Walking the Bride by Kevan Manwaring

Walking the Bride: a journey to free the waters

I stood with my bare feet in the cool, clear waters of the river Bride—enjoying a last defiant meander as it gouged its path through the tombolo of Chesil Beach before debouching into Freshwater Bay. It was a warm, sunny day at the beginning of June. The pristine sky was ozone blue, contrasting sharply with the crumbling golden cliffs of this part of the Jurassic Coast. I was enjoying a symbolic paddle, which also served a practical purpose—enabling me and my fellow river-walker to cross to the footpath on the opposite bank to the brutal tourist-control zone of the caravan park.

A short ride earlier I had met Adam, a spry sixty-something with a centred grace, stoic wisdom, and sharp photographer’s eye, at Littlebredy, eight miles east. The idea was to walk from the sea to the source, at Bridehead—a handsome country estate whose spring-fed lake is the start of the modest Dorset river. Recently sold for £30 million to an anonymous owner via a company called Belport, there had been turbulence created by their decision to rescind the permissive access to the lake and grounds that had been enjoyed by locals and visitors for three decades. The day of the river walk was the last day of public access, and so I had organised a ‘mindful picnic’ by the lake. The plan was to walk the length of the river, and then join picnickers for river-themed poetry and contemplation on the importance of freshwater and access to such sites. I had allowed for three hours of walking, which was what Google Maps told me it would take by foot, but I hadn’t factored in the off-road element – a wide arcing meander, crisscrossing the river but rarely following it. Although suitably riverine, this route highlighted the problem of access: apart from Freshwater and a short section at Burton Bradstock, Bridehead was the only place offering good access to the river. The rest of it seemed deliberately off-limits, with local footpaths rarely being allowed to go close. To walk the Bride valley involved several lengthy traverses of its sloping fields as we looped our way towards the source. And so, having left my car at Littlebredy, we had driven in Adam’s to Freshwater.

And now here we were, getting our feet wet.

The water formed a braid of rivulets over the shingle, a scintillating basket of light. Gin clear at its source, it was unusual for a British river in 2025 to be clear at its termination in the sea. Over the last couple of years there had been scandalous amounts of sewage discharge in many of our rivers in England and Wales, in some cases technically ‘killing’ them, as with the nearby River Lim, which was declared ‘ecologically dead’ in 2023. To kill a river suggests it is alive, which would confirm Robert Macfarlane’s question articulated in his new book, Is A River Alive? It is an ontological hypothesis posited by the burgeoning Rights of Nature movement, which has seen rivers in Aotearoa, Ecuador, India, and Canada declared as ‘living’ and thereby granted legal status and protection. I wonder if the same defence could be used to protect the River Bride from such actions as Belport have taken? To cut off its source is to cut off its very ‘life force’. Surely, the river belongs to the whole valley and all who love it, who live and grow there—both human and more-than-human? We should be mindful that the river is a shared resource that belongs to all communities along it. It has a presence and agency that transcends neat categories, and our attempts to define it, and even to articulate its needs. As Macfarlane suggests, perhaps the question is not simply ‘Who speaks on behalf of the river?’ but ‘What does the river want to say?’

I attempt this kind of deep listening as we begin our walk along the ‘mature’ river, although walking with friends means often the focus is shifted more to the human than the more-than-human. This still felt strangely sympatico to the riverine theme of the walk.

Walking with Adam on the first leg of the walk, the conversation was  heart-centred, as we discussed the complex river systems of relationships. Something about being close to waters softens the heart and stimulates the flow of ideas and conversation. Studies have shown that the ‘pink’ sound of running water affects the synapses of the brain, changing wave-pattern from Alpha to Theta, enabling greater synaptic connections across the hemispheres of our own complex, cranial river valley network. Perhaps this is what happens when we meet our other fellow walker, Josef—tall, slim, dressed nattily in black (his t-shirt sporting the legend ‘Co-ops are the New Black’) with heart-shaped mirror shades and a straw trilby, and bearing only a water bottle, while Adam and I were weighed down with daysacks—mine containing first aid kit, food, waterproofs, spare layer, and anthology for the picnic. He’s a local dynamo behind West Dorset Commons and its many initiatives. Always fizzing with ideas, we quickly tumble into a lively, free-range conversation about ecological issues –primarily the challenges and practicalities of living sustainably (or more fundamentally, how to create complete systemic change so that we live within the ‘doughnut’ of the planet’s resources).

