This is Mike Oldfield country. He ran away from Tubular Bells fame to live on a hillside overlooking Hergest Ridge and wrote, well, Hergest Ridge. He didn’t stay long. Long enough to realise he didn’t like it. He was free to go because he rented a house that he could leave whenever he wished. At least he made the place briefly famous.
King Offa has also made it famous by building a dyke. Although that wasn’t his intention. He just wanted to keep the Welsh out and the English in, or perhaps it was the other way around.
Now Offa’s Dyke path goes past our front door. It’s not all dyke of course. Though there are some impressive bits that have survived. They have joined the dots to allow walkers to enjoy the views and the solitude without staying. If they’re lucky, our pub will be open when they pass through. It has opened all hours and no hours over the last few years and has now settled for 11.30 till 3.30 five days a week, not including Monday and Tuesday.
The village also used to have a shop. It housed a post office agency and was located in someone’s front room which had formerly been a real post office. When the post office branch was closed, the residents briefly protested and then gave up.
The owners of the front room needed to find another second income so they closed the shop. The shop was one of the reasons many of the considerable number of ‘incomers’ had chosen to live in our village.
For a while the previous post mistress couldn’t think what to do with the front room. She wanted to open a cafe in the summer but the owner of the pub opposite objected because they would take his custom. So they opened when he was shut. Now there is a Saturday, Monday and Tuesday Cafe. It requires a large sign to accommodate the name.
The post office sends a van twice a week instead so locals can still buy stamps and withdraw cash. It comes for an hour on a Wednesday morning and an hour on a Thursday afternoon. As there is also a mobile library van that comes for half an hour (cut from an hour) fortnightly on a different day, it is necessary to have a flow chart on the fridge with a detailed schedule of part time public services.
The jewel in our village is a school. It has 40 plus pupils who live in and around the village, and it has to be said, from further afield. This is because our school has the highest ranking possible of any school in Wales.
The school only exists because the building was donated to the community and because the grateful community successfully fought to keep it open.
Twice they have saved it from closure in spite of all the might of government, national and local. And they need to keep in practice because it’s only a matter of time before the enemy gathers strength and returns. In the meantime, 40 plus children get the best education a child in Britain can get. For free anyway.
In this blog I will record the decline of the rural area in which I live. And its small victories.
Border Lines 