This week : Craig reflects on his regular commute between Dorset and Wiltshire
‘Have you seen my brown boots?’
When my wife (who usually knows where everything is) asks such a question, it’s probably going to be my fault for losing something. When I (who never remember where anything is) ask such a question, it’s also probably going to be my fault for having a cursory ‘man-look’ before giving up.
Right now it’s 6AM and, on this rare occasion, I actually know the right answer.
Unnerved by this rare display of acuity, I pause. I could just tell her the truth: her boots are on the back seat of my car. But I’m thinking better of it. We’re in our little cottage at Worth Matravers and, pulling the curtains to one side and peering into the gloom, I see that it’s blowing a hoolie out there. The car might be just a minute’s walk away, but as Storm Éowyn blazes its trail over the Atlantic Ocean towards Northern Ireland, its rough edges unleash a lesser hell on the south-west coast. It’s been at gale-force since the early hours and now it’s chucking it down. Once I’ve stumbled (burdened with two days’ worth of luggage and recycling) down the dark lane to my car, I want to be entrenched in the warm vehicle until I get to my destination, not scrabbling backwards and forwards like a runner on the film set of The Day After Tomorrow clutching a pair of size four boots.
Nevertheless, I zip up my parka with a sigh. ‘I’ll go and get them.” Bank those brownie points, Ennew.
Ten minutes later, and I’m behind the wheel and cursing my way through the puddled potholes north of Worth. My engine cuts out at temporary traffic lights beyond Corfe Castle. Thus begins my thrice-weekly commute to Salisbury.
“How are you getting on with the drive?”
It says something about the human condition that, when you make the effort to simplify your life and effect positive change, most people would rather hear about the obstacles than the successes. So it is that, now we’ve moved to Dorset, the question I find myself fielding most often is: ‘How are you getting on with the drive?’ I have a colleague who seems intent on asking on a weekly basis. His eyes bore into mine, eager to find any traces of fatigue. Having made no real attempt to hide the early onslaught of schadenfreude, he might just as well come out with it: ‘Go on, you cocky bastard: admit that it’s starting to grind you down.’
I know what he wants to hear: ‘It’s worse than I feared. My back’s in half, the cost in petrol is draining our bank account dry, and every hour stuck behind that wheel hurtles me towards an excruciating and premature death.’
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint the gloaters: for the time being at least, two out of three ain’t true.
No-one is more surprised about this than myself: I am no keen driver and car-talk bores the life out of me. But the tolerance of – or indeed the pleasure found – in my commute has nothing to do with the driving or even the blissful periods of solitude. It is rooted in the landscape.
When following the same route south before we’d moved from Salisbury, my wife and The Boy passed time by identifying markers in the geography by which they could claim the landscape as their own. An imperious, side-less barn lording it over long furrowed fields; a meadow of white goats bleating at the traffic. Crucially, cries of ‘There’s our barn!’ kept The Boy off-tech and encouraged him to observe nature; to feel a part of the new ways that we three were beginning to carve out for ourselves. Now he’s spotting a red kite hovering above an unsuspecting field mouse on the borders, or a rangale of deer bolting into woodland. Hypervigilant, he sees things way before others can.
Something magical happens when you cross over the border into Dorset
They both agree with me on this: something magical happens as you cross the border into Dorset. Perhaps it’s the sheer scale of the backdrop of hills and a sky that always seems too vast to grasp. Perhaps it’s the thought of the many snuffling creatures out there, teeming within the undergrowth; little lives stirred up by the ghosts of travellers that once traversed drove and bridleway. Perhaps it’s the sentinel roundbarrows and dykes that have guarded the mysteries of the undulating lands for millenia.
