Crane's Ford is not a village, though the old maps mark it as one. It is a crossing — a place where the river Aldermere (the same river that gives the whole continent its name, or so the song goes) narrows between two gravel banks and can, at the right hour, be waded. There is a single dwelling: a hermit's shelter, drystone and thatch, occupied when I first passed by an old man who gave me tea made from rosehips and told me the ford was fordable "whenever you've the legs for it." I took him at his word. I should not have.

The truth, which took me three seasons and a very wet afternoon to learn, is this: the ford is fordable only at low tide. The river here is tidal — the sea reaches upstream for a full league, and the gravel banks that look so solid at noon are underwater by midafternoon. I have drawn both states on the facing page.

The hermit, when I returned to tell him I had discovered his "whenever you've the legs for it" was a kind of lie, laughed and said: "I've the legs for it whenever I cross, and you've the legs for it whenever you learn. Now you've learned." He gave me tea again, and I sat on his drystone wall and watched the water rise over the gravel banks, covering them entirely, and then fall again two hours later, leaving the ford exactly as it had been. It is not a ford that hides. It is a ford that has a schedule, and it expects you to know it.

I have added a tide-table to the margin — rough, drawn from the hermit's memory and my own observation, but it will serve. The ford is crossable from two hours before low tide to one hour after. Outside that window, you wait or you swim. I recommend waiting.

The hermit's shelter I have now marked correctly on the map — on the north bank, not the south as my first drawing had it. The error matters because the path from the ford to the Northern Spit (see Chapter XVII) departs from the north bank, and a traveller who walks to the south side expecting a path will find only brambles and a hermit who will laugh at them. I know. I was that traveller.