We enjoy living near the top of a hill very much indeed - it was high on the list of priorities, not just for the vista which is important for the soul, but all the other extras that come with it......especially if you don't live at the very top. There is always something then to look forward to. I take in the view of its crown slightly to my west every day - I have got to know its moods, sounds and notice the changes as the seasons move through the year. There was a short period in my life when I forgot such things. I failed to notice them, but it all came back and they are now as deep and as part of me as they are ever going to be. From down here just watching the wind whistling through the beech, ash and elm is enough some days, but to get the best out of it you need to be up on it, in it and almost let it envelope you. Selfish I know, but I have on occasion called it my hill - it is not mine, it is our hill. It belongs to all of us even though it is owned by others who may not always see it, love it, enjoy it and have its best interests at heart as perhaps others who have deep likings for it. Today the wind is blowing. It's a cold wind ahead of much colder days to come, but my window is open and I can hear the wind on the hill as it tears through the trees. No other sound is necessary. I often have this certain window open to get my fix - sometimes to hear the constant call of tawny owl who call day and night to their pals down the hill by the river, hear the raark of raven, tappity tap of yaffle, chatter of rooks or observe the silent hunt of peregrine which hunt on the hill away from their cliff top nesting sites by the sea.....after a few years I am starting to know it, understand it by watching and listening from down here or up there on it.
I often walk up there alone. It is wonderful however with my children as they notice many of the lovely things that I do not and there is nothing like walking in an environment with so much to offer so near to home. The great comfort that the home fires are not too far away. In spring and summer my eldest son walks home over the hill and I can hear the chatter and laughter of teenage boys from some way away....he too is getting his fix. I get most of my fix alone. I like it like that as I get the best of both worlds, but it just so happens that alone is when it sees me right.
From the top I see Eggardon slightly to the north east, the hillocks that line the route of the old railway line towards Maiden Newton and to my north, south and east the delights of Marshwood, Pilsdon, Golden Cap, Thorncombe Beacon, Colmers Hill and Lewesdon to name just a few. My path to the top is part of a longer route known as the Monarch's Way. This 625 mile route was the escape route of King Charles II in 1651 after being defeated in the Battle of Worcester. What gives me greater pleasure is knowing the hunted protagonist of Rogue Male (1939) by Geoffrey Household used this section of path between Sydling St Nicholas, past my house and up over the hill as he headed towards North Chideock......fiction I know, but pleasing all the same. As I look west I pick out his route and imagine the deep lanes which I can almost follow by naked eye as they drop into a network of otherworldly places. Places I have likings for almost as much as this hill. Such places are always on the cusp of being interfered with, "improved", tampered with, mis-managed for the benefit, usually, of one rather than the masses. Without folks who have the passion and love for such places they can be lost. Sometimes beyond repair and more often than not it is those who do have such passions for them who can feel like they are the in the wrong.....too over sensitive. Let's just say I am one of those. My visits to the hill have lately been tarnished with such thoughts. Overzealous clearing of hedge, scrub and undergrowth has been carried out in earnest, quickly as if someone or somebody has a plan they wish to execute quickly.......execute? I have always been nervous of centrally driven Government targets which have little to do with local need........you see it here where over the years parishes have grown along communication routes to eventually join larger settlements and in the end almost all the space between has been lost.....this is what I fear for the hill. Some are hoodwinked by the terms often used on the back of such developments knowing that it may just give them extra weight to a development - affordable, smart housing, community, environmentally friendly, shared ownership, eco..... For now, I will keep listening to the wind and look forward to my next visit....I'll stop calling it my hill, it's our hill, our land.
It's been a tough few weeks - one of those periods where even stopping to reflect has been difficult. On a dark windy solstice day I decided I needed to take time out to just take stock and listen to the wind as it whispered through the trees. My favourite local hollow lane, holloway, dark lane or deep lane is just up the road from me. It's short unlike some of its more famous neighbours, but I find it the most atmospheric. Iv'e foraged here, brewed tea, slept, day dreamed and generally switched off, but today I just wanted to take in the air. I see it in all seasons, but like it with its thin winter cloak.
It worked. As soon as I dropped down into it I knew I had done the right thing. The quiet, other than the eery tune of wind above, was just the tonic - I walked, slipped and stumbled its full length before turning back for the steep climb. I found, or it found me, the perfect yule log which is now drying by the fire for the festive days ahead. Some holly to green the house and all is looking good. Make time to stop. There will hopefully be more opportunities in the dark days ahead, but for now I am content to have heard the sound of the wind on this the shortest of days.
