Dawn broke reluctantly this morning. The light was dull behind a dark blue-grey curtain. The birds were quiet in their roosts and the air was cool after the long rain; the rancid air was washed clean. In the parkland, a black and white heifer was reaching up to the lower branches of an Oak, giraffe-like, and plucking leaves with an out-stretched tongue. At Oxen Hoath, the birds were singing among the Limes and Beeches as if it was spring again. Then all was quiet.
I approached a grey rabbit. he didn't run from me. I asked him why he wasn't afraid. The whole World was reflected in his dark bold eyes.
I broke my fast with bitter-sweet Blackberries and soft Loganberries. Up onto Gover Hill, the mist was rain-filled but dry under the broad Sweet Chestnut trees. The rain pitter-pattered sharply on the leaves above me and the way was a dimly-lit tunnel. I came upon a Rowan tree, its bunches of brilliant scarlet berries brightened the place.
At Crouch, the Damsons were almost ready, but still a little bitter, so they were left to ripen. I forsook Doris's bench and drank coffee under an Oak in the wood near Basted Mill. And then walking by the Bourne, sunlight filtered through the trees and spangled the rain-soaked foliage. Then up the hill from the river, apples invited me into the Brambly orchard. I accepted and popped a few large ones into my bag. At the orchard bottom, by the little wooden footbridge over the clear-running brook, I took off my coat for the uphill walk to Yopps Green. My legs were soaked by the long wet grass, and halfway, at the edge of of the meadow, the bungalow there had burnt to the ground, just a few blackened bricks were standing. The sum total of a life lived was just a pile of stinking, smoking ash.
A second cup of coffee was taken under a Copper Beech in Yopps Green, in case of a shower. It was much warmer and doves cooed about me. Opposite, the Victorian orchard was heaving under the weight of fruit: apples, plums and pears.
Through fields of wet golden Barley, in the blue distance, Hadlow Tower dominated the valley; a Gothic grandiose monument to silliness, but it shows my way home. I had one more coffee in front of the Kentish Rifleman, on the strangely-carved pine bench in Dunks Green. Then the final leg took me back to the Bourne. A family of Buzzards were crying and wheeling over Clearhedges Wood, sometimes harried by Rooks, but always, they were hunting.
I continued homeward, with muddied boots and a belly-full of blackberries.
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