Windsor view

For as long as I can remember, I have loved open space. Growing up in London's suburbs meant that I was always aware of its absence, an awareness which was re-enforced by our family's search for it at any given opportunity. Free-time together invariably meant escaping from the Thames-valley's pressure and smog, to places such as Shaftesbury in Dorset, or the wild North Cornish Coast, to National Trust houses set in large grounds like Polesden Lacy - but if time was short, a quick trip to Windsor Great Park. I loved these places, and saved hard as a teenager to buy a bike that would bring many of them within my reach. Yesterday I found the receipt for the "F.W. Evans Tourer De Luxe (black)" on which I pedalled through as many of these landscapes as I could manage.

Windsor Great Park was the nearest place to our house that I could find that feeling of open space, that escape from the traffic and architectural overload with which the south-east had been blighted in the course of a generation. My Grandma described moving out to Ashford, Middx after WWII as moving out to a quiet village - but by the end of her life, London had caught up with her again, growing out to surround the village, deny it a shape or identity, lasoo it with the M25 and drag it into the uniformity of Londonness. But from here - I could cycle to Windsor Great Park, which had acres of grass, mature trees, deer and no cars; and I did whenever I could. There are paths and trackways through the park on which you very rarely see a soul - even today. There are remote corners of the park where even the rumbling of Heathrow can be forgotten.

As a child, Windsor Great Park used to give me that sense of remoteness that now only comes if I am out wandering through the Cairngorms or up some wild Torridonian ridge whilst looking out to Skye. Much as I love 'The Copper Horse' and 'The Long Walk' (above), it doesn't feel as wild as it used to! Nevertheless it is a place which overwhelms me with memories - of events and days, of life-formingly special people, some of whom are gone, some of whom I have lost touch with, some of whom walked through there again with me this summer.

As I sat at the foot of the "Copper Horse" and mulled over these things; my Dad played 'Hide and Seek' with my young children, around the vast trunks of ancient trees that will outlast us all.