Train of thought

 

 

You knew something was coming from the faint whistle. It sounded familiar, like an echo from the past, an almost lost memory. There it was again, sounding closer, and you straightened to catch it on the wind. Yes, it was a steam train, like the ones from our childhood, the ones we rode on to London or our holidays, those icons of nostalgia that mean so much to us as we get older.

The whistle was a warning of the many footpaths that cross the Reading to Redhill line. With the last one came a vibration that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It roared into view, the A1 Pacific 'Tornado' pulling old cream and crimson coaches, and suddenly it was gone. What wonder, what bliss, you  now know how Toad felt in Wind in the Willows, sitting in the middle of the road watching the automobile disappear in a cloud of dust murmuring 'poop-poop'.

It occured to me as I stood leaning on my hoe that in years gone by how many old allotmenteers had witnessed what I had just seen, though perhaps with not such a grand locomotive. It gave me a strong sense of connection.

Not far from the allotment and just below the National Trust car park on Ranmore Common is a view looking west, beyond Landbarn Farm, along that same length of railway line. What I see must be similar if not the same as anyone standing here when it opened in 1849.

We are rooted in the landscape and by virtue of that have a real connection with the land we live on. Most of us could probably go back just two or three generations to find an ancestor that lived from or on the land. Sometimes it can be a hard thing to get the dirt from beneath our finger nails and maybe for the sake of our children's future we should not try.