So near and yet so far

(BroadhempstonCommunity Woodland - visit six 19.1.09)

Did you know that the summit of Beacon Hill is clearly visible from the top of a double-decker bus at several points on both the Newton Abbot to Totnes road, and the Totnes to Kingsbridge road? You have to be quick, wipe away the condensation and crane your neck a bit - but it’s there!

But the bus I was travelling on runs once every two hours, and the nearest it comes to BCW is Ipplepen. And therein lies the problem. I don’t have a car and neither do the majority of those that the community interest company is hoping to help. Now I don’t mind a walk, but having got into Newton from Dawlish, then made the connection - by the time I got to the Beacon I would just have enough time for lunch before having to start back! Besides the whole point is to do a day’s purposeful work.

So far I’ve relied on Verity and my friend Martin (see previous articles!) However when the management committee is up and running, and putting together bids for money, then the case for transport to and from Newton at least, will have be part of the equation.     

         ‘I followed this straight southern track for several days, living on figs and ears of wheat. Sometimes I’d hide from the sun under the wayside poplars, face downwards, watching the ants. There was really no hurry. I was going nowhere. Nowhere at all but here. Close to the spicy warmth of this foreign ground a few inches away from my face. Never in my life had I felt so fat with time, so free of the need to be moving or doing.’ From Laurie Lee’s, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

But my peers and I have become too fat with time, stuck in alienating urban places. We’re isolated and no longer skilled at being around others for any length of time. So for users of mental health services, becoming involved in BCW would be about purposeful small group work. The activity and physical skills learnt might well be environmental conservation and woodland management; but the so called ‘soft outcomes’ would be just as important. When the social policy people use this expression they mean the social benefits - a problem for them because they find them so difficult to quantify and cost! Yet it’s what we the clients need most - the social and communication skills, and the motivation that can only come from others. But if my memory serves me right, working as a team doing physical work in remote locations when the safety of everyone depends on everyone else - you learn because you have to, and you start to care again.