She poured herself back in, a walking club with delusions of Tolkien, and pretending this bit doesn't exist

2 October 2025

Welcome to issue 8 of Tales from the Chase, a weekly newsletter for Cranborne Chase. Local events. Odd tales. Mildly strange goings-on. All delivered by email, free, and occasionally unhinged (in a charming way). Was this email forwarded to you? You can sign up for free by clicking below!

Welcome, curious wanderers

October begins. Welcome back. We’ve missed you terribly.

As ever, we’ve gathered the most curious sightings, semi-verified reports, and sideways glances into the secret life of Cranborne Chase.

Featured this week:

• long overdue revelations about Hubert and Ebble
• the start of our new series on the Forgotten Footpath Society, those elusive wanderers who map paths that only exist on certain days
• what happens where Blandford Forum meets the Chase
• the usual mix of quirks, curios, and charmingly strange goings-on.

A RIVER SCORNED

Regular readers will know that Hubert has been on the receiving end of some watery mischief from Ebble, the goddess of the river of the same name. She haunts his dreams, and not in a good way. Seemingly all because he slighted her in his very first piece in this newsletter (Issue 1, 14 August), and so far has stubbornly refused to apologise. This has led to some alarming consequences for Hubert (see issue 6, 18 September).

But something shifted in the last edition (Issue 7). His description of the Ebble at Bishopstone took on an unexpectedly reverent tone. His words were flattering, laced with an admiration he rarely shows for anything. He even described her as “great fun at parties.” Knowing Hubert, that grim emissary of sarcasm, I raised an eyebrow at that. Fun and parties are not something Hubert does. Unless, perhaps, he was different once.

Hubert is famously secretive about his personal life. I don’t even know where he lives. But last week, I did note that the dropbox where he leaves his material for the Guide is located in the parish of Bishopstone. That stirred a memory: Isla Cobb’s revelation (Issue 3, 28 August) that, back in the 1990s, Ebble took human form as a charismatic, country-music-loving woman named Mary, who rented a cottage by the river in that very parish. She was known to be lively, charismatic. She drew people to her. I began to wonder whether Hubert was among them.

I asked Isla what more she could tell me, about him, and about the possibility that he had once known Ebble… or Mary.

She told me Hubert was only an alias: no surprise there. The name, she said, was chosen for the patron saint of the hunt, a nod to the Chase and its beginnings as a medieval hunting ground. He did live in the Bishopstone area, a short walk from the White Hart. And no, she won't tell me his real name. That's his business.

She confirmed there had been an attraction between young 'Hubert' and 'Mary.' People saw him walking her home after line dancing, sometimes hand in hand; lingering with her after pub singalongs, laughing with her at village gatherings. Leaving her cottage early in the morning.

“He was besotted,” Isla said. “Or at least swept up in her current. And she...well, she liked mortal company. It isn’t unusual. Rivers are curious.”

But then her voice lowered. “Dalliances with goddesses rarely end tidily. Some say Hubert grew uneasy when Mary’s glamour slipped: when her eyes flickered river-grey in candlelight, or when her laughter carried an undertone like running water. I heard he left her waiting one night outside the White Hart, standing alone. He didn't show up. Whatever the truth, the romance ended. Not long after, ‘Mary’ vanished."

Isla gave a thin smile. “And the night she left? The river swelled without warning. No rain, no storm. Just a quiet rising, like she’d poured herself back in. Folk still talk about that. But Hubert never spoke of her again, and he withdrew from company, sour and silent.”

"Until decades later, in my newsletter", I said.

Isla thought a while then said this: "His dismissive remark about the Ebble being “a moist suggestion of a stream” who "can't be bothered to turn up", was perhaps meant as satire, but it looks like to her it compounded his betrayal. To mock her flow, and her constancy, after their history and after he had abandoned her outside the White Hart, touched something deeper".

"My opinion? The feud's not simply caused by careless words in a newsletter, and its not just a goddess enforcing respect. It's the rekindling of a much deeper hurt".

Finally I asked Isla what she thought of Hubert's attempts to flatter and placate Ebble in the last newsletter.

