The Old Road

The house is flush with the road, but the road no longer exists; or rather it runs for a matter of yards either side of the house, like a railway station with a small section of preserved track and then wilderness. It reappears a hundred yards along the valley, is tarmacced and used, then disappears again, part of a network of old tracks, half-roads, that didn't all make it into Ordnance Survey. Our road was a toll road built in the late 1700s and part of the Radnor toll system administered from Presteigne, marked by a plaque in the town centre. But it was outgunned by the modern road, and apart from isolated stretches it has disappeared into the light woodland along the valley side. Until now. Since September Welsh Water have been replacing water pipes, and finally reached us a month ago. The pipes run under the old toll road for some reason and the water board sent in a mechanical digger to trace the road and clear the trees. They found the pipe and replaced it and have gone, leaving white-gashed trees and thick mud. The lines of the road are clearly marked, overgrown hedges and mossy walls originally laid and built in the 1760s. But the road itself has gone. I had expected hardcore, road-stones, I don't know what. But even the modern machine could not uncover any road surface, and the line of the 'road' is slanted, drunken, reflecting the hillside not the toll road. Walking to the post box along the toll road - off road as it were - is like following the trail a plane crash makes in a jungle. The trees are hacked and broken, the trail is wide but thick with deep mud and heavy mudstones. I find the loss of a road to nature deeply poetic, that a road surface could slip underground, overgrown so much that leaves become mud become soil, and a whole road could disappear.