Rural Rides

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I work as a Land Agent specialising in rural planning so the countryside has always been my workplace. Now with my one horsepower companion, whose ancestors also worked the land, I am seeking an understanding of the impact of the modern world on rural communities, businesses and the countryside. Urban/Rural Rides will bill the member monthly; there will be no cash transactions between drivers and members. years ago, William Cobbett rode his horse through the Home Counties and wrote Rural Rides. My journey with Scarlet is a modern take on this. The benefit of this service goes well beyond the ride itself. I have a lot of health issues and I am in constant pain. However, when I am in the car having a friendly conversation with a driver, I am distracted in a way. I feel better. My pain is lower for a time because I am interacting with someone.” said Michael. Rural Ride from the (London) Wen across Surrey, across the West of Sussex, and into the South-East of Hampshire

Magnificent in every way. One of the best travel books I have read, one of the best snapshot/state of the nation studies, a brilliant audit of the agriculture of southern England during the Corn Laws, a masterful account of the effects of government policy on the producers of food (and to some extent industry- especially textiles - there were many producers of cloth in the south west and quite a few mills), a brilliant and brilliantly biassed history of the period and a must for any student of UK politics in the post Napoleonic era. On top of that an entertaining read. Rural Rides in the Counties of Surrey, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire.... Original publication by Cobbett, 1830 and 1853. Rural Rides is the book for which the English journalist, agriculturist and political reformer William Cobbett is best known. The views across Salisbury Plain, stirring then, are stirring now as well. I zigzag alongside Cobbett along what is now the A36 to reach bypassed villages with "singularly bright and beautiful views" and drop down into Warminster. The town bustles in the way that lively market towns do. It seems to be full of Indian and Chinese take-aways and army families out shopping. I eat freshly baked sausage rolls here. Cobbett liked Warminster because "everything belonging to it is solid and good". Even the sausage rolls. The market trades fairly, he says, and there are no middlemen. RIDE THROUGH THE NORTH-EAST PART OF SUSSEX, AND ALL ACROSS KENT, FROM THE WEALD OF SUSSEX, TO DOVER.

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I turn the car down the narrow lanes that cut a diagonal path through Hampshire, down through lots of villages called something-or-other Candover to the Alresfords, Old and New, and so to Winchester, where Cobbett harangued the farmers. The lanes are very fast. There are no buses, public or private; or, at least, I don't see any. Twice, a BMW - one red, one blue - seems intent on attaching itself to my tail, as if they were Messerschmitts and my Jag a wounded Lancaster. I corkscrew off the road and up to The Grange. This is a magical and unexpected Grecian temple, Arcady in Hampshire, and once home of the Baring banking family. It was designed by William Wilkins, the architect of the National Gallery in The Wen. Now it is empty, except for the summer when it is home, delightfully, to the Grange Opera Company. Drivers will be instructed NOT to take ride reservations other than those arranged through the to ride coordinator. Honest yeomen were vanishing in the 1820s. They were Cobbett's heroes, the strong, independent farmers of yore, or folklore, who had nurtured the landscape he loved over many hundreds of years. Now, the common lands were all but enclosed and farm labourers had been reduced to wage slaves. Cobbett met some earning as little as six shillings a week - starvation wages.

