[A face carved into clay. Guardian of Hell Lane? Omen? Warning? Demon? Photo is mine.]

Greenways, droveways, stanways, stoweys, bradways, whiteways, reddaways, radways, rudways, halsways, roundways, trodds, footpaths, fieldpaths, leys, dykes, drongs, sarns, snickets, bostles, shutes, driftways, lichways, sandways, ridings, halter-paths, cartways, carneys, causeways, here-paths – & also fearways, dangerways, coffin-paths, corpseways, & ghostways.

~~ Robert McFarlane, Ghostways

Everywhere we saw evidence of creatures taking refuge in the soil: mason bees, wasps, rabbits, successors to the fugitive priests & hunted men.

~~McFarlane, Ghostways

I was feeling no pain when I pressed the red button to lock the boot of our rent car. The rain had stopped for the tenth time in the last hour. I was feeling fine. If it’s truth you want, then I will tell you that I was feeling great, awesome, terrific, and excellent. Impossibly excellent. One more time in my life I was walking through a field and along hedgerows, over the crest of a hill in Dorset. Back in the day, I was a young man with the stamina of the same. But, of late, its been a hard winter on my lower back and my problematic right foot. Regardless. Here I was, on a windy day with a good chance of being rained on, hiking with Mariam to a place I’ve only read about. Wait. That’s not totally accurate. I’ve been to one such location a decade ago. But where we were heading today was a place of legends, folktales, dark rumors and even ghost stories.

[Down in among the trees lies the dark holloways. Photo is mine.]

We were walking to see one of the most storied holloways in southern England. This was the Symondsbury Estate, a few miles from Bridport.

This was the location of the infamous Hell Lane. And we were bound for that dark and lonely place.

Holloways are basically deep depressions in an old path or roadway. Carts, people and wildlife, coupled with the power of erosion, over a long time, have worn these paths down. Trees, vines and shrubs have grown overhead and produced byways that are dark and forbidding. Their origins go back to the Iron Age. None, apparently, are younger than three centuries.

We walked along the hedgerow. The sky, at times, was blue and inviting. I looked out over the distant fields and watched the sunlight and clouds play over the meadows below. Then the darkness approached. We quickened our pace as the rain fell in silent waves. Two leafy trees ahead to the left. Mariam stood listening to the wind and rain, the drops that filtered through the branches spotted our parkas. As fast as it arrived, the dark cloud passed away and the sun shone again. We enjoyed the rest after hiking a quarter of a mile up a slow rise and along several fields.

The rain came and moved on; it was that kind of day. We were a little confused by the trail map. Something about the scale and positions of the fields seemed wrong. Another couple approached behind us. I let them overtake us.

“Are we on the right path that leads to Hell Lane?” I inquired.

“Just past the next field,” said the woman.

A few minutes later we stood looking at a dark hole in the trees. We were at the entrance to Hell Lane, a section of a much longer footpath, one that we had no desire or time to go the full distance. From the darkness in the forest, I was glad that we only had a short walk to the heart of a legendary holloway.

We walked on…

[Walking into Shutes Lane, just a few steps from Hell Lane. Video is mine.]

After Shutes Lane, we retraced our steps and headed for Hell Lane. The most famous holloway in Dorset.

[The approach to Hell Lane. Photo by Mariam Voutsis.]

[The clay holds a steep wall. It carves easily. This is only a small portion of the name and dates. Photo is mine.]

[Some of the carvings depict faces. Some are unnerving to look at. Photo is mine.]

[And some are not so scary at all. Here’s Homer. Photo is mine.]

The number of names, initials, dates and slogans were beyond count. But, individuals, some just having fun, others were accomplished artists. All took the time to stand, some in the fog, some in the rain, but all in the cool chill of the thick shade to use the clay as their canvas and express themselves or make a statement.

[A Celtic style design. Photo is mine.]

The following image is my absolute favorite of all the carvings we had time to examine. It reveals a level of skill that, considering the medium, is nothing short of amazing.

[My favorite carving in Hell Lane. Photo is mine.]

[The author at work. Photo is by Mariam Voutsis.]

[Photo bellow. I am not scraping wet sand. It’s the carving of another person’s hand. Photo is mine.]

[Some sun penetrates into the sunken lane. But not much. The wetness abounds. Photo is mine.]

These depressions were once walkways on the surface. They have been slowly eroded downward. When I first entered the lane, when I first lost the direct rays of the sun, I confess that I felt a chill. Not from the weather but from something else. I love a good ghost story and graveyards and churchyards don’t affect me…too much. But in Hell Lane, I experienced something odd. Spooky is too lightweight a word. Scary is fluff. Horror is too dramatic and overbearing. I don’t know a good word. It was creepy. I was creeped out, surely. Mariam offers this comment: “I was uneasy.”

In another time, defrocked priests hid in these places to avoid execution. Highwaymen hid their booty. Those who did not want to be found easily, found a nook, muddy and cold, to avoid discovery.

The clay carvings were interesting, riveting, skillfully done, thoughtful and inventive. But they did not detract from the something else-ness about the sunken lane. But what was it? There we are, searching for a better word than spooky. Again, the encompassing atmosphere. Again the feeling that something is ‘off’ about the place.

This is not to say that the experience is nothing more than a ghost tour through a place damned. The natural world abounds down here. Numerous plants and animals find it their home.

Sadly, all the effort of the artists and pranksters is for naught. With time and the rains and winds of coastal Dorset, the clay will crumble to the ground. The near vertical walls, dark and always wet will spell off and erase all the designs and faces and names.

I stood back and looked at the figures and thought about how transitory it all is. Like life itself. We hope to make an impression on the earth but in the end, it’s the stories about the artists, the faces and ourselves that, hopefully, will live on.

[Hell Lane lies off to my left, behind the fence, past the trees and just a little further along the footpath. Photo is by Mariam Voutsis.]