Opposite is a hedge, and behind it something else that (like the goose pond back at Trill) is visible only in winter when the hedge is leafless: a statue, gracefully female, standing at the end of a garden. ("And can I reach through the hedge and goose her?" asks an irreverent recipient of this detail.)

PICTURE: statue through hedge (and version 2, in summer?)

Update. 2007: the statue has gone.

The road rises only a little more, as a forest avenue—at the end of which, in a certain winter light, I saw a giant—

Then between fields on the open upland; then, entering another patch of houses among trees, begins to descend, gently at first. Then it plunges, with forest banked up to the left, sharp drop into forest to the right.

When the trees on the right cease (actually, the first two openings are obstructed by a house and a hedge—

—so a field gate gives the first chance)—

—the view opens wide and deep over a dale, a confluence of valleys. Toward the back of this view, like a curtain to a theatre, stand the ten tall arches of the Cannington Viaduct. Beyond and above them, you may notice vehicles flitting; they are on the coast road. (Next over the horizon, unseen, is the sea.)

Notice in front of the viaduct a low hill or spur, with a hedge descending along it. The site of the local Roman villa is in the field beyond that hedge, on the spur's level top somewhat to the right.

The lane you are descending is a ledge slanting along the southern flank of the Woodhouse hill, and is so exhilarating to swoop down on a bicycle—with the dale exploding into view alongside—that I call it The Swoop, and let out a whoop. It dips (passing some lucky cottages and the top of a lane that drops into the Holcombe side-valley), then rises to a hump, before its final long descent (called Wadley Hill). If I let go the brakes and put my head down, I can freewheel through the dip and almost to the top of the hump before coming to a standstill—and sometimes, when there is no head wind, just over it, thus coasting without moving the pedals all the way from the plateau to somewhere in Uplyme.

On the way down, the lane tunnels under a high oak, and lower down another, lower again a third. This gigantic creature with its mazy body-plan seems to start from astride the lane and soar past the valley's opposite wall; only arriving closer do you make out which bank it has its foot in (the right).

The steepest part of the lane is the last: it plunges past the first two cottages of Uplyme, on the left, and through a small crossroads—

—where the turning on the right leads into the Cannington valley; so does the sharper turning at the bottom.

This is a growing tip of the maze. In other words, it WILL eventually lead to the goal—the Cobb—when I've had the time to construct it further. Tell me) if you've reached this far.