Sally in the Bluebells

Me and my P.A. went for a 'walk' this afternoon. The ground around here is so dry (no rain for a month or more) and hard that it was possible to go in the wheelchair along an old drove road (now a footpath) which runs by the side of a wood, further than I have been able to go for over eight years since the Lupus began. It was wonderful, on the side of a ridge, just below the top, able to see for miles along the chalk downland, some fields bright ploughed chalk, others bright green with new crop growth. Deep breaths of fresh spring air.

At the start of the walk, close by where I parked the car, a wire fence that had been there forever, had been removed and a well trodden path led into the wood where recent coppicing had cleared the undergrowth, providing ideal conditions for bluebells, and me . I was able to take the wheelchair actually inside the wood, which has no legal public rights of way, but the newly worn path is obviously used regularly, but by small numbers so not sufficient to bother the estate owners, or the estate workers we heard deeper in the wood.

So I sat in a sea of blue-green bluebells in grass, doted about with white wood anenomies, laced with yellow celandine on the edges. To be surround by blue is a sensory experience beyond mere sight. The consequence of blue as far as the eye can see is an appearance of a haze of blue hovering above the actual flower growth. Blue is imbibed.

The wood is a plantation of various years growth, and has young oaks and spanish chestnut as well as pine grown as a crop for timber, but one edge of it along the drove is ancient woodland. There were clumps of violets and we looked for 'Archangel', which my PA said is evidence of old woodland. I had not heard it called that before; it is a yellow flowered dead (i.e. not stinging) nettle. None to be found there. Growing in the older part of the wood was sloe in frothy white flower; my favourite spindle in young leaf, and lots of beech, older oak, holly, ash and hawthorn and blackthorn. In another area in denser damper woodland there was a mass of wild garlic in full leaf, but not yet in flower. That too is a total sensory experience, to walk or wheel through it, the pungent bruised leaves scenting the air with garlic.

On the return journey we crossed a bridge and saw this minature water mill over the stream. Notice the brick and flint banding and proper Dorset roof - clay tiles, with stone tiles along the bottom edge. The building is no higher than 3 metres, and was originally built to provide water powered electricity for the dairy, but it is not in use as such now.

After the winter rain fall the river water is deep and powerful and water cascades over the top of the small weir and often spills over into the adjoining water meadows, the silt fertilising the land as it was designed to. Not flooding in the negative sense, but water flooding the grazing land to warm it and provide ideal conditions for early spring grass growth for the dairy cows. In the summer this small river often dries completely and the little mill wheel stands still.

This post is really just an excuse to include my favourite Airedale picture again, taken in the very same bluebell wood.

(Sally in the bluebell wood 1994)