character, form have vanished into the indistinct distance. The delicate framework of this thing of beauty with its clothing of bright-hued tissue has gone to disintegration and final destruction, only however to enter in a new form into the components of other and immediately succeeding objects of loveliness and utility. But we must turn from the bridge and from the actual and suggestive beauty of its immediate surroundings and follow the road towards Fordingbridge, taking a peep, however, before we leave, of the prettily-thatched village inn at Ibbesley with its front wall garlanded by trailers and its little garden gay with flowers. The Avon will be our guide to Fordingbridge and we follow its stream as it winds through more water-meadows, northwards up its valley. Our way lies through deep lanes under the shadows of Oak, Elm and Ash, but we get glimpses of the heathy uplands of the forest away over the meadows on our right. We presently reach two Ash trees growing on a green mound by the roadside, where another road crosses the one we are following. But we continue the route we have been pursuing and pass under the shadows of overarching Elms and by hedgebanks dyed with the purple of the Dogwood. Emerging from our lanes upon a little bridge whose stream runs into the Avon— which we can now see once more across some meadows we continue past the bridge until we reach some Poplars between the branches of which, away to the left, we catch sight of the houses of Fordingbridge and of the church tower of the little place standing up above all other buildings. After one or two more windings our road takes us into the town itself. |