The second hedge is likely to be lighter and more easy to get through than the first. You come into a broad meadow, and see beyond it the darkness of a woodland you have never entered. On the fringe of it the rabbits are playing. In the bushes are more nests, more fluttering of birds. You enter the wood. It is still and dreaming, apparently utterly unpopulated. It belongs to some quiet family living in a big secluded country house a mile away. There is room for a tribe where but five people and their servants are living. Naturally enough, you meet no one. You are in woodland which is after all but little visited though in the midst of crowded England. The berries on the blackberry bushes rot unpicked. No one comes seeking the many mushrooms. Even the rabbits are only shot at once a year—to keep their numbers down. You are treading on last year’s leaves, or the leaves of the year before last, on the leaf mold of ages past. England is carpeted under your feet. You delight in your steps, in the rise and fall of the land, in the sunny clearing and the vetch-covered bank where you sit watching little blue and brown butterflies fluttering about you.
No one comes to chase you off. At least you are not a trespasser until some one has seen you. You hear no one moving anywhere. You do not even hear the motor cars on the road you left. You have disenchanted the England of those roads. This is the real England, the England into which you ought to have been born, rather than that of curbed ways and tarred roads.
From the woods you emerge on to a fair pleasaunce, an upward-reaching greensward, flanked afar by a white house—the owner’s probably. Your eyes turn wistfully towards the house and its windows, but there seems to be no one there, it might be empty. There is not even a smoke from a chimney. You climb the green slope to another wood, and passing through it, come unexpectedly to a gap, no, a ditch, no, a country road, a lane, leading from you do not know where to you do not know what.
You go down into it; you climb up on the other side. You have entered a different type of property. You are in a turnip field, which you skirt. In your next field you see a fearsome animal all by himself, grazing at leisure, and it depends on your courage whether you will face the bull or make an exception to your rule of the game of the walk.
It is well to have a notebook and record the rules, by-laws, and exceptions of your walk as you frame them. In this notebook also you keep a personal record of the England you found the other side of the hedge.
Upon seeing a bull you decide to pass him in the spirit of an escaping torero, or you make a rule to meet the danger. You take a bearing by your pocket compass, and ascertain what tree or landmark you are naturally making for on the other side of the bull’s field. And having assured yourself of that, you reach it by making a detour.
Then, proceeding with your tramp, you go right through a farmhouse yard. If the compass directs that you should go right through the farmhouse you may go in and get some refreshment. You do not avoid the farmer and his spouse, or farm hands. They are part of your novel adventure, and are nearly always quite pleased to see you, even if a bit puzzled at your line of route.
It is just as well not to explain what you are up to. They will not take to it. They do not mind your walking across the farm with a given object, but will fail to understand your notion of following the compass. Assuredly they will think you rogue or mad. It is best to talk politics to them, talk of that terrible fellow Ramsay MacDonald and the dreadful doings of Labor; they love that. Your interest in the stock will not come amiss. You may ask also of land for sale, of estates falling vacant, and changes of ownership. They will tell you much about the owners of the land you travel over. The difficulty is in getting away from a farm and making the crazy exit that your compass dictates. There again a rule may be framed. You may select a point in view ahead and get to it conventionally, resuming your bee line across country there.
You are in for a delightful day or for delightful days of tramping. If you have a cottage in the country, as I had when doing this, you can do a few hours of this and then return by road or rail home, resuming, another day, at the point where you left off. On the other hand, if the weather is fine, there is no reason why you should not sleep out and tramp all the way to the sea. Only it will take longer than could be expected, as getting over hedges and walls and ditches and streams takes time. And it is more tiring than an ordinary walk on a moor or a common.
On a long tour of the kind you learn something about English life which is not easily obtained in a conventional way, and the experience should be filled out by learning the names and histories of estates and owners. If you have friends on the way you can have delightful accidental meetings and enriching conversations. If you are seriously studying English life there is no reason why you should not frankly call at the houses you see on the way and get what information you can. Some people may meet you coldly, a few boorishly, but most will be polite and friendly enough. Occasionally you will meet people who will be extremely kind and helpful. It is neither so wicked nor so dangerous to be a trespasser as might at first appear.