We have come to Winchester, our nearest city and an old haunt. From here you can be in water meadows or downland within minutes. We walk out past the cathedral towards St Catherine’s Hill, its iconic dome part of the Cretaceous chalk of the upfolding Winchester anticline. But since I last walked up, my old route through a meadow has become the park and ride I protested against back in 1996.
In the wood skirting the hill, a light turbulence of the air stirs the leaves into a brightness of fur. A dog fox and vixen weave through the trees. We find our way in up a track beside the M3 where it roars a great maw through Twyford Down, the site of many 1990s road protests. I pause on the footbridge where I once unfurled angry banners. A lorry honks.
