One of the many things I love about blogging is seeing photos of bloggers' local environment, especially when it is a very different to the one where I live. I do hope this is something that you enjoy too as today I am going to take you on one of the walks that I have been enjoying this week.
I try and get out of a walk everyday on week days, not a long one but just to get some fresh air at the beginning of the day. The terrible weather over the last few months has meant that this has not happened very often, so I am glad of the time to fit this into my days just now, especially as the weather has been so wonderful recently.
So grab yourself a cuppa, find a comfy place to sit, I am going to take you for a virtual walk. Many of these photos are taken looking back at places I had just passed as I walking into the sun for some of the time.
As I put on my shoes and any layers that I need to keep warm, the view from my porch is the one I have shared a few times recently on my Peek into my Day posts.
I live on a main road, luckily for us it is a a quiet road, as main roads go. At the moment the verges near our house are full of daffodils in flower. These verges are maintain by the parish council, we pay through our council tax for the maintenance of areas such as these. I love that they are a beautiful cheery sight at this time of year.
You can just make out a road maintenance vehicle in a lay-by. They have been resurfacing large sections of the road through our village this past month. It feels like it has been going on for ever. It was work that badly needed doing. It is adding five minutes to my journey to do the shopping as they have a convoy system to let you though the works, it is a good job I don't need to be anywhere by a certain time these days!
In and amongst these daffodils there is a fence around a well. This would have been the water supply for my end of the village in the days before piped water. It comes to the surface as a spring in the garden of a house to the right, it runs all year round. It is piped under the road, and must continue underground, it is only visible in very wet weather as it creates a stream on the surface.
A couple of crocus flowers sit nestled amongst the daffodils, opened wide to the sun that was shining in full glory.
Front gardens that I pass are also starting to bloom, a flowering currant. I read this week that this plant has a strong smell rather like cat pee. I don't have a great sense of smell and couldn't get close enough to test this out, perhaps that was for the best!
My walk along the main road comes to an end now as I turn left down a lane which heads towards more houses and fields. It passes a big industrial unit that used to be a sausage factory and is now a warehouse for a company that makes noticeboards, whiteboards and exhibitions stands amongst other things. It is good to see this site back in use as it stood empty for several years after the sausage factory closed and was looking a little dilapidated. I am soon off the lane through a snick in the wall and into the fields.
Nearly all the edges of the fields that surround my village are built with stone, dry stone walls, the incredible art of balancing stones in layers to make beautiful and useful walls. They do get knocked over occasionally and most are repaired by building the wall back up again using the same materials. The stones are all local and most will have come from the fields themselves cleared to the edges so that the land could be farmed. This stone is limestone, but you will also find the odd bit of granite too, something that my village is famed for.
Across the second field I come to a different method of moving from one field to the next. This is a kissing gate, a slightly different method to allow people and stop livestock moving from one field to another. The gate on the right swings open to allow you to pass into the section on the left, you walk round the gate and swing it closed, it kisses each side of the enclosure as it swings open and shut, hence the name. It is also fun to kiss over the gate after the first person has passed through!
From the kissing gate (which is just out of view in the bottom right) I head up hill, from the top of which I can look back and see where I have come from. In the distance you can make out a lorry driving along the motorway that runs along the flank of the hill.
At the top of the hill is a house, commanding a position with great uninterrupted views to the front and back. It is lived in by the people that Cameron works for. I pass to the left of the house and through the gate.
Once I am though the gate I am in a network of walled paths, which are likely to be very old. There are many of these tracks around my village, they are well worn and in places are much lower than the fields that flank them. It is likely that this particular track led to and from an Abbey, the ruins of which can still be seen today. I often wonder, when I walk these tracks, who has been there before me, what they might have been doing and where they were going.
The walled track meanders its way gently up, snake like across the land. I am not going this way today, my route takes me left....
...into another walled track. On one walk this week there were two butterflies doing a fluttering dance together in the sunshine landing on the sun warmed stone in the wall, they were not around when I had the camera with me. I meander down hill towards a farm....
...and fields of sheep with lambs. There is a cacophony of noise, the lambs calling to their mothers. I stand and watch the lambs gambolling around. I love how they run and spontaneously jump, their gay abandon is heart warming and a lovely antidote to the worry that runs through our lives right now. I watch for a while, their nervousness abating as I remain still.
As I leave the lambs to their gay abandon, I continue downhill where the track becomes very soggy and waterlogged. The large stones in the photos above surround a spring, the field to the other side of the track has a similar spring both of which release their water onto the track. Wellies are a must to negotiate this section.
I now leave the track, which continues to the farm, and head left into a field, empty today but on past days has been full of sheep with their lambs. I am walking up hill once again, from the top I have a views to the left of the industrial side of my village a working lime kiln producing quicklime and lime products using locally quarried limestone, and to the right one of open countryside. There is a house just out of view to the left in this picture, it is at the end of the lane past the warehouse building. Access to this property is over a ford in the river on the left, an interesting prospect in the months of rain we have every winter!
From this high point I now head down hill towards a bridge over a stream. To the right of this bridge is an area of flat land where there was once a mill. Once upon a time there were four mills in my village, it is most likely they all belonged to the Abbey. There is little to be seen of this one, or indeed any of them, except a few piles of stones and a large patch of nettles both indicators of sites of previous human habitation.
As I cross the bridge, I love how to the left the stream falls in gentle steps created by large slabs of limestone. Sadly the sun had dropped at little by now and left the stream in the shade by this point so it is not the greatest photo. I love to linger on this bridge and watch the stream flowing gently down, slowing flowing out to sea on its long and meandering journey. This stream is part of an unusual watershed, one that flows North to reach the sea, most large rivers in England flow South.
Having crossed the bridge I head up a short slope where you can clearly see the line of an old wall or hedge, this was probably the boundary to one of the tracks leading to the mill. The other side of the wall running across the top of the photo is the lane we have been on before, the one from the ford to the warehouse. I am heading up to there to meet the lane.
It is the home straight now as I return once again to the main road. I notice the mail train going by, the red line running left to right in the middle of the photo. I know it is 5.45pm without looking at my watch, it is never late! This train is traveling South to London, we never see the train returning, I guess it must do the return journey at night.
I once again pass all the daffodils above which are tall trees full of rooks, loudly going about their nest building. The pavement will soon become splattered with bird poop, it is best to run this section! I return home nourished by the fresh air, the exercise and the beauty of nature.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the walk. I will back on Thursday with my words on sustainable living.