Beware of trolls

With Commando on furlough, I suddenly found myself with a walking companion. I’d been telling him about the fairy doors I’d seen on the Butterfly Trail and the fact that many had been removed. He suggested a little circular walk to have a look at what was left. The idea of walking down to the sea was appealing, although from what I’d seen on social media, it was so crowded down there that actually walking along the shingle wasn’t going to be an option.

Social media was turning out to be a double edged sword. On the one hand there were lots of wonderfully positive posts appearing. Some offered help to the elderly and people self isolating, or unwanted items free to good homes. People shared baking tips, gave away sourdough starter, vegetable seedlings and books they’d read. Some told heartwarming stories, like the owner of a local cleaning service who, at his own expense, had been going around sanitising the street furniture to stop the virus spreading. Others made it clear that some people had far too much time on their hands and were way too quick to judge and abuse.

Commando is not good at walking slowly and stopping to enjoy the view, so having a walking companion was also a double edged sword. Much as I enjoyed the company, I missed the dawdling, the musing and the chance to stop and look around. We’d reached the new wastewater treatment plant in Woolston before I took my first photograph. The £100 million pound scheme to upgrade the old sewage works had been completed earlier in the year and this was the first time I’d seen it up close and in person. I had, however, seen lots of people complaining about it on social media.

Back in the distant past, when I lived in Woolston, the sewage works was affectionately known as the Poo Farm (amongst other things). Depending on the direction of the wind, you could smell it before you saw it and there were many rumours about untreated sewage in the sea. The plans I’d seen for the new plant were very futuristic and now the curved and corrugated metal roof, shining in the morning sun reminded me of some of the interesting buildings I’d seen in Barcelona. To my mind, if you have to have a sewage plant (which obviously you do), then it might as well look interesting. More importantly, the air was wonderfully sweet, without the slightest whiff of a pong. Despite all this the social media trolls were not impressed and I’d seen lots of grumbles about the look of the building. I had an idea it wouldn’t have met with their approval even if it had been made of gold and encrusted with jewels.

We walked onward toward the shore discussing the rise in online nastiness we’d both noticed recently. Perhaps it had always been there but it certainly seemed to be getting worse. The heritage and history pages were especially bad. Even the most innocuous post was often followed by council bashing, finger pointing nastiness, accusations and downright rudeness.

The Woolston end of the shore was fairly deserted but we could see from the long line of cars parked further along, that walking by the sea wasn’t going to be a good idea. Luckily, we’d always planned for this to be the turning point of our walk so we turned towards the woods. The trail through Jurds Lake is the beginning of Shoreburs Greenway, a three and a half mile trail leading from Weston Shore to Bursledon. It was beginning to get rather warm by this time so we were both glad we’d thought to bring water with us. As usual, I lagged behind Commando, not because I couldn’t keep up but because I kept stopping to look at interesting things like the dog roses growing beside the trail.

The land we were walking on was once owned by the Royal Navy and housed the Rolling Mills, used to produce brass strip to make shells, and the Royal Navy stores. The stores closed in 1987 and the area was turned into a nature reserve. I’d read on a local social media page that, amongst all the interesting butterflies and plants, there were even bee orchids but I didn’t see any, possibly because I was too intent on keeping Commando in sight. In the centre of the site there is a stream and a lake containing reed beds but we didn’t see that either because we were skirting the edge of the site heading towards Archery Road.

We didn’t actually see the stream that runs right through the greenway to the shore until we’d crossed Archery Road and had entered Mayfield Park. From now on it would be our constant companion until we reached Millers Pond and had to go back to boring road walking. The park has an interesting history, including a mill, a revolutionary new method of mass producing wooden rigging blocks for the navy and a connection with Woodmill. If you’d like to know more about all this, click here.

It was the fairy doors we’d come to see, or rather the lack of them. At some point, not long after my previous walk, a lot of them had been removed. There were several rather angry posts on social media about this. Commando and I both agreed that whoever removed them probably did so with the best of intentions. From the pictures I’d seen things had begun to get a little out of hand. Many of the most recent additions to the enchanted walk looked as if they included a lot of plastic and, nice as it is for the children to enjoy the magic, a nature walk littered with lots of little plastic objects isn’t really ecologically sound and could even be a danger to some of the animals who call this their home. Some people didn’t seem to understand this even when it was politely pointed out to them and some of the responses to the posts were openly abusive.

It seemed quite fitting when the first sign of anything magical we saw was a warning to ‘beware of the troll.’ I couldn’t help wondering if the person who put the sign there had seen the social media posts. The next thing we saw looked like it might actually be a troll, hanging from a tree.

I only took one more photograph on this walk but I was pleased to see that some of the more magical evidence of fairies had been left in place. I was also pleased that some of the other things I’d seen in photographs had been removed. It’s lovely for children to believe in magic and fairies but I think it’s also important to teach them about keeping the environment safe, even if this does mean they might end up feeling a little disappointed. As for the trolls, we didn’t see a single one, but the evidence of their existence is all too clear if you venture onto social media.

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