Cricket on The Green, Burley

Sheba was well aware that I was off again and not taking her with me. She curled up on the front seat of the car hoping I would notice her and drive off with her still on board. For Sheba it was not to be, she hung her head and looked for-longed and sad, and all this on a Sunday too.

The journey south, working my way toward the Isle of Wight, my second island location for the sabbatical 9th - 30th June, staying at Quarr Abbey, near Fishbourne. The traffic and the maddest fo the road has steadily increased as I drive further south from the Orkneys. Gone is the courtesy of the road, the wave hello, or thanks, or drivers simply waiting for you, before turning out in front of you. On the way here the number of people who cannot wait more than a few seconds has multiplied. The wave is not a figure or two, a fist of anger, and waiting has become a new road-rage of impatience.

My car found it’s cruising speed and the countryside of Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire sped passed almost unnoticed by the users of the A5, M42, M40, A34, A303, and the A360. For me this blur was shaken from my brain by the sight of Stonehenge a place not even built or thought of for another couple of thousand years after Maeshowe, Ring of Brodgar, and Skara Brae were built and were fast becoming thriving communities in those windswept isles. It had been my intention to stop and take a few pictures, but a delay in starting off from home, traffic on the M40, and A34 dashed that thought from my mind and I was in salisbury before I realised I had not stopped!

Spent a couple of hours at No.23 and then it was off to Horlde, near Lymington for the night. The A338 down to Ringwood is one of those roads that is as fast as the car in front of you. I turned onto the A31 and being the summer everyone wanted to go home at the same time, “car park” came to mind crawling its way up hill to Picket Post for the Burley road, that would take me across part of the New Forest. Just as you leave Burley Village on the left hand side at the top of the hill there is the school and the Village Green with the Cricket Ground fenced off to stop wild animals padding across it and ruining the crease.

Today, this very afternoon, the noble game of cricket, as played on many a village green, sports ground, and hallowed places such as the Oval and Lords, was being played. Like a bad omen I stopped the car and took out my camera, to see whether or not I could slow down the passage of play and see someone bowled for a duck. I was not to be disappointed, this man came it, his first delivery he missed completely. the second ball stumped him and the bails flew in different directions: he was OUT!

I packed up my camera and left, to complete my journey to Hordle, via the A35 and then the B3058 to the Rising Sun before taking the Tiptoe and Hordle roads in turn to say with an old school friend and his family. Tomorrow would bring another ferry ride to look forward too...