The windmills of my mind

19 October 2014

A local news item determined my Sunday walk this week. The report was about the Bursledon Windmill and the work being done to refurbish it. This is the only working windmill in Hampshire so, historically, it’s of great importance. The original wooden mill was built in 1766 and the bicentennial of the current mill is next month. The hope is that the work will be finished by then and the sails will be turning. This would be nice because I’ve never seen the sails turning before.

Not so very long ago I wandered up there to see if there’d been any progress but, apart from a beautiful blue sky backdrop that hadn’t been there on my previous visits, it all looked the same. The local news showed the windmill ensconced in scaffolding which was a departure, if not an improvement. It was time to take another look.

There are a few choices of route, some more scenic than others. Due to time constraints and heel blisters, albeit covered with a blister plaster, I chose the shortest, which is also the least interesting. This was about the windmill after all. Basically it’s a long, straight road starting from the top of the Big Hill and undulating down and up three more big hills to a huge roundabout. As it happened it wasn’t quite as boring as I’d expected.

As I passed the village church a flash of red on the grassy bank behind the low wall caught my eye. At first I thought it was litter and I had half a mind to pick it up. A closer look showed me it was a fly agaric, amanita muscaria, one of the most recognisable fungi with its red skin spotted with white. It was, apparently, sprinkled in milk to get rid of bugs in England and Sweden and is the mushroom the caterpillar sat on in Alice in Wonderland. It is, of course, poisonous but has been used as an intoxicant, causing auditory and visual disturbances. This one was broken but I was pleased to see an undamaged one just behind it.

Another flash of red drew my attention to Virginia creeper competing with ivy to climb a tree and the church spire rose above more red leaves. Right beside me a squirrel froze mid bite on a nut as I passed. He was sitting amongst the graves but, by the time I’d raised my phone to take a picture he’d roused himself and dashed up a tree.

The next photo stop was at around the half way point. At the dip between hills I stopped to peer through the allotment fence at a rather attractive shed surrounded by flowers. There aren’t many flowers about at the moment and I’ve never seen a shed with a dovecote on the roof, at least I think it was a dovecote.

At the top of the final hill I took a very welcome break to snap horses grazing peacefully in a field across the busy road and some fungi growing on a fallen tree. I’m not sure what they are but there were lots of them and they looked beautiful to me against the greenish tree bark. This is the season of fungi so I’m looking forward to seeing lots more in the coming weeks.

By this time I was almost at Providence Hill with just one road to cross before I reached Windmill Lane. It’s a busy road with a wide grassy island between the two lanes. There are trees on the island and a curious sculpture made from a dead tree. It almost has the look of a totem pole with a kestrel at the top spreading it’s wings about to take flight and a very grumpy looking face at the bottom. Despite his grumpiness I kind of like him.

It took a while to get across the road but I was soon walking past the pastel coloured cottages on Windmill Lane. The sign told me the windmill was still closed but I knew that already so I walked down the lane wondering exactly what I’d see at the end of it. Behind the trees I could hear hedge trimming going on and the smell of bituminous paint drifted on the air.

As I’d expected the windmill was still clothed in scaffolding. The arms that support the sails have been removed and the body of the mill is all but hidden. Things often need to get worse before they get better I suppose and maybe that’s a lesson I need to learn.

As I was taking photos of the mill pond and the Hiltingbury Granary, not to mention the curious kiln like structure with a fire burning in it, the person cutting back hedges spoke to me. When I looked up he took off his protective headgear revealing himself to be Gary, the miller who’d shown me round on my second visit.

We had a little chat about the ongoing work.
“Will it be finished in time for the reopening?” I asked.
“It will,” he said, sounding very confident.
He told me the new drive shaft has arrived and has to be fitted and there are new sails too. It all sounds like a lot of work for such a short time but I’m very excited at the prospect of seeing the sails turning in the near future. As we chatted another worker came over, he said he’d never seen the mill with sails either and, if anything, he seemed even more excited than me.

All that remained was to take a picture of the Chineham Barn. With that accomplished I said goodbye, and promised to come back when the mill was open. As I passed the ground floor window I couldn’t resist a little look to see if there was any sign of William Langtry’s ghost.

As I walked back to the village, bypassing the interesting footpaths I might have taken, I couldn’t help wondering what Phoebe Langtry, saviour of the mill, would think about it all.

If you’re wondering what the windmill looks like without all that scaffolding, I’ll show you tomorrow. Hopefully, at some point in November, I’ll show you what it looks like with sails turning too.