The first stop on this route is not a place so much as a movement: the long curve where the road bends between two green hills and the view turns with it.
Before the bend there are only fields and sky. Halfway round, the hills open out and the road shows itself ahead, grey and unhurried, under a sky that could not decide between cloud and blue.
I pulled over after the curve, not before, which is how I have done it ever since. The notes are always better when they are written just after something turns.
Notes for the road
- Fields on both sides, each a slightly different green, stitched together by the road.
- No signs, no buildings, nothing to say where I was. That felt right.
- For next time: write the first line before the engine stops.