Dogservations in Corsham

Following its canine inhabitants, writing student Rachel Henson explores Corsham on foot, and discovers parts of the village most tourists never get to see.

A wobbly dog and two ladies walk past the Deli. I jump up and follow them past Boots and left at Co-op. They enter a café that my cheese sandwich forbids me to enter. I’m in a graveyard waiting for another dog to come along. A stone cross declares it’s sacred to the memory of the Reverend William Green, died in 1904, aged 46. Now surrounded by flowers on a thoroughfare to the supermarket. The owners reappear with sandwiches and tea. The dog is invited to join in with neither and lies panting in the sunshine as they sit down to eat. I awkwardly try to feign an interest in the lone tree in the old churchyard, which I notice is fluttering unnaturally. A closer inspection reveals mesh ribbons and bows tied to its branches, and luggage tags twisting in the breeze. I stop one spinning:
“Be strong and never give up”.

The headstones haven’t been tended to in a long time. But there are other more recent additions besides the ribbons. High up on a wall, between a security light and the metal torture spikes set out for homeless birds, is a sign:
“Pigeons. Please don’t feed them. We love them but there are just too many and they do cause problems. We want to avoid culling.” I’d love to know what sort of problems pigeons can cause in a ruined churchyard between a carpark and a supermarket. The sign annoys me because it’s lying. I doubt that its composer really loves pigeons. I really love my nan, and she certainly knows how to cause problems, but I wouldn’t put spikes on her favourite chair or advise not feeding her as the only alternative to culling.

A man walks past carrying a sack of compost, and cigarette smoke drifts over from a chap staring at me from inside a hi-vis jacket. I feel despairingly dog-less and walk around to the rear of the café, noticing a fellow writer in a hedge as I do so. The gate is open to the rear of the café. There are gravestones here too, but sombre sounds of reflection and mourning have been replaced by a clattering of plates entering the dishwasher. Wiltshire Waste Recycling blue skips sit amongst the tombstones. A ladder lays painfully across a child’s last resting place. “Annie, beloved daughter of Arthur and Jane Holder who died September 1st 1890. Aged 14 years.”

I doubt they wanted her buried in a rubbish tip. I pick up a Fruit Shoot bottle tossed onto someone’s grave and put it in one of the skips, which is itself positioned without respect. The best I can do is tidy up a bit, then I remember I’m meant to be looking for dogs. Yellow lines on the road seem like a plausible thing to follow whilst lacking in dogs, but eight steps later they run out underneath a silver Transit van which is parked over both them and the pavement. They turn up again after an unexplained break where I suspect the painter gave up trying to work around a parked car. This new pair of lines is smattered with white paint, which somebody has driven through before also parking up on the double yellows. Corsham’s traffic warden must be on holiday this week.

A peacock yells at me from a wall on the far side of the car park in which I find myself. It peers haughtily from an elevated position above a Biffa bin, scratches its head with its foot then stares at me until I retreat from the carpark. Back on the high street I finally have one. A rat-sized dog attached by its lead to a mobility scooter. I can’t catch up. I speed up and the woman stops, without warning, to allow the dog to sniff some fallen leaves. I accidentally overtake and kick myself for ending up in front. I have to walk painstakingly slowly, whilst trying to look interested in in the parkland view, until correct order is restored and I’m behind my subject once more. The woman stops again, spinning her tiny buzzing motor around to glare at me over her glasses. I’ve been rumbled.

“This way, Peggy”, she demands, and scoops up the dog, depositing it into a basket before scooting off at a speed I can’t match. A corvid laughs at me from the tree above. I’m not sure whether it’s an angry crow or a grumpy rook, but they seem to find my inability to keep up with a pensioner in the sunshine most amusing.

Walking with the Wounded Badger Patrol

Walking at night with the Dorset Wounded Badger Patrol, naturalist Rachel Henson witnesses the controversial badger cull first hand, reflecting on the impact it has on one of our most iconic mammals.

The fields were laced with orange mist, illuminated by a Halloween pumpkin moon. The sloping fields were kept from running away by hedgerows hiding mammals and the traps laid out to catch them with. This part of Dorset was hosting a nocturnal battle for the fourth consecutive autumn. The government-led badger cull was brought in as part of an attempt to curb bovine tuberculosis, but arguments over efficiency and animal welfare rose in temperature until activists raised up from their armchairs and put on welly boots and head torches. By day these paths led dog walkers and ramblers, but during the cull the traffic changed. After the ten o’clock news, a human on these paths could be a peaceful protestor, a cull contractor with a weapon, a hunt saboteur, a police officer or a curious neighbour. For a badger, it would make the world of difference.

