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The West Dorset Magazine, May 6, 2022
Health & Beauty
Walking West Dorset FROME VALLEY TRAIL: 4th WALK This walk of 6 miles is easy going and much of it is on the cyclists’ Route 26. Park at the walkers’ car park, about 100 yards beyond Greenford School in Higher Frome Vauchurch. Walk down past the school to the junction with the A356. Cross the road and then the bridge over the river Toller (aka Hooke) just before its confluence with the Frome. Walk diagonally to your left across the field, through a gate and alongside the Frome, to join a road that continues downstream to Lower Frome Vauchurch.
Continue past the Church until the tarmac runs out at a gate. Follow the path across a couple of fields and cross the Frome twice at an island on the boundary with Maiden Newton parish. Turn right and follow the river to the next bridge then turn left along the road to
with retired Dorset rights of way officer Chris Slade
Cruxton. Follow the road until the houses run out and turn left and follow an unpaved Council road, which is muddy in places, to Notton. The surface improves along the next mile, a bridleway, that, past Throop, passes Nunnery Mead, a wild flower meadow with the site of a medieval village and a Roman villa that you might like to visit. Continue through a short section of woodland and you’ll arrive at Southover, a suburb of Frampton with
lots of houses that will make you wonder where the flint mine is. Continue through the hamlet until you reach a junction. Turn back and follow your footprints back to the start unless, at the west end of Southover, you’d like to join the bridleway that takes you up the peaceful and beautiful Southover Bottom, a coombe that takes you up to Notton Hill Barn then down through Notton Bottom to rejoin the route.
Dealing with difficult life decisions
Alex Fender
youcantalk.net is a new wellness and mental health resource launched by Bridport-based duo Kerry Miller and Alex Fender. It features lots of free resources to help people relax and take stock. I thought it might be helpful to share a Life Review with you. This one developed into a supported biography (more about that another time). I should say at the outset I
keep all work secure, under lock and key whilst in progress and destroy all work when the Life Review is completed. The client keeps the work we produce. I don’t keep copies. What I share below is from memory and anonymised. When I first met Janice her hands and arms were shaking, she was generally fidgety and over time it seemed to be getting worse. I wondered if there was something deeply buried, and toxic, in her past. Eventually, with me as an empathetic writing companion in a safe nonjudgemental space, she told me her father took his own life in the family home and the grief of that led to her having sex with a former
boyfriend much against the mores of the conservative and religious society she lived in. She became pregnant and decided to bring up the baby herself. Her mother supported her. One day Janice was invited to a wedding and her mother urged her to go. She met Tim. Tim and Janice married. Tim adopted Raymond, now three. Janice and Tim had four children together, none of whom knew Raymond was a halfbrother. Janice was on constant high alert because Tim would make mistakes about how long they were married for and in his job and the society they lived that mattered. We discussed the corrosiveness of these two
secrets – her father’s suicide and Raymond’s illegitimacy – if we were continuing with a Supported Biography, perhaps Raymond needed to know the facts and all the children should know the truth about their grandfather’s death. I felt hugely privileged to be given this task and saw Raymond and told him the story. A week later I went to see Janice, she opened the door looking like a different woman: fresh, smiling and incredibly, the shaking had gone. She said she felt peaceful for the first time in decades. If you want to know more about Life Reviews, Supported Biographies or Legacy Writing go to youcantalk.net
