me, that we got a little bit lost trying to get back to the road. I turned a few times and it all suddenly looked exactly like this:

We were definitely still in Narnia and it didn't seem to want to let us out. I was starting to worry (or hope) that we were going to be called upon to fight a war with swords and shields and an army of minotaurs and dryads who would quickly become our most trusted companions. Matthew found a bit of a path that took us back to the river, with no road in sight. I started to watch the skies for flying arrows.

But then, just like that, Narnia was gone. We were back in the world of men. 

This little feature here is known as 'the weir'. It's just a dam that changes the height of the river, as weirs do. You can walk along it, but given that we'd had enough of an adventure for one evening, we decided to save that for another time. I would be bound to fall in, honestly.

So we found the road – this is the street where I used to live. You can hear the river when you live in these houses, but you can't really see it because of the trees. I think it's a little bit unforgiveable that I didn't walk by the river every day, but we rarely appreciate what we have, eh? 

If I had walked by the river every day, I would've been rewarded with this view. I mean, that's awesome. It's like a proper river!

Do you remember many days ago now when I wrote about the five bridges? One of the bridges was near a place that made cattle feed and we used to smell it every day on our way to school? Well, I smelled that smell again this evening and it stopped me in my tracks because it brought back a million memories. And that's because it's made over here instead ... in that ugly great white monstrosity over the other side of the river – looks like some kind of NASA hangar. 

Ah, our old enemy ... ramps. This is how you get off this bit of river, which is actually rather lovely because it's totally accessible, as long as your wheelchair or pram can do hairpin bends.

We could've carried on down this not-at-all-frightening path, but we couldn't quite be bothered and I had a suspicion we'd just end up coming all the way back when we found we couldn't get to the road that way.

So instead we went to the cemetery. Being as we're in the middle of a pandemic and it's best to be a bit sensitive about these things, I'm not going to write anything about this bit of our walk, except to say that I showed Matthew where some of his ancestors are buried and it was quite lovely. 

After that pleasant interlude, we thought we'd best get back to the car because we still hadn't eaten and we'd parked in a really dark place. So back down my old street with its grasping and tickling trees.  

See, our car was down there. I really don't think sometimes, do I? A whole brightly lit road to park on and I decided to put it down there, practically inviting trouble.  

It's alright, Auntie Trish, there was no trouble. Apart from when I was talking about something jolly to keep our spirits up and Matthew suddenly slowed very dramatically and moved behind me, widened his eyes to size of dinner plates and pointed at something I couldn't see off to the side of the path. I couldn't make anything out in shadows at all and my heart dropped into my bowels. Matthew couldn't speak, so I shouted in the end, 'Matthew, what is it??'. 'Oh, nothing,' he said, all normal, 'I just thought I heard something but I didn't.' Afterwards he said he thought it might have been a really aggressive wolf or a wild boar or some kind of alien creature. Hmmm.

Until tomorrow, when we will try not to be scared of things that aren't there.

WQ