The old wandering track

England is not a land of straight lines. Our streets curve, wander, change names at every intersection, and rarely intersect at right-angles. Our country lanes follow the track of paths between fields and follow the curves made by ancient plough-teams. Our footpaths follow old routes along ridges and between fords, and paths taken to carry coffins from outlying hamlets to the parish church. So it is not surprising that experts were sceptical about Alfred Watkins’ proposals in the 1920s that there was an ancient network of straight tracks across the landscape, from one hill fort and stone circle to another. Watkins called these ‘ley lines’ because they often went through places with the suffix ‘ley’. I live in one such community, which are thick on the ground in this part of the Midlands, probably because this land was once covered by trees, and a ‘ley’ means a meadow cleared from woodland (and is pronounced ‘lee’ not ‘lay’).

Watkins’ ley-lines became adopted by ‘new age’ believers, the most rapidly-growing faith group in this country. Whereas Watkins proposed that ley-lines were just a means of finding your way across the wooded and boggy prehistoric landscape, new-agers speak of ley-lines leading along ‘lines of magnetic power’ across the ‘living rock’, and other such wonderful codswallop. I have a better explanation for lines of the landscape - to reach a good pint of ale. I have noticed that the pubs close to my home form a line, from the Fox at Lulsley, via the Talbot at Knightwick and the Admiral Rodney at Berrow Green, to the Crown at Martley. Extend the line Northwards, and you get to the Red Lion at Holt Health. Ale is an ancient drink, regarded as much safer to drink than water through much of English history. My ‘ale lines’ provide a much better motive for travelling than just following lines of magnetic power. Of course, if you stop at a few pubs on the way, you will no longer follow a straight path, which helps explain why the English landscape looks the way it does.