“‘A few kind words might smooth the water" she said. "But Ebble’s no fool. Flattery ripples across her surface, yes, but it does not reach the depths. If he’s truly sorry, let him show it in deeds. She won't leave his dreams until he does. And he really shouldn't stir her memory again.”

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This week, Tales from the Chase sets out on a new path: a series tracing the curious wanderings of the Forgotten Footpath Society, based here in the Chase. I begin by joining them on one of their “taster” walks, offered to those tempted to step into their world, to learn who they are, what draws them together, and why they do what they do. In the weeks ahead, we’ll open their archives, and meet the characters who keep this unlikely club alive.

we don't get lost. we get curious

The path insists the way lies straight on, over the fields towards Chettle. The Forgotten Footpath Society insists otherwise. They slip through the gap in the hedge, trousers snagged by brambles. I follow, with a sceptic's eye.

The OS map shows a field on the other side of the hedge. But we are in a hollow lane, deep and lined with trees either side, and not marked on any map. Something shifts.The birds fall silent, the breeze stills, and the light pools oddly in the hollows. There's a feeling as though the world is pausing, waiting. The hollow lane bends as though to conceal a secret, and silence feels more watchful than empty. But nothing overtly uncanny happens. We follow the lane a short way and it rejoins the path we were on, a little further on towards Chettle. Looking back, no sign of the hollow lane.

Walk leader Elspeth Thorne (“Els” to everyone) calls a halt. Out comes the notebook, and she starts scribbling away. I catch a glimpse of what she's writing: Hedge-gap at grid reference such-and-such, curious dip in the path, possible portal, hollow lane, definitely elsewhere, rejoins path at grid reference..

The FFS treats these moments as data points for their grand project: a patchwork archive of oddities and clues, cross-referenced later with old maps, myths, legend and local gossip. To the uninitiated it can look like an exercise in over-interpreting brambles. But to the Society, this might be a breadcrumb on the trail to somewhere stranger.

So there are walking clubs, and then there’s the Forgotten Footpath Society

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They gather on weekends with boots laced, maps folded, and a quiet determination to step away from the ordinary. To walk with them is to accept a certain looseness of plan: any sense of destination is more of a rumour than a certainty.

The Society was founded on a belief both simple and impossible: that there are paths which don’t just connect one place to another, but pass to and through this world to another. Perhaps several others.

Their mission statement, earnest and poetic, speaks of “hidden layers of the landscape” and “discovery of forgotten ways.” Their maxim “We follow signs no one else sees” makes them sound part outlaw, part dreamer.

the ffs mission statement

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​We follow signs no one else sees.

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​The Forgotten Footpath Society is dedicated to discovering and exploring the secret paths that lead beyond thresholds into hidden layers of the landscape, not entirely of this world.

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We seek to uncover the stories, mysteries, and wonders woven into discovery of forgotten ways. Through shared adventure, careful documentation, and a spirit of respectful curiosity, we step between layers of reality and keep alive the wanderer’s instinct to follow the way that should not exist.

Their unofficial motto is simpler: “We don’t get lost. We get curious.”

This series explores the Society’s world: their eccentric members, their improbable adventures, and the peculiar joy of wandering not off the path, but off the map.

They say they're not just eccentric walkers sneaking through hedges. They’re seekers of thresholds, edges, deliberately looking for routes that slip through the thin places between this world and another. That’s a much richer, stranger, and more mythic way to walk.

In the Society’s eyes the landscape is littered with "thresholds". Step across, and you might find yourself not merely in the next field, but in a clearing that shouldn’t exist, on a path older than the landscape, or in a place where time seems to fold. All what they like to call "The Elsewhere".

I asked Hubert if he knew of the FFS and if he had any thoughts. Hubert calls it nonsense.

“It’s a walking club with delusions of Tolkien,” he says. He grew up in the Chase, knows every right of way and permissive path, and considers himself a man of maps, not myths. His father was a gamekeeper, his uncle a surveyor; Hubert’s childhood was a long apprenticeship in practical topography. For him, there are no hidden paths, no secret ways.