Elements of the landscape or items that form part of a buildings structure should never be taken for granted. It's easy to do so as these things we have likings for just tend to be in the background giving us comfort as we go about our everyday business. One such example is my post box - not a local post box for me, but one I have passed, admired and visited often on my travels. I have liked it so much that I reserved it for the posting of my extra special mail. I remember the time the bees took over the box - I watched them for a considerable time as no vehicle or pedestrian came down that country lane. It formed part of an old tumbling cob farm out-building. I have a liking for the building as well with its corrugated iron and general untidiness.
I shall post my special post from this box no more.......it has gone, but certainly not forgotten.
Every time I go fishing these days it seems to absolutely piss down. I don't mean just a shower, but really thrash it down.......oh yes, and you can add a bit of wind too for good measure. I don't mind really, but as all anglers know it is a real chore drying everything out at the end of the day. This particular trip was one I was looking forward to. Not that I don't look forward to fishing, but going to this place not only brings me the anglers joy but it does something to my soul - I have been at one with this particular landscape for a big chunk of my life. At times we were not on good terms, but now I just sort of roll into its folds and take it all in. I don't want anything especially and certainly do not take it for granted.
I left the car in glorious sunshine and just as I joined the fisherman's path the skies darkened and all hell broke loose. The walk to the nook that I wanted to fish is treacherous at the best of times, so I must have looked like an old boy in his carpet slippers wending his way........unscathed, I arrived at where I thought the ancient carp would be. The bird song here is mixed - the usual chik and chak of rooks on the wing coupled with the occasional woodpecker were all that I heard. Sometimes there are surprises, but not today. Who ventures out on such a day? A fool? No, not I. I have a brolly, a brolly that has seen better days but under the canopy of oak and beech it will help shelter me a little. My simple bait is fished so close to the bank that I dare not move, so I am thankful to have a screen of bramble and sallow to shield my movement. As the rain and wind get louder I see the odd vortex, then bubbles which betray the location of feeding fish and so the wait........the float twitches, hands shaking, hovering over the rod should the float rise and sit flat on the surface or slide away............it's gone and all hell breaks loose. The wind keeps spinning in the trees high above and the rooks keep calling and all too soon the light leaves the day - I could be anywhere at any time in this ancient and spiritual landscape, but I for one will give thanks before I leave.
It's been a bit of a slog over the last few weeks. I was carving a really good groove with my walking and then disaster struck as I put my back out - the quack noticed my embarrassment as I was told another "person of your age" did the same picking up a sandwich and I have since heard an acquaintance did it playing chess. Life in the fast lane eh? I didn't have time to fib massively and say something manly like it was changing a tractor engine, building a garden shack or lifting sacks of cement - I meekly mentioned to the quack I was giving very important cuddles to one of my terriers. Oh dear.
No walking, drugged up to the gunwales and no alcohol for over three weeks with a recovery in six weeks meant taking it easy. This is hard when you have found something that makes you feel so alive and is physical requiring footfalls over rough terrain. After three weeks I just had to get out, so pain killers taken, walking pole in hand I tentatively set out for a short dawn walk east. It was one of those mornings that makes you think it really was worth the effort creeping out into the mist and hush......I puffed like a grampus going up the slope, eventually above the mist and into glorious stillness. My favourite sunrise over Eggardon was the perfect tonic coupled with a cacophony of bird song. The short walk turned into a six mile one just to satisfy my addiction - it worked, although a dull ache proved I had been pushing things. It was worth it. The views up top felt like I was on top of the world and other than a few roe deer there were no other stirrings - even the dawn chorus seemed quieter. My route left a pioneering trail in the morning dew and on returning home I realised I was not the only one walking that route. The cocktail of fox, deer and badger piss on my trousers was just too much - a small price to pay I guess!
To get my fix and have the all round feeling of being alive I have been setting out early. I leave between 04:00 and 04:30 - I have been up and off, treading the route which gives me not only the feeling of great accomplishment when I return to a still sleeping house, but keeps me in everyones good books. With a young family my indulgence has no impact on anyone. Only me. My route is a familiar one - I have no specific location to head for but it usually is to one of two places. The dark and sunken lanes to the west or the ridge to the east. Both are as good as each other and offer a different vista so I just go where my boots take me.
I do prefer the route westwards. The birdsong is louder here and in the deep lanes, made famous by Geoffrey Household in his superb book Rogue Male, it's easy for my mind to wander. All my best plans and lists are made in these early dawn moments and usually they are coupled by some of my most memorable wildlife spots. It's that moment at the edge of night and day when nocturnals, like Household's hero, are returning back to their hole. Parts of this route were undoubtedly carved by Household himself. The Monarchs Way passes the rear of our house and our hero, when on the run, may have passed here when returning from Eggardon to the deep and hollow lanes west.
