Outdoorswoman

Today, we stood outside and caught snowflakes on our tongues!

It’s been a soggy, foggy, boggy morning up on the moors, today. I set off at 6.30am and trudged up the hill. There has been a lot of rain and flooding lately. Although, this morning there was the merest of fine drizzle and little wind when I began.

I saw three dead sheep. They are probably the victims of flooding, as they slip on the steep sided gullies, fall into the swollen streams and can’t escape as the weight of their now sodden wool holds them in the water. It is sad because they would all have been ewes about to give birth. I saw one new lamb with its mother. They give birth much later up here on the hilltops, in lowland areas some of the lambs will be two months old by now. I often wonder how these upland farmers can compete financially with their lowland counterparts and yet the moors would completely change character without these sheep biting at the grass and keeping the ecological status quo.

I heard the curlew’s burbling call coming out of the mist. I was surrounded by dense white walls but could hear the bird’s song rising and falling. The wind was beginning to pick up but in calmer interludes I also heard the skylark as it took to the air. The songs were punctuated every so often by the chesty bleating of sheep close at hand but still invisible in the fog.

As I reached the summit of the hill I found my way blocked by a fence with an attached notice declaring that the area around the transmitter mast, which is located at that place, was to be fenced off until the end of 2009. Apparently, it was undergoing a major refurbishment to upgrade it for digital transmission. The footpath was diverted around the fencing so I followed it. It crossed a bog and ended at a service road. I decided to go back home and turned around and took two steps. I heard a noise like somebody lobbing a half-brick onto the soft ground. I turned round mystified as to who would be around throwing bricks into a bog so early in the morning. I heard another land then another. I caught one in the act of landing and realised that the ‘bricks’ were in fact lumps of ice that were falling off the hawsers that supported the mast. They could have fallen from the height of a thousand feet and the wind, that was picking up speed, was carrying them outside the safety fence. The amazing thing was that I had been prompted to turn back home just at the very moment that the lumps of ice had started falling.

After looking at the ice and contemplating the situation I set off downhill. The wind was blowing from the north and shredding the mist, which flowed in clumps down the road as if it had urgent business elsewhere. I passed a nature garden near a group of stone cottages. There was a dark pink Ribes sanguinea flowering against a background of pale yellow daffodils. In a couple of weeks the whole area will be green but at the moment the colour combination is near perfect.

I passed a mixed hedgerow where the sloes are heavily in blossom. This is not a natural area for sloes, they prefer limestone and rarely make a good showing of fruit. Added to this we often get late frosts which wreak havoc with these early flowering shrubs. Tomorrow will be a case in point as snow has been predicted and feeling the icy northly cutting through my jacket I can well believe it.