“FFS indeed,” he mutters, like a curse. “Other worlds? Keep dreaming. You won't find the way to Narnia round here".

He claims he once overtook a group of them while they were carefully sketching a hedge-gap he uses to nip to the pub. “They think it’s a liminal portal. It’s a shortcut to a pint.”

Back to my taster walk, other than the mystery of the hollow lane, which led a short way before merging into the path on the map, nothing more remarkable happens. No vanishing pubs, no phantom gates. And yet, the strangeness is there in subtler ways. It’s in the way the group pauses over an unassuming ditch assessing in hushed tones whether it might be a doorway. Or how they linger by a crooked gate, sketching quickly as if it might disappear at any moment. After a while, their way of seeing starts to rub off. The landscape feels charged, restless, as though the ordinary countryside might give way to something else if you only looked long enough.

The lack of any grand revelations is treated not as a failure but as part of the adventure. I found myself half-expecting the world to tip sideways, and half-laughing at the absurdity of looking for magic in a patch of Dorset farmland. Either way, I couldn’t deny: the vibe is infectious. And what could explain that hollow lane?

By the time we circle back to the start, I realise the land feels altered, or perhaps I do. Yes, much of the time they end up knee-deep in brambles and find nothing more interesting than a different type of mud. But believe their stories and they also find things: a signpost with no path to mark, an old iron gate standing alone in a field, a path that is unmistakably ancient and yet absent from every map. A hollow lane that bends where geography and topography says it should go straight. A pub in a clearing in the woods, gone next time they visit.

Sceptics who join them on one of their ‘taster’ walks can’t quite explain away the moments when the world feels misaligned, and you sense that you have stepped, if only briefly, into somewhere else.

The FFS has built itself around that sensation. Not explorers, not trespassers, but seekers of thresholds. Walkers who insist the world is larger, stranger, and full of more wonder than maps alone allow.

They sketch, draw and note their findings for their archives, and Tales from the Chase has been given exclusive access to some of this material. We’ll be bringing this to you over coming months.

Through fields and lanes, over stiles and streams, they also make their own cartography, drawn not in ink but in stories, laughter, and the occasional bruise. They may not be explorers in the grand sense, but they are keepers of something quietly rebellious: the idea that the world is still bigger than its maps.

But as the light fades and the map no longer matches the ground beneath your boots, you start to wonder. Perhaps the FFS is foolish. Or perhaps they are right, and the Chase is larger, stranger, and littered with more doorways than we care to admit. Walking with them leaves you unsettled in the best way, wondering whether mystery lies not in what you find, but in how you choose to look.

A final word from Hubert; "Away with the enchanted brambles, the sentient mist, and all that poetic nonsense they scribble in their notebooks. It’s a footpath in the Chase, not Lothlorien".

See you in four weeks time with our first report on our exclusive access to the FFS archive.

A parish by parish tour of the Chase

And so it continues. Our parish-by-parish pilgrimage through the Chase’s 108 parishes. Alphabetical order, of course; Hubert's in charge and he likes methodical.

BLANDFORD FORUM (Parts of)

This week brings us, rather curiously, to Blandford Forum (population over 10,000). Not the bustling Georgian town itself (that, truth be told, lies largely outside the Chase), but the parish fringes that creep across the Chase boundary. Hubert's guide will focus just on these.

The map below identifies the parts he will address; numbered 1 to 4. This is where the Chase overlaps the parish boundary. The map may look a little small to see the detail on your screen, particularly if you're using a phone, so if you wish to look more closely, do download the map here Blandford NL Chase map.png.

Areas 2, 3, and 4 got chopped off by the bypass in the ’80s and promptly filled with new housing. The boundary line? Still stuck in 1981. Moving it means wading through government red tape, so, unsurprisingly, it hasn’t happened. Yet.

Before Hubert gets started, a bit of background on the wider town and links to the Chase

There's been a settlement here at a crossing point on the river Stour since Anglo Saxon times, and by the 13th century this had become a market town.

