Spring Walk

The weather offered a foretaste of April: soft rain alternating with fleeting bursts of sunlight. Sometimes both at once. With the new job starting soon this week has a poignant, end-of-the-holidays feel about it, free days measured as a diminishing and precious commodity. After an inactive weekend and in response to a gnawing urge to make the best of Monday, mid-morning I set off westward along the riverbank heading for Breinton Springs, a few miles away.

The narrow path was so slippery with mud and puddles the immediate task was to stay upright. A couple of hikers - a middle aged man and woman - picking their way gingerly through the mud from the other direction, smiled as they went by, the three of us cheerfully bonded in self-inflicted adversity. It didn't matter. The mist of raindrops was so gentle on my face, it resembled a cool caress.

Suddenly a large buzzard rose over the bare branches of the surrounding trees. He was joined by two others - a male and a female - and a loud dog-fight (for want of a better term) broke out overhead between the two males. They came together repeatedly, clashing then withdrawing, their eerie, mewing cries reverberating over the valley.

The losing male flew off, vanquished.



The spring. A trickle of clear water issues from a horizontal crack in a tree-covered escarpment of red standstone a dozen yards from the river. No habitation and no signs to speak of, though it appears on the local maps, just a grassy access track leading towards it from the Wye Valley walk. A mysterious, intimate, feminine place if you overlook the discarded cigarette packets. I hate litter. I couldn't bear to leave them there, so scooped up the sodden cardboard and found a rubbish bin later.

Homewards via a different tracery of paths and lanes. A steep climb then a track leading past cider apple orchards incongruously protected by high, barbed-wire fencing. To the right the wooded drop down to the river, in the distance to the left, green fields and hills.

The rain had more or less stopped and everywhere were visual pleasures: the clump of wild snowdrops in an abandoned orchard .....



the warm, red brick and classic lines of a farm outhouse ....



....and a very faint rainbow's end in an adjoining field. A minute or two later it had vanished completely.



More pictures from the walk here.

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I'm looking forward - cautiously - to the new job. It's a simple, part-time admin position, but the department provides a service that's indirectly useful to the wider community and my soon-to-be colleagues seem friendly and congenial. It will be a relief to have a small but steady income and a definite, though not stifling, structure to the week. I need both badly.