Lost Green Fields

Passing the fields by the Ring Road unsettles me these days. For many years I have walked along these fields. Once they were a summer meadow, just three miles from the city centre. In my teenage years, during the 1980s, my father and I walked our dog Tyrone across these fields. After a heavy Sunday lunch, we would put on our walking boots, put on Tyrone’s leash and head down to the fields. Once we reached the centre of the fields we would step over a small-stream and sometimes we would even cross the motorway slip road and into a burgeoning forest of sorts, planted in the 1970s. Since those halycon days, I have passed by these fields almost everyday on my  way to the city centre. I have seen vans, cars and coaches pull up beside the fields to feed the horses which graze there.

Now a huge portion of these fields is a building site for the multimillion pound, Stourton Park and Ride Scheme. The horses have been shunted into a smaller area, a strip of land beside the park and ride. What was a green field is now grey mud, black concrete and tarmac dominate the now industrial-looking landscape. The top soil has been shorn away to make room for cars. Floodlights and the sounds of generators drown out the magpies, blackbirds, crows and sparrows.