Blandford is known for its grand rebuild after the fire of 1731, which swept away most of the medieval town in a single afternoon. The rebuild, designed by the Bastard brothers, Blandford’s own architect-builders, resulted in those elegant Georgian façades that make the town centre so attractive today.

Located close to the medieval Cranborne Chase, the Chase was historically a source of fuel, grazing, and perhaps a little temptation for townsfolk who sought to sidestep the forest laws by which it was governed. For the people of the Chase, Blandford was a place to sell venison, hides, or timber when the rules allowed; and, one suspects, sometimes when they did not.

There are stories that tell of venison being quietly sold in the market despite the forest courts forbidding it. The Chase’s produce, lawful or otherwise, found its way onto Blandford tables.

Civic accounts record the odd fine or fee tied to the Chase’s governance. There’s at least one 17th-century complaint lodged against Blandford men who had been “cutting wood without warrant” within the Chase bounds.

Today the Chase remains a popular recreation destination for Blandford residents. In turn, the town is a popular destination for Chase residents, providing shops, restaurants, schools, and employment and leisure opportunities.

Hubert's guide is below. All views expressed are Hubert's own, and not necessarily shared by Tales from the Chase.

BLANDFORD FORUM (Parts of)

The town is neither bland nor a forum. I resent liking it. Come for the architecture. Stay because the one-way system trapped you.

Here is my reluctant tour through what can only be described as “the parts of Blandford that shouldn’t be, but technically are, in Cranborne Chase.” The Chase is ancient, layered, strange; and much of this is lost in these parts. Of course, the boundary came first, reflecting the landscape character. Then came the bypass, neatly severing bits of the Chase and leaving them stranded on the wrong side of progress.

Numbers refer to Rob's map above.

1. The Milldown

First, the good news. The Milldown: a real, actual nature reserve. Grassland, trees, butterflies, and views that haven’t yet been spoiled by scaffolding. One walks here not because they must, but because it’s actually pleasant. Shocking, I know.

It’s favoured by dog walkers, joggers, occasional picnickers. Don't let that put you off. There’s a hint of wildness. Views across the valley to the Dorset National Landscape. Glimpses of the grand roofs and chimneys of Bryanston School. For a brief moment, you could almost believe you were somewhere that had been left alone on purpose.

2. Some new houses, a supermarket, and two small business parks

The houses are no more than 15 years old, but feel oddly second-hand. You can almost hear them sigh under the weight of mortgages.

And a Lidl. You can buy something confusing; an angle grinder, a salmon en croûte, and a packet of novelty socks. Or a discount wheel of brie. Or thermal trousers, a trout, a chainsaw. Probably the largest supermarket within the Chase boundary.

Also, a scatter of large rectangular buildings of no design merit housing various businesses, some next to Lidl and some (older) on the other side of the bypass. Where also lies the wide expanse of the Chase, rolling away into the hazy distance beyond the urban.

3. A school and a few new houses

A triangle of former chalk downland occupied by a school and a narrow street of houses clinging to the hillside like a barnacle with council tax. Freshly built and already tired of life.

4. Some more houses

Just that. Cut off from the rest of the Chase by the bypass, this small sliver of former chalk downland is now home to a bunch of people in new(ish) houses. Pleasant enough as somewhere to live, if you like that sort of thing; but not really the Chase anymore. At the bottom of the hill lies the River Stour. A peaceful spot, were it not for the bypass roaring overhead like a motorway-themed opera. Still, water is water.

Summary

Should you visit? I suggest heading for the Chase proper and pretending this bit doesn’t exist. Or have a look at the town centre. That’s what I do.

NEXT WEEK: BOURTON (Part of)

Prepare to be utterly underwhelmed. Really this time.

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And so we draw the curtain on another excursion into the odd. Thank you for following along, whether out of curiosity, duty, or a sense that things can’t possibly get any stranger (they can).

As always, do take care as you re-enter polite society. Check your boots for river mud. Avoid making eye contact with buildings that seem to stare back. And if you find yourself humming a tune you don’t remember learning, just keep walking.

We’ll be back next time, assuming the terrain allows it and no one vanishes in the meantime.

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