'We found out soon enough what Furzey meant though. At first the digging of that line seemed easy. Going across from Brockenhurst through Sway, it's all sand and gravel which is hardly difficult to shift. The first year or so they were very pleased with themselves. But things aren't always what they seem, in the Forest.

'You know on a beach, you can be sitting on the sand and it seems quite dry? But any child with a bucket and spade that digs down soon discovers that it's all watery underneath and the wet sand's runny and won't stay still. It turned out the southern Forest was like that. There were tiny streams coming down by Sway - you could see them - but underneath there was a huge seepage, water just oozing down through the clay and the gravel. Every time they made a cutting and tried to build up the banks, everything just collapsed again. Several people were injured. The treacle mines, they called those workings, because the clay was a golden colour and as runny as treacle. The work was soon months behind schedule.

'Only Grockleton didn't seem to mind. "It'll come right," he'd tell them. "It's the path to the future."

'I suppose the land of the Forest didn't feel the same way.' He shook his head ruefully. 'But eventually it looked as if things were getting sorted out. The line by Arnewood and Sway, where the worst of the trouble had been, was duly laid. The banks of the cuttings looked solid.

'And to celebrate, Mr Grockleton announced there was to be a picnic on the heath beside the line. I think he felt it would be good for morale, as they say.

'He did that picnic in style. There was a brass band, tables of pies and cakes, more than you could eat. Beer and cider. It was like a fair, and a lovely, hot August afternoon he had for it too. All sorts of people were invited: the families of the men working on the line; people from Lymington and Sway, and even Christchurch. Colonel and Mrs Albion came along, the Furzeys too.

'It must have looked a bit strange, in a way - two or three hundred people, with a brass band, sitting around by a half-finished railway line, under the hot sun, in the middle of a heath. There was an even stranger sight, though, to keep us company.