Bure Brook

The headwater of Bure Brook, which enters Christchurch Harbour near Mudeford Quay, runs through one of the remaining pockets of Chewton Common, a narrow though still substantial band of wet and wild woodland running through Walkford. The fact that it's predominantly wet (with few paths), means that we don't often walk here, though the recent dry weather has now made it more accessible. Amongst this ostensibly wild wood there are signs of human activity, we walked along the raised bank of a long neglected old enclosure (shown on a 1888 map) to where it's cut by the Bure, still less than a meter wide.  Beyond on a drier slope are the scars of the levelled and filled dirt ramps built by local cyclists, they saw use for well over a decade, though soon they'll completely disappear out of sight and then memory. The archaeologist in me enjoys deciphering the layers which overlay our landscape, watching how features connect, how they weather or how the more ephemeral ones can appear only to completely disappear within a few years. It amazes me how, if left undisturbed in a stablish environment, simple earthen features can endure in a landscape for thousands of years, when soil seems such a fragile medium to endure.