At some point we leave the map. It’s not a matter of falling off the edge, not exactly.

 

Just off the motorway, we head cross country on the back roads. True back roads, winding, deserted. If we get it right, we take the road over the top of the wooded hill. If the day is anywhere halfway decent, this is the best bit of the whole journey. If the sun is shining it is magical. The road twists back on itself a couple of times as it heads up the hill, the light beneath the canopy of trees a luxuriant, almost aquatic green. In springtime, there are carpets of bluebells beneath the trees and, fleetingly glimpsed through breaks in the greenery, the odd woodland clearing bathed in golden light.

     On the downward side, the road ahead is splashed with dappled light and on one straight section which seems to stretch for ever, a cathedral-like vastness opens out in front of you beneath arching trees – monumental trees, epic trees, a vastness made vaster by slanting beams of sunlight. In the distance, there’s a bright O where the tunnel ends. It’s all too perfect, like a painting, except a painting will never make you feel  this space, will never give you this sense of awe, this sense of charmed perfection, this hushed and magnificent architecture of dense and dark green, these slanting sunbeams, these delicate, ephemeral streaks of golden yellow.

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This is how it starts, I suppose.

 

This is exactly how it starts...