Alone on the journey home, I often find myself driving into impossibly beautiful sunsets, the first vivid pinpricks of lights from isolated houses twinkling like strings of pearls across the distant hillscape. In the dusk, I think of the loved ones I return to. Once, more recently heading east on the way to work, the dark returned like an uninvited guest. As the morning light tried in vain to push through, the sky took on startling shades of mauve and purple, fields and white houses popping out against it. Within minutes, the first fat drops of rain were smacking the windscreen, the sky then resuming its bible black mantle of night-time, heralding some apocalypse whilst stabbing shards of forked lightning into the horizon.
Any sense of a long drive is banished
I’m learning on these drives as well. In the mornings, it’s the Radio 4 Today programme: serious but important news with the occasionally feature of light relief. Heading home, it’s often a podcast or audiobook – usually something uplifting about simplified living – any place where my head happemns to be at. With such thoughts, any sense of a long drive is banished. Before I know it, I’m back home with my wife and The Boy.
As the seasons change, so will the landscape of my drive. The days will stretch out, and sunlight will bookend both legs of my journey. Homeward bound, as I turn the corner into the final minutes of my drive (whether it be to Worth Matravers or West Lulworth), I will be greeted by the sight of what this, our life-shift, has been about. I will be greets by that age-old symbol of change.
The sea.
©Craig Ennew 2025
- New Year’s Eve, Lulworth Cove
- Coincidence?
- St Oswald’s Bay, Jurassic Coast
- Autumn at The Fells
- West Lulworth, Dorset
- Thirty-Eight: Two Legs Good, Eight Legs Bad
- Sherborne, Dorset
- Thirty-Seven: In for the Long Haul
- Petronas Towers, KL, Malaysia
- Batu Caves, KL, Malaysia
- Chinatown, KL, Malaysia
- Thirty-Six: All Going East!
- Redang Beach Resort, Malaysia
- Coral Island Resort, Redang
- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Thirty-Five: A Farewell to the Close
- Thirty-Four: Windows and Doors
- The Boat Shed Cafe, Lulworth Cove
- The Fells, West Lulworth
- Thirty-Three: Old Friends
- Moreton, near Dorchester
- Thirty-Two: Bottled Up
- Lulworth Cove, Dorset
- Thirty-One: Another One Fights the Dust
- The Fells, West Lulworth: BBQ with a view
- Lulworth Cove: our first night
- Leaving Worth Vegas!
- Thirty: Channelling Alan
- The Garden of ‘The Shack’, West Lulworth, Dorset
- Twenty-Nine: Worth its Weight in Gold
- From the Cove looking towards Portland Bill, West Lulworth
- Twenty-Eight: Schools for Thought
- Dancing Ledge, Purbeck
- Bridport, Dorset
- West Bay, Dorset
- Arne RSPB Nature Reserve, Dorset
- Moors Valley Country Park, Dorset
- Twenty-Seven: Spring Forwards, Fall Back
- Twenty-Six: The Square and Compass
- Twenty-Five: About a Boy
- Twenty-Four: The ‘A’ Word
- The Priest’s Way, Swanage
- Twenty-Three: Why did the chicken jump on the trampoline?
- Twenty-Two: The Shape of Sundays
- Twenty-One: Who’s Gonna Drive You Home?
- Twenty: Keep the Change, Ya Filthy Animal
- Nineteen: A Fork in the Road
- Wareham, Dorset
- Eighteen: Elephants and Coat-hangers
- Seventeen: There is a Light…
- Sixteen: Twas the Night Before Christmas
- Fifteen: Christmas in Limboland
- Fourteen: Goodbyes
- Thirteen: Jumping at the Cupboard Knobs
- Twelve: When Good Neighbours Become Good Friends
- Eleven: A Cackle of Hyenas
- Ten: Turning the Page
- Durdle Door, Dorset
- Nine: A Wait on Our Minds
- Eight: Clouds on the Horizon
- Seven: The Naked Man Story
- Six: All Pets are Off
- Five: Space Exploration
- Four: Bungalows and Builders
- Three: Bland Designs
- Two: Killing Pianos
- One: Funky Little Shack
All Going South 
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