Lowland navigation is hard at the best of times. Map reading by moonlight is harder. Hedgerows merged into the night, distorting field boundaries. Distant landmarks couldn’t help us after dark, keeping quiet until sunrise. Every cowpat squelch or cracking leaf made my muscles tense, but not as much as the pigeons who chose flight over fight as we interrupted their sleep. We entered the woods, sinking into land that gave way under foot, hidden by water left behind from a storm the week before. I shone my torch to the base of each tree, looking for any sign of mammalian life. The map indicated that this was Brock Farm. It couldn’t confirm the presence of badgers, but it seemed like a safe gamble. Memories of a previous outing came to mind when my torch light picked up a badger, standing still at the entrance to its sett. It didn’t leave immediately. Dipping our beams in respect we watched the badger as it decided that whatever threat we posed was minor, and turning slowly, its tail wobbled back underground behind it.

A tawny airborne steam train hooted in the distance, making me stop in my tracks. I chilled from nerves as well as my wet feet encased in no longer waterproof boots. Having recomposed myself, a barn owl barked above my head, and I started to think the badgers would be fine looking after themselves.

“I’ve got one.” Katie called from behind a bank peppered with sett holes. I scrambled closer, cursing foliage too low for my torch to warn me about, that only announced itself by smacking me on the forehead. The cage sat ugly in the amber glow. I had expected it to be shiny, but it was painted bullshit brown. The death box was tied open with baling twine, which tripped effortlessly with a sturdy stick. At the very least it wouldn’t kill anything that night. A silent text message carried away our location as I studied the trap. Either the badgers had grown wise, or this sett was already empty. Peanuts remained in the bait point, the trap untouched.

Less than a mile away, a sow dragged her bleeding body back to her sett, seeping the soil red because the free-shooter couldn’t get a clean shot. The ladies on patrol found her at the entrance, too exhausted to make it underground. At least with a trap, it should be a quick kill. But if a badger enters the trap at sunset, it has no choice but to cower there until somebody comes to shoot it after breakfast. Many of these contraptions were recalled from the vaccination trials and reissued for this year’s extended culling. Standing where a protected species was due to be shot at dawn, the cull seemed an expensive slaughter of scapegoats for a disease mismanaged by humans.

The phone screen glared in the darkness: “Thanks, will sort it.” We carried on our night walk, relieved that the trap was retiring soon. Thoroughbred Black Beauties lined the fences as we returned towards the houses. Demon eyes and Batman ears surveyed the situation. Galloping into the fog they took our secrets back to the farm, but we were gone long before they told anyone.

The Great Dorset Steam Fair at 50

Each August, The Great Dorset Steam Fair takes over the fields of Tarrant Hinton. Attracted by the largest collection of steam engines in the world, 200,000 people swarm amongst the exhibits; wellies on feet, hotdogs in hand.

The collapsed crops are faded by sun and mud, trampled by the public, rolled flat by tyres and steam rollers. In the shadow of fairground rides is an area cordoned off by an ellipse of metal barriers. Spectators perch on hay bales, cameras dangling from necks, waiting for the classic car parade. Strings of light bulbs struggle for attention in the daylight, high up on poles above the fences. Alongside the ring is a silver caravan which stands unnoticed until words begin to leave the speakers paired up on its roof.
“Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the Great Dorset Steam Fair.”

A threshing machine continues to work, oblivious to the more modern display. Sun-hatted men stand confidently on top of the shaking wooden box, feeding straw in to the chute that begins the process of separating the grain from the chaff. A steam engine works hard to one side, the belt lazily wandering over the fast-paced flywheel. It rocks against its chocks, as eager to work now as it had been when new, when Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles took in this new technology for the first time in the Wessex countryside, over a century ago.

The phut-phut of the engine is out of time with the ABBA mega-mix exploding from a gold and red organ, adorned with angelic statuettes playing Dutch-made castanets. The exhaust of a proudly polished Austin A40 blows its heady petrol scent towards a cocktail of sausages and onion, coal smoke and dust.

“Now we move on to Number 13 in the programme, this lovely Morris Cowley 12/4 coupé, restored by the current owners and used again since 2005…” A man in a checked shirt stumbles into the crowd, drawn over to look at the car. His vision is tunnelled by multiple tankards of farm-house cider, served up in a green-canvas tent held fast by ropes that flaw its customers on the way out. He leans on the fence as the Morris purrs past, completing its lap to a wave of applause before parking up amongst the crowds of curious holiday makers, enthusiasts and eyes that light up as they exclaim in delight, “My Grandad had one of those!”