'Where [the roman road] crosses the downs, the line is marked by Caesar's Belt, a strip of woodland as straight as the road, narrow indeed but more than three miles long. in this hot noon-day the trees of the Belt were looped and netted with darkest shadow. The sun lay outside, the shadows inside the trees. All was still, save for the grasshoppers and the falling finch song of the yellow-hammer on the thorn.'
Caesar’s Belt is a formed over a branch of the
Portway group of Roman roads, which
connected what is now London with Silchester, Bristol, Wales, and other parts of the south of England including Southampton and
Porchester. The name ‘Portway’ is not
Roman, there being no known Roman name.
Also we are not sure which Caesar
(emperor) the belt belonged to!
The rabbits on the journey to Efrafa entered the Belt somewhere around here and Dandelion told the story of 'El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit' on the edge of a spinney jutting out from the southern side of this woodland, probably no more than a hundred metres from this spot.
Click
Bigwig here to return to select another location. It might be best to avoid his ears,
his fleas live there!