immensely rich bishopric and chapter; and there were, at this “service,” two or three men and five or six boys in white surplices, with a Pg ii]Rural Ride from Kensington to Uphusband; including a Rustic Harangue at Winchester, at a Dinner with the Farmers All information is confidential–the volunteer driver will need to sign an oath of confidentiality form. Certainly, the countryside hereabouts is still being sold off to create banal executive cul-de-sac estates, and business-park and PFI architecture. And yet there are lyrical moments to be had as you delve deeper into rural Hampshire, never more than a few miles from today's turnpikes. To be fair, such moments are even to be had on motorways. There is the moment, for example, where the M40 sweeps down from the Chilterns through a deep chalk cutting and out into Oxfordshire-in-excelsis. Here, you can see what seems to be an eagle-eye's distance. If only the Jag had flaps and wings, it might rise among all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Cobbett was a born campaigner. What he championed was England, and in particular an England of oaken wealds and downs south of the Thames. This was disappearing as fast as he rode, hunted hares and wrote. His dream England was to fuel the imagination of William Morris (1834-96) and thus, a touch ironically, suburbia itself via the garden city movement. For Cobbett, embryonic Regency suburbia was the decadent home of tax-eaters.J. M. Dent & Sons; Everyman's Library (1912), reprinted 1924 and 1953, ASIN B00085HPA0. Introduction by Edward Thomas. Rural Ride through the North-East part of Sussex, and all across Kent, from the Weald of Sussex, to Dover If I follow this parade of executive cars, it will take me, as surely as a New Labour politician follows the creed of Margaret Thatcher and her placemen, to superstores, out-of-town shopping centres, multi-storey car parks, drive-thru burger joints, multiplex cinemas and, worst of all, Swindon's Great Western Designer Retail Outlet. He would have hated them all, and so do I. The culprit, at least in part, is PFI, the private finance initiative, which has spawned bad buildings across the land.

The new executive estates are as hard to escape in southern England as articles on television soap operas are in newspapers. Outside Godalming, I visit the home of an architect and his wife. The house, a converted barn, used to be a working part of a farm owned by nuns who live close by. Over coffee and cakes, I learn that some years ago, the nuns sold much of the farmland to developers to build executive housing. In the 1960s, the nuns had enjoyed tabloid fame. Sister Maria Mater, "the Nun with a Gun", liked to hunt, while her novices, all 57 of them - quite a variety - splashed around in a swimming pool. Rural Ride from Lyndhurst to Beaulieu Abbey; thence to Southampton, and Weston; thence to Botley, Allington, West End, near Hambledon; and thence to Petersfield, Thursley, and Godalming dear good woman,” said I, “but you have been at [Pg 324] Ludgarshall?”—“No.”—“Nor at Andover?” (six miles another Rural Ride from Dover, through the Isle of Thanet, by Canterbury and Faversham, across to Maidstone, up to Tonbridge, through the Weald of Kent and over the Hills by Westerham and Hays, to the Wen no road there, and it is impossible for you to get through those woods.”“Thank you,” said I; “but through those woods we mean to go.” Just atPrivate Eye, by the way, used to run a column under the heading Rural Rides, with a suitably bucolic wood-engraving as a masthead. It was written by "Bamber Gasket". Each fortnight, Mr Gasket would recall a trip by road from, say, Kensington to Uphusband, Wilts, via the A3 and obscure B roads. After absurd adventures in petrol stations and having criticised the skills of other road users, he would sign off by asking why the roads can't be left to professional motorists, and then adding "Reading Infirmary, Tuesday."

Rural Ride from Salisbury to Warminster, from Warminster to Frome, from Frome to Devizes, and from Devizes to Highworth At the time of writing in the early 1820s, Cobbett was a radical anti- Corn Law campaigner, newly returned to England from a spell of self-imposed political exile in the United States. Please note that all incomplete or illegible forms will be returned to the applicant and the application will be delayed. Inspired by the historic journey of William Cobbett I am traveling around Dorset with my Dales Pony Scarlet, looking at and recording the countryside. Taking in the rural landscape as it is today and how it has changed with particular regard to the environmental changes we encounter.

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Rural Ride from Gloucester, to Bollitree in Herefordshire, Ross, Hereford, Abingdon, Oxford, Cheltenham, Burghclere, Whitchurch, Uphurstbourn, and thence to Kensington At this point, a livid youth driving a bright red car with what looks like the entire contents of a Halford's motor accessory shop superglued to it blasts his horn at me for parking not exactly in his way. He gives me two fingers, mouths the national cry of Saxon England and roars off, angry eyes half hidden under the long peak of a newly traditional English red baseball cap. He didn't even toot. By chance, I tail him into the designer retail outskirts of - where else? - Swindon. He turns off for the Caravan Centre. Forms are be completed by the applicant, any other person designated by him/her, or by his/her legal representative if the applicant cannot act.