Under the Hill

Following the hint of one of this blog's regular readers (and as recently featured on the estimable wood s lot blog -- Go Struan!) I went for a walk yesterday afternoon in the Water Meadows below St. Catherine's Hill. As promised, it's a place with a lot of potential. I was very taken with the signs, planted regularly along the streams, which read "DANGER! DEEP SILT" but which I kept misreading as "DANGER! DEEP SHIT" (well, I have finally been catching up with The Wire).

I like the idea of deadly hazards close alongside the paths where good citizens walk their dogs. It gives a certain edge, mainly metaphorical, to your afternoon. On Old Winchester Hill hillfort (nowhere near Winchester, as it happens) the signs warn of unexploded munitions, left over from when the hill was used for military training in WW2. On walks up there, I have several times found the sharp end of a .303 bullet thrown up by moles, trailing shreds of metal jacket delicately twirled by the Lee Enfield rifling. The first time, I thought I'd stumbled on some elaborate piece of Bronze Age jewellery.

Backlit allotments from the Water Meadow path

Beneath the old railway bridge