Alex James: The Great Escape

Running is every bit as compulsive as drinking, once you get going

Oh, I've been running around a lot. Over the fields, along the river, up the hill and round a vast and perfect bluebell wood. At this rate, I reckon the leather trousers will fit me again by the end of June. Running is every bit as compulsive as drinking, once you get going.

I seem to have a lot of brilliant ideas and thoughts in that wood. I go there with my preoccupations and stupid anxieties and somewhere in the shade of the trees with bolts of brilliant sunshine firing through on a sea of royal blue and pea green, and the steady beat of my feet, I become a part of it. It always makes me feel better.

Running has actually been a good way to get to know the local area, especially our land. We've got 200 acres. I'm still not sure exactly how big an acre is, although I do know that eight acres of it is a wood, which is shaped like a croissant. It's mainly oak and ash trees, although there are clumps of bluebells, so it must have been woodland for a long time. There are about a thousand rooks living at in it. They spend the days spiralling above it, croaking.

Inspired by my excursions around the bluebell nature reserve over the river, I've been trying to beat a trail through the woods. There's a rusted iron gate where you go in, then, immediately on your left, there's a huge pile of tyres. The tyres are splattered with rook pooh. They make very white pooh, for such black things. It's about their only artistic contribution to the universe.

In my week or so of beating my way through nettles and brambles, I have come across a path. I've also discovered that the overgrown avenue through the trees is criss-crossed with little streams, and found the remains of some pheasant pens. It all harks back to a time of prosperity and beauty. I even found an old shepherd's caravan.

The beast of Burford, an escaped big cat that gets spotted frequently around our area did prey on my mind a little in the colder months. But it's stopped being scary now that the days are longer. In fact, I've been on the trail of the beast for some time, I reckon it must live in the bluebell wood. Just as running has replaced drinking, the thought of snakes has replaced the thought of tigers as I tramp through the undergrowth.

Anyway, not wanting to keep all the adventures for myself, I have decided it will be good for the family morale to clear a path through the wood. When we bought the farm, I sold the aeroplane and bought a new roof and an old digger. It's a big hit with Geronimo, our one-year-old, in fact "digger" is his favourite word. He calls most things "digger" - the cats, balloons, his favourite songs, baked beans and so on, but when he actually sees the digger he goes completely nuts.

Charlie drives the digger. He strums that bucket like a guitar, and I know exactly what Geronimo means when he says "Dig-a-dig-a-dig-a-digger". It's beautiful.

I walked down to the woods with Charlie and showed him the tyres - he thinks we should bury them - and the trail. By the end of the day, with the big bucket on the front, he'd shaved off all the nettles and bashed down the little sprouting hawthorns leaving a winding way you could canter a horse down. I think it's primal, the need to make trails. It's better than flying.

alexjames@independent.co.uk