The footpath from the picturesque village of Burton Bradstock was pleasant to follow –lined as it was by willows and alder, offering deliciously dappled shade. Yet, all too soon the footpath veered away from the river, over fields towards a farm and a campsite. Following a track which headed up towards the brow of the valley where the A35 dominated the skyline with its steady flow of traffic, we looked for the path that would take us back down towards the river. Here we encountered the first of many instances of missing signs and overgrown paths—an increasingly common problem, highlighting the need for a better national policy on public access to nature, as well as the funding and support to make it work. We followed what seemed like the right way along a grassy track, but quickly ran out of path. We were forced to follow the edge of the next couple of fields to avoid damaging crops, and this led us on a circuitous and counter-intuitive ‘eddy’, which nearly broke my friends’ morale and faith in my orienteering skills. Fortunately, I found the (well-hidden) footbridges that enabled us to cross the Bride, and get back on track. We stopped at the charming Modbury Farm Shop for a snack and a slurp. Talking to the owners, they sounded generally against the closure of Bridehead, although keen to see how the new owners move forward, aware of the tricky balance to strike between conservation and access. Continued permission would be the preferred outcome, but they cited recent instances of thoughtless dog owners leaving their dog waste behind in bags. This was something I hadn’t seen there before in all my years of visiting, so might have been the result of the surge in last-minute visitors. Unconscionable behaviour, certainly, but I do not think it justifies depriving the rest of us the right of access to the lake. However, education, consideration and mutual responsibility are key.

We all need to be mindful users.

Fortified, we continued along the lane, turning off at Berwick Farm and heading uphill to Puncknowle – warm work in the midday sun.Fla gging, we stopped to catch our breath at The Crown, before forging stiffly ahead. We were all feeling a little ‘hike-drunk’ by now, and so we could be forgiven for taking the wrong path out of the village. We made up for it, with a more direct traverse to Littlebredy, leaving out Litton Cheney and Long Bredy altogether. The way got easier to follow, with less climbing, except for the final push to the edge of Bridehead.

Two hours late, we still felt good as we arrived at the lake (the first time for Josef). There were a handful of picnickers, but we spotted our ‘rebels’ straight away—relieved to see them still there, with plenty of food to be had.

After we had caught our breath, and revived ourselves with vittles, I suggested a few poems from the lovely Common Ground anthology, The River’s Voice, which I had brought along, and we took turns to read a selection: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Plath, Hughes, and others followed. This helped to focus our attention on the river. But the meditation that my friend Izzy Robertson then led (on my prompting) was even more effective at attuning us to the actuality of the water: by gently opening our senses and relaxing us into the soft ‘thick’ phenomenology of being by water. I asked the group to share any words or phrases that came to them: ‘flow’, ‘alive’, ‘gentle’, ‘peaceful’ were among the suggestions. Then another one of our picnickers, Carolyn Emmett, spontaneously started singing an old Andrews Sisters classic: ‘Cruising down the river on a Sunday afternoon/With one you love the sun above waiting for the moon…’ This captured the riparian idyll perfectly. To sit by the lake, enjoying a picnic with friends, felt veritably Arcadian. We could have been figures from Manet’s Impressionist classic painting, Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, albeit with clothes.

Josef’s wife, children, and friends joined us, and we now numbered around twenty. But there was space for everybody by the lake. None of the crowds I had imagined would be there on the last day had manifested. Something about water just relaxes everyone. Some took photos by the bridge, or played by the waterfall. Others snoozed, or chatted, or read. It was very peaceful and most pleasant. Why should this be a problem, I wondered? Increasingly, the super-wealthy seem prone to hoarding and guarding such resources that surely belong to us all.

