‘I say,’ suddenly calls the type of voice that carries with it generations of breeding. I’m now even keener to get away. Maybe if I don’t look up, don’t make eye contact he’ll pass on by. ‘I say, you there,’ the voice calls again, making me realise that it’s too late to make my escape.
I look up to see a well-dressed, ruddy-faced walker, of indeterminate age but possibly in his seventies, approaching and gesticulating from the other side of the road. My immediate impression is that the very embodiment of Toad of Toad Hall has just materialised into the real world, straight from the pages of Wind in the Willows. Or maybe he is one of Bertie Wooster’s many uncles. His brown tweed jacket is open to reveal a matching tweed waistcoat, straining to remain closed over his ample stomach – fortunately the resilience of the expensive weave is proving to be worth every penny for it shows little sign of being bested. Beneath the waistcoat is a checked shirt, sporting at the collar a neatly-tied red tie – a Windsor knot if I’m not mistaken. Whether his face, atop which is perched a cloth cap, matching jacket and waistcoat, is unusually flushed because of the tightness of the tie or some excessive physical exertion or whether this is its normal colour I can’t be sure. Below the jacket is a matching pair of plus-fours, reaching halfway along his calf, beneath which he is sporting thick red walking socks and a pair of stout walking shoes. A cane completes the picture. I am just disappointed that he isn’t wearing a monocle, although there is a silver watch chain which almost makes up for it.
For a moment I expect him to start berating me for parking in the lay-by; some of the locals in this exceedingly affluent area can get very censorial and vocal about ‘strangers’ suddenly appearing within their realm, but I needn’t worry on that account. ‘Nice day isn’t it?’ he continues, 'For winter that is.' Having been berated by a fair few ‘Little Englanders’ in my time, it is not my experience that they ever begin with pleasantries about the weather. Instead it's usually a case of, 'Hey, you, do you know that you're not supposed to park there.' And always in a voice that expects immediate subservience.
Allowing a car to flash past, he crosses the road towards me. ‘They drive along here so fast,’ he says with a gruff Churchillian bluster. ‘I live just over there,’ he adds, pointing with his stick in the general direction of a particularly large detached residence on the side of the road from which he has just crossed. ‘Just been for a jolly good walk. There’s quite a lot of history to this place, you know.’ As my brain urges my tired body to conjur up one last effort to make a run for it he proceeds to give me the potted-history of the area, including a list of the rich and famous, including Henry VIII’s wife Anne of Cleeves, who he mixes up with Anne Boleyn. Well, too many Annes probably does get confusing - I dare say it did for poor old Henry as well. I chose to say nothing, as he doesn’t strike me as the sort who would admit to mixing his royals.
‘Have you been working around here?’ he suddenly asks, possibly having exhausted the well of his dubious historical knowledge. Again he uses his stick as a pointer to indicate the general area behind the lay-by. After I explain that we have been clearing scrub towards the top of the slope, he replies, ‘Have you now, indeed?’ seemingly impressed that anyone could access, let alone work, on such a slope. ‘You’ve been doing a good job up there. I walk the old dog along the ridge at the top quite often. Well, I used to anyway. He's getting on a bit now.' He then switches to a potted history of his various dogs and their individual charms and challenges. 'Still,' he switches again, 'It's good to see that someone is taking an interest in maintaining it. How high would you say it is?’
This takes me a little aback, as I was mentally questioning whether Randolph, who it turns out was a more than capable gundog, could really catch that many rabbits in one day.
From the view from the top, I know that it’s quite high, but as for an actual figure.
‘A thousand feet, do you think?’ he suggests.
‘I wouldn’t think that high.’
‘Oh,’ he replies, clearly disappointed.
‘Maybe two or three hundred,’ I say, taking a wild stab.
‘Two or three hundred,’ he slowly repeats in his gruff voice, as though carefully weighing up my estimation. The pain on his face shows an even greater degree of disappointment – either that or the combined constriction of his clothing is about to get the better of him. I silently pray that it is the former. ‘Well, those are my trees over there. How high would you say they were? About seventy or eighty feet, do you think?’
‘About that,’ I agree, not sure but happy to go along with him. It’s getting dark and I’m getting cold and hungry.
‘And the top is about three or four times the height of the trees, wouldn’t you think. That would make it…’
‘Between just over two hundred and just over three hundred feet,’ I reply as he struggles to juggle the various guestimates.
‘Two hundred to three hundred,’ he echoes even more thoughtfully.
‘More or less.’
‘Oh dear, that’s nowhere near a thousand, is it?’ he says his voice betraying the fact that this wasn’t the answer he was hoping for.
‘Unfortunately, not.’ I wish that I could make it higher for him as he seems a genuinely nice man, but no amount of willing is going to add seven hundred feet to the top. Unlike in the film, this Englishman wouldn’t be claiming to have gone up a hill but to have come back down a mountain.
‘Oh, dear,’ he says again. ‘I have my grandchildren coming over at the weekend and I told them that it was a thousand feet high. They’re looking forward to it.’
‘They might not notice,’ I offer, feeling that he now sees himself as a bit of a fraud.
‘Possibly,’ he muses, but is clearly not convinced. ‘Still, I mustn’t keep you,’ he says, and I notice that he has already kept me for nearly forty minutes and the light is all but gone. ‘They will be disappointed,’ he mumbles as he wanders back across the road, the metal tip of his stick clicking against the tarmac. ‘Oh, dear me,’ is his final word on the matter as he disappears into the dark.