April’s end

April went out with great downpours and fleeting blue skies; the air cold-washed and crystal clear. Watched from the down at Fackenden, the slow but relentless passage of an evening storm creates a moving patchwork of contrast and colour with great folded blankets of falling rain. After the deluge catches the edge of the escarpment,…

Chalkhurst and Hartnips Woods

Above the village of Eynsford across a wide fallow field freshly sprayed with herbicide, sits a long strip of broadleaved woodland.  Under a blue sky, a single swallow flies across the field calling. A slow worm rests under an old piece of matting and brimstones work the dandelions in the floristically dull field margin; a…