Coleslaw for the Soul

 

Heading out mid-afternoon, because no one gets up early on furlough, took me on a journey through the past and along a path I hadn’t been before.  With the sun high in the sky and a chorus of nature to help me along I set out along the lane and across a field.  As you clamber over the rickety style you are faced with two choices.  Do you stick with convention, follow the path across the middle of a ploughed field and head down to the road or do you veer off to the right and follow the path of wonder? Blue pill, red pill. 

My innate sense of wonderment took me down the path less trodden, into the unknown.  The way forward is much flatter, and you feel the earth either side rising up and holding you in its grasp as you head into a tunnel of trees.  The high banks and flat path should give you a clue as to what was once here, despite nature doing its best to reclaim the land after Dr Beeching had his way.  A mile further on and the disused railway line becomes more evident even without the sleepers and the tracks as clues.  The rotten remains of a wooden sign announcing the station that no longer exists.

Some say that if you listen carefully you can still hear the hiss of the steam engine as it slows towards the station, but all I heard was the rumble of the distant motorway.  After over a hundred years there is virtually nothing left of the short-lived forest station that no one really wanted to use, but if you look carefully the retaining wall of the platform still remains. 

Nature has well and truly taken over, as grass and ferns force their way through the broken masonry, but there is an eerie feel to the place.  With the sun sinking down behind me casting long shadows I can almost feel the presence of that which was, many years before.  A stationmaster stands proud in his newly pressed suit, surveying his domain.  A few passengers wait patiently on the platform after a hard day’s work in the forest, waiting for the train that will take them home for tea.  A whistle sounds in the distance, the smell of coal and oil permeates the air, and the rising steam appears in the distance.  Anticipation grows as you almost feel the train approach.  Its only broken by the sounds of the intercity passing by some miles to the west and the scene is gone. 

The path continues for maybe a mile further on until it runs into a field of cabbages, all signs of the once proud and majestic railroad wiped out by the need for coleslaw and soup.  A short hop to the west and you re-join the pathway back to the village and home.  A day of reflection and a trip through the past is like coleslaw for the soul.