First light exposes the tall pines on the ridge; dawn is warm with no mist in the valleys that run down off the high heathland plateau or dew drenching the purple moor grass, heather and bracken. Midsummer arrives to the sound of churring nightjars and fluting song thrushes. A cock pheasant is caught in the…
Tag: Dartford warbler
Ash Ranges
The firing range and military training ground near Pirbright is the largest patch of heathland remaining in Surrey and under a heavy mist in late May it is not the usual tinderbox of summer. Today, a perimeter fence bars entry except on days when the red flags are not hoisted up the white-painted poles. Nearly…
Ashdown Forest in February
The view at dawn from the high ridge near Gills Lap looks down over Eeyore’s gloomy place to rivers of mist that fill the Wealden clay valleys below. The land is quiet in February; a cock pheasant runs whilst crouching across the track muddied by winter clearance of swathes of old, leggy gorse. The gorse…
Postcard from the Suffolk Coast
On a fine day, the narrow, shingle edge that shelters the great reed bed in the wide valley between the villages of Dunwich and Walberswick is one of the great coastal walks. There is a distant view of Southwold to the north across the bay. To the south, beyond the pretty houses and abbey ruins of…