The Wansdyke & District Forums

another one for the collection, not me this time, my neighbour, whos lived here forever and is the last person youd expect. says years ago, walking the Ridgeway early, he saw a file of men crossing the path ahead, wrong clothes, helmets, spears, and visible only from the knees up, as if the old road surface was lower than the modern one. didnt make a sound. crossed and were gone. he doesnt tell it for effect, he doesnt like telling it at all, i had to drag it out of him. is this a known Ridgeway thing or has he just seen one too many documentaries?

It is one of the most consistent kinds of apparition there is, and the detail your neighbour gives, visible only from the knees up, is the one that persuades me he is not embroidering, because it is the detail people who invent these stories do not think to include. It is reported wherever an old road has been worn down or built up over the centuries: the figures walk the level they knew, which is no longer our level, so they appear to wade through our ground to the knee. The famous one is the legion seen in a cellar in York, marching on the old road two feet below the modern floor. Your neighbour has the genuine article, Dave. Be gentle with him about it. People do not enjoy being haunted by history; they would mostly rather not have seen it.

And the Ridgeway is the right place for it, the oldest road in Britain, walked for five thousand years. If any road has soaked up its travellers it is that one. I have never seen the soldiers, but I have felt, up there at dawn, that I was one of a great many walking it and not the only one present, which is as close as I get and quite close enough. The road remembers its feet. Your neighbour walked into a place where the remembering thinned for a moment. He is luckier than he feels. Most of us only ever feel the edge of it.

thank you Mrs A and Bran, ill tell him gently that hes not mad and hes not alone, which i think is all he wanted really. the knees-up detail got me too. hes a retired engineer, reads the football and the news and nothing else, and he saw Romans wade through the Ridgeway and its quietly troubled him for thirty years. theres something sad in that, carrying a thing like that on your own all that time because youd be laughed at. glad he had somewhere to put it down at last.