A cold and windy spring morning.

11th May 2014

    Something woke me and Mani lit the bedroom. But Venus rose before me. A grey sky greeted me though, as I left to satisfy my weekly pedestrian wanderlust. And the village was silent, apart from the birdsong.
    Up on Gover Hill, the south westerly wind was fierce and cold; I put on gloves and coat and a Garden Warbler clung to a branch for dear life but sang prettily just the same. Into Hurst Wood, the wind died and the Bluebells were mostly gone. But new flowers replace those which take advantage of the leafless, open canopy, and Red Campion was splashing its colour along all the paths and lanes.
    In the orchard, the Walnut catkins were dancing in the breeze and the flowers ready. A sharp shower went with me to Doris's bench on the hill at Crouch, but abated and I drank tea with the cold wind in my face. The valley below was all green cultivation; everything on course for a good year. Swallows searched the air like Spitfires and watching the acrobatics was mesmerising.
     The land all about here would have belonged to the Culpepers and remain so until the 17th century. Old Soar Manor and Oxon Hoath Manor housed Culpepers for centuries, and other manors all through Kent and Sussex. I think the Culpepers were from Surrey originally, but where are they now. Maybe to the Americas? But the valley below me was worked for millennia by people who lived and died silently and anonymously.
     The walk to up Scathes Wood warmed me and I took tea at the edge of the trees on the seat hewn from a fallen tree away from the cold wind and people. A Robin flew away and I remembered Raggedy. Water had leaked from the bladder in my rucksack and soaked my notebook, dammit!
    The walk back through The Mote and Shipbourne along the paths and rides; the verges bursting and over-flowing with Queen Anne's Lace and my clothes dusted with confetti was a warmly satisfying journey home.