Beltane and Bluebells

For May eve we camped out in a little East Sussex wood; we wanted to be out in the fresh new green and jump over our own mini Beltane fire to bring in summer. Also, the area is renowned for its bluebells, of which I am something of a connoisseur.

The weather was cool and damp, the humidity intensifying the depth of the colours  and general sense of lushness and rampant growth. Birdsong seemed astonishingly loud, the only other sounds a constant dripping and the babble of running water.  I felt I could almost be in a high altitude cloud forest anywhere in the world if it were not for the familiarity of the trees and vegetation around me.

There are so many wildflowers all blooming together right now, the harsh winter having telescoped the seasons down until the first late winter flowers stand shoulder to shoulder with summer blooms. And everything is giving it’s best after that winter, including the bluebells.

If you are lucky enough to have been in a bluebell wood in full flower you will know well the extraordinary sensual overload that this can provoke.  You walk along thinking that you’ve already seen it all, it couldn’t possibly get any bluer. Then the trees open out a little more and they are swimming in an astonishing violet mist of overwhelming voluptuousness. This, I can tell you, you have to experience for yourself.

It’s not just the colour, the scent is vivid  too – heady and exotic for something so British, but with a coolness that makes it bearable, like lilies crossed with violets. Sometimes you can smell the flowers long before you see them.

I remember my first sighting of bluebells as a child, and the wonder I felt at their unexpected beauty. My mother wisely told me not to pick a single one, they could never look better in my hand than standing exactly where they were and I understood and did as I was told. Coming back from our walk we saw a family who had not been so wise; they had greedily picked as many as they could carry and were already making disappointed sounds at how swiftly they had wilted. They bore my mothers rage with baffled indifference, but if they learned nothing that day, I had learned plenty.

To read more Nature Notes, why not visit Rambling Woods – in fact, why not write a Nature Notes post of your own?

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Holding Post…

Could it really be that two months and indeed a whole season have passed me by since I last wrote here? This morning on the way to the shops I was jolted awake by yet another sign of time passing – the rowdy screeching of swifts overhead, the first I’ve heard this year. Despite the cold, it must be summer.

With every passing sign of spring – the first snowdrop, the first lesser celendine, the first wood anemone, bluebell, swallow sighting… I’ve been wanting to write and celebrate. There hasn’t been the time though, so even though I note these changes and absorb their import they have passed here in silence. It’s felt so wrong, and now that I’ve started writing again I can barely collect the discipline together to figure out what I have to say. There are the swallows, and bluebells, and Beltane woods, and a feeling of the headlong rush of life that has broken the banks of spring and flooded into summer already. I feel knocked over and swept away by the flow of it all of it all… and then I have to go and do the chores.

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Derwentwater Sunset

It’s hard for me to believe that this sunset was little over a month ago – so much has happened since then, summer has all but arrived and I’ve been to so many other places both physically and mentally. It was the evening of our first full day of camping on the shore of Derwentwater, a day of speeding clouds and thick, blanketing drizzle of the kind that is utterly miserable everywhere else but familiar and atmospheric on the fells.

Just as we were starting to cook dinner back at the tent, the clouds parted and we were treated to a spectacular sunset that went on for an hour or more, the clouds that were passing across Catbells somehow still catching sunlight long after higher cloud had bled to grey.

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

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The Long Man of Wilmington

A misty spring morning a couple of weekends ago saw a group of us set out to explore the Long Man of Wilmington.  At the start of our walk, in a valley buried in cloud and noisy with birdsong we couldn’t quite believe we would see anything, but as we climbed the haze lifted to give us one of our first truly glorious spring days and a vast panorama dissolving into the horizon.

On the approach to Windover Hill we chose to first climb the ridge to the top, thus hiding the Long Man from our view until we had picnicked at the top and made our descent. Spurred on by the exhilarating song flight of skylarks, buffeted by chilly winds and squinting in harsh sunshine we gained the top of the ridge, sank down into the stubbly grass and unpacked our goodies. Our bellies did very well for themselves, but perched on the precarious ridge with our legs braced against the drop we also feasted on this…

I’ve walked in higher places but this still felt like the top of the world. Where we sat and gobbled our food it was possible to steal a glance at the giant inscribed on the hillside  just below our feet, but he’s so huge (and designed to be seen from below) that we could not make much sense of what we saw. Once we’d eaten it was time to go and inspect our enigmatic friend.

It seems no-one can agree on much where the Long man is concerned; although he looks ancient there are many who believe him to be a relatively modern creation. There is controversy over whether his outline was changed during a restoration attempt, and whether he is a war god wielding weapons or a man standing in a doorway. Even up close he is not as he seems; as we descended the hill and approached the white outlines which we had assumed were scratched directly into the chalk hillside they resolved into a kind of narrow stone pavement laid into the turf.

Whoever made him, he was designed to be seen from below and at a distance, and this is the best way to look at him and make your own mind up. He is an astonishingly powerful presence even if, as we agreed, it did look as if someone had botched up his feet a bit. I couldn’t see the war god in him at all, preferring the interpretation of someone standing at an entrance, hands on either side as if flinging open a set of doors, paused before entering or emerging. Of course no-one really has a clue or ever will, and therein lies the Long Man’s true secret… he makes you see what you want to see, we are all free to interpret him as we wish.

At a distance the sinuous curves of Windover Hill took on the aspect of a sleeping woman, curled up on her side.  “He’s being born!” D exclaimed, and once he’d said that we could all see it too.

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Spring Adventures

In the time since I last wrote here spring has arrived and I’ve been so immersed in it that I’ve neglected to share. Shame on me! From turning part of our tiny back garden into a vegetable patch, hedge planting in Hampshire, discovering a Neolithic Giant on a chalky hill and Osprey spotting in the Lake District I have a huge backlog of stories to tell… plus I’m off to Scotland again next week for another adventure. My itchy feet are giving me plenty to do and no time in which to record what I have seen. I love the busyness of spring, but capturing it is one task too many.

The gradual unfurling of blossom, then green, the release of delicious new scents into the air, the reappearance of old migratory friends (we were lucky enough to be there when the Swallows returned to Derwentwater) has felt like celebration after our unusually hard winter here. On the banks of the Thames, the dainty yet screechily foul mouthed Black headed Gulls have regained their smart summer plumage. A few weeks ago when I took the pictures below some were still growing in the handsome chocolate brown head feathers for which they are named, now all sport their fine new plumage as they squabble and wheel.

Crammed into an unpromising corner of  our garden a small, self seeded plum tree has sprung up from a plum pit fallen from our neighbours tree; a week ago this little wild fruit tree was covered in delicate pure white blossom. Dandelions spring up in cheerful clumps wherever we turned the earth for planting, leaving me regretful at having to grub up their rubbery carrot like roots.

Sunflower seedlings bravely defy the slugs and snails, and in the rotton ash tree wood pigeons have settled into lazy displays of affection after the comical territorial disputes of early spring. I’ve been wandering the countryside, but spring in a small London garden is as beautiful and full of potential as anywhere I’ve been.

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