The loudest bird at this hour is most definitely the blackbird, its song reverberates in deep lanes thirty feet below where he sings - there is not an ounce of melancholy in these lanes with such a tuneful and melodic soundtrack, it puts an extra spring in my step. I time my arrival at a high point as the first proper light arrives, a swig from my water flask, maybe an apple and I continue....just giving myself enough time to still get home before anyone else is about and the joy of sipping my first mug of tea watching the final moments of the day waking up whilst most of the town still sleeps.
The path is a treacherous winding fisherman's path - lightly carved into this ancient Neolithic landscape. It is high and oversees the dark expanse of water below it at one moment and it takes a turn the next so you are inches from the water where one slip would see you fall into eight feet of freezing inky blackness.
They say it is good to experience places you love in all the seasons and therefore experience their moods both good and bad. I have done so here for a large chunk of my life, I could walk its banks blindfolded and find my way around, but it still catches me out - that is why I always return.
How I come to be sitting by a remote carp pool of antiquity in freezing rain at the tail end of the coarse fishing season is a question I am asking myself as I stare longingly at my orange tipped float. A whim trip - away from the outside world for a few days with all its baggage left behind is good for the contemplative anglers soul. The rivers are bank full, so if I am to idle my time anywhere then I can think of no better place than here at the Wizard's Cauldron.
For once I am pleased my battered canvas Efgeeco brolly is with me along with a large flask of tea. I am also fortunate that "you know who" from down the lane is away elsewhere. It is challenging enough getting here anyway without that old bastard putting an enormous spanner in the works for the last few hundred yards of my journey......not this time.
A carpet of curried maggots is on the silty leaf strewn bed and the soundtrack of rook, raven and buzzard add to the general gloom around me. I sit in years of accumulated leaf litter, sheltered in this hollow as the storm brews ever stronger and louder............I watch my float and wait.
These shots do not do the scene justice. On my travels during Spring and now into the warmer days of June it hit me - the roadside verges have got better and better, more growth than ever before. The variety of plants, colour and fragrance are fantastic. The wildlife is enjoying the growth too - much more of everything about this year. I have not known a year like it and it certainly makes my commute all the better. There are, of course, grumbles from certain quarters who like the countryside to be orderly just like their neat front lawns. I love cow parsley - it is the plant that reminds me of this time of year and the verges are full of it. Foxgloves, ferns and ragged robin are all thriving. There have even been orchids this year which have avoided the blade. I mentioned it to a friend the other day and he told me the reason why - it's the cuts of course! The highways chaps tinkered and pruned and did "gardening / improving" type works in the countryside all the time. Some of it just for the sake of it. The verge flailed to within an inch of its life. Now they can't as budgets dictate funds are spent on the major routes. One element of Austerity Britain that I won't be shouting about!
The Mummers play is something that has fascinated me since my school days - I think it does stem from doing a Punch & Judy show at a very young age and something like that, if the spark catches, can ignite a flame that keeps on going. This superb film, made locally in my part of West Dorset, is about the Symondsbury Mummers - made with help from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Cecil Sharp no less! It's quite a long film at an hour, but if there is one bit you must see it is at 29 minutes - the original vintage film made by Cecil Sharp and the EFDS - magnificent stuff. Happy Christmas!
Over the years I have been heeding the advice of Mark E Smith to eat yourself fitter. It hasn't worked, so I have decided a different course of action. I have always loved a walk, but never one of great distance until now. The footpaths, dark lanes and byways around this part of the hill intrigue me. So much so that I have been recently marking them off on my maps once trodden like an excited loco spotter. It's verging on the obsessional and I get twitchy if I don't get my fix.
One such route has captured my imagination more than most. The Monarch's Way. It passes my back garden as it carves its 615 mile route from Worcester to Brighton. The section I love the most goes up over my hill into the wilds of West Dorset along a glorious ridge up the holloway made famous in Robert Macfarlane's book of the same title(heartbreakingly now destroyed in places by the tractor and flail) and wends its way through the Marshwood Vale to Pilsden Pen and beyond. I love it.
Bilshay, Axen Brow, Henwood Copse, Jan's Hill, Denhay Hill, Wormstall Copse, Ryall Bottom, Copper Hill, Doctor's Copse all have their charm and I drink in the view to savour on dull days.
A day walk brings much pleasure and all being well a pint en route but the air is the best refreshment - cooling from the sea or warm from the hills with a hint of ramson, bluebell and primrose at this time of year. This is the stuff of dreams or as I prefer to say it's the right side of the hedge. All being well I'll be back in time for tea.
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