A river, one could argue, belongs only to itself. We can only ‘borrow’ it—by enjoying it for a while. But a river teaches, among many things, the art of not holding on. Of letting things flow as they should. The very antithesis of Neoliberalism’s miserly tendency and agenda to skew the supply and demand of global resources to the advantage of a few. The hard economics and extractivism of this system is concretized by Bridehead itself, built, like many picture postcard properties in Britain (as Professor Corinne Fowler has highlighted in her work on the ‘Colonial Countryside’) on slave money. So, one form of reparation—although not the only one required—is to allow the public to enjoy such places, rather than capitalise on them, placing them behind paywalls and security fences. It is a small eco-karmic offsetting, but an impactful one. Such places are good for mental health and wellbeing.

We heard from a woman called Rebecca how she had brought their children and grandchildren there. Good memories had been made. And this is just one family.

Over an entire generation Bridehead had become a repository of so many positive associations. People had brought newborn children here, watched toddlers take their first unsteady steps, seen children grow up, racing around like giddy lambs or foals, see them mature, marry, mate, and start families of their own, and to scatter the ashes of loved ones.

The lake is fed by three springs, and has a numinous quality to it—one that certainly the ancestors of this ancient landscape (one festooned with Neolithic stone circles and long barrows, and Bronze Age round barrows) would have seen as sacred. As the archaeologist C.J. Bailey pointed out in his survey of the Bride Valley, the density of these monuments ‘is as high as that round the great prehistoric centre of Stonehenge.’ This was des-res for the dead and an important gathering place for the tribes of the Durotriges, as the mighty oppida of neighbouring Maiden Castle, Eggardon, and Pilsdon Pen evidence.

A rich temple landscape, it deserves to be treated as the special place it clearly is.

It is suggested the etymology of Bride comes from a Celtic word meaning to ‘throb’ or ‘boil’, but that is just from a single source—Place Names of Dorset by A. Fagersten (1933). So, one man’s interpretation. Tellingly, this interpretation fails to even acknowledge the possibility that Bride might be related to the goddess Brighid or Bríd (known fondly less than forty miles away in Glastonbury as ‘Bridey’, which is linguistically close to ‘Bredy’): a more logical source term than to ‘throb’ or ‘boil’ – which the quiet Bride observably doesn’t do. The waterfall, where the water is liveliest and comes closest, was created artificially in the 18th Century. There are no others along it, so it couldn’t have been the source of the name. Back in 43 CE conquering Romans wished to map their prize. Many river names were recorded tautologously as ‘Avon’ (from the Brythonic word for river, ‘afon’), I suspect because the locals were reluctant to divulge the actual name of the river: a tutelary spirit that was usually perceived as a goddess. We have a few precious remnant words, Sabrina (Severn), Tamesis (Thames), and Belissama (Ribble)—three of the river deities whose names have survived. Here, in West Dorset, we have the Bride, which seems very likely to continue this tradition. The name of a goddess, hiding in plain sight, yet whitewashed away by bland explanations. Thus, the sacred feminine gets erased from history.  Let’s bring Her back and let us help Her waters to flow freely once more.

This shy Bride has shaped and defined the whole valley, as the place names attest: Littlebredy, Long Bredy, Bridport, and the word ‘Bridian’, which originally described the area around Bridehead in the Domesday Book, and later the residents of the area. It is so much more than ‘just’ Bridehead, but Bridehead is its source, and is fundamental to its whole identity, as is any birthplace. It deserves to be protected, and made accessible to all—with all the obligations such rights entail—for it is our true commonwealth.

Adam, Josef, and I finished our walk with a celebratory drink at The Crown, back in Puncknowle, overlooking the Bride valley from its beer garden. As we toasted our modest achievement, I savoured the view. We had spent five hours walking its length, and we had gained a muscle memory of the valley through our legs—a landscape no longer abstract, but embodied. A little bit of the Bride had become part of us (certainly the many scratches, stings, bites, and splinters on my legs provided some evidence of that), or rather, we had become part of it. We had become rivered. ‘River’ always struck me as being more of a verb, than a noun. ‘To river’ also feels like a good modus vivendi.

Days afterwards, the burn of the walk and the glow of our time by the Bride lingered. It flows through us still.

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Dr Kevan Manwaring is programme leader in the MA Creative Writing at Arts University Bournemouth. He is the author of Writing Ecofiction (Palgrave), Heavy Weather (The British Library), Lost Islands (Heart of Albion Press), The Long Woman (Awen), and more. He lives in Bridport, and is a keen cyclist and long-distance walker.

Photographs courtesy of the author.