The Dart Estuary is a sinuous flooded valley, lined with ancient oak woodlands that run down to, and hang over, the water. The influence of the Atlantic creates a damp, dark understorey of holly, birch and butcher’s broom with a ground flora rich in ferns and mosses. Between Dartmouth and Totnes, there are a handful of villages…
Tag: Winter
Curlew River
On a clear and crisp Sunday morning in the churchyard at Teynham, muffled sounds of singing escape the thick, flint walls of the old church. In the treetops and overhead, fieldfares laugh their pagan cackle; redwings rustle deep within the heart of berry-laden holly trees; immigrant blackbirds pink pink and a local robin ticks from the ivy-covered boundary…
Cliffe Marshes
The north easterly blows hard across the water of the flooded clay pit and whips the waves into a choppy mess. The sun is surprisingly warm out of the wind and insects work the few flowers, all of them yellow; including bristly ox-tongue that swamps every patch of waste ground and yellow-wort that peppers the…
Life and Death in Late Winter
The view from the old, stone castle or Ankara Kalesi stretches beyond the houses, tower blocks and mosques to the empty white mountains. The capital city has been exploding from a small town of some 50,000 in 1945 to a city of 5 million today. Young people continue to leave the harsh demands of the distant countryside…
Winter windfalls
Adrift in the North Downs, the small village of Eastling sleeps in the early morning sun. The great yews bury much of the churchyard in deep-frozen shade. A goldcrest briefly emerges from the dense needles in its hunt for tiny prey. Goldfinches sing their light, liquid trickle from high, hidden places. A chaffinch bursts into its plain, spring song but…
Pintails and Running Rail
Feather perfect, pintail pairs paddle the gin blue water of the East Flood; the males stay close and carefully guard their females. Every now and then the dominant male lifts up out of the water and bows his head toward his partner, and then a few moments later, pitches forward and lifts his pointed tail. A sweet,…
Travels in the Holy Land
Israel December 20th 2016 – January 3rd 2017 The Ayalon River or Wadi Musrara used to flow from the Judean Hills west through Tel Aviv to the sea at Jaffa; today it is re-routed through a concrete channel that lies in the centre of the Ayalon highway and adjacent to train tracks. The clogged artery of the…
Winter Sun
Oare Marshes, North Kent, December 14th 2016 The sun shines low in the sky and the few high clouds pay scant attention to the stretched blue canvas. The wind warms from the south, and the drying day is a break from the blanket of brooding drizzle. The familiar view of church and brewery in distant Faversham sits…
East is East…Shellness and Sheerness
From the sea wall on the Isle of Grain, the Port of Sheerness is an unbroken strip of trade and industry between the gun metal Medway and the brilliant blue sky. The Grain Tower, once the principal defence for the Medway ports, squats in the shallow estuary like an old, broken barrel. The high tide takes it…
On the Konya Plain
The ancient city of Konya, which sits at the southern end of the vast Central Anatolian plateau, has a rich history: visited by St Paul; the former capital of the Seljuk Turks; and home, in the 13th century, to the most famous Sufi poet, known simply as Rumi. In the old centre, a mosque has been…
Early Winter Snows
The wind drives the Swale into a muddy broth. Small flocks of Brent geese career down the coast on the wind and then turn and hang before alighting on the barren shore. Oystercatchers flock on the tideline with curlews, redshanks, grey plovers and a handful of turnstones. There has been a recent passage of scoters and…
Cobham
I walked under grey skies, giving occasional rain but with rare splashes of weak sun, from Sole Street to Cobham. The footpath took off through grassy orchards to the Church. These held no veteran bramley, cox or russet, just neatly numbered rows of whips held up by beanpoles and wire. There were a few flocks…