A 6 am start for us, and I see a big dog-fox streaming up through our paddock, his coat darkened and glistening from the wet grass. He passes within an inch of the horses Basil and Jazz, who ignore him completely. I wonder about the baby pheasants that I haven’t seen for a while, though I know the hen is very cautious with them and so there’s a reasonable chance they’ll have escaped Reynard’s teeth.
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Out in the long grass of the river meadow we hear the pitiable screaming of a rabbit. We both stand stock-still as the creature’s terror holds us for what seems far too long. Then silence, and we both exhale. Something small has come to a fearful end on this beautiful morning. Jack turns on his tail and sets off again, nose to the ground, terror forgotten.
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Above: Common Spotted Orchid.
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Above: last year the muddy bank at this turn in the River Ystwyth was a tenement block of burrows for nesting sand martins. I spent hours sitting in the grass with Jack watching their comings and goings. This year they were just back again and settling down when torrential spring rains hit, and their bank was a foot beneath a turbulent flash-flood scouring out the meadow with deep trenches. After the deluge retreated the long grass lay as though in crop-circles from the eddies, and a new landscape of mud and shingle banks appeared in the middle of what had been grazing for occasional sheep. No signs of life in the mud-face pock-marked with the ruins of the sand martins’ washed-away burrows. Click on the photograph and you’ll see the remains in the strip of red soil above the shingle. I hope that next year sees the survivors return, and with weather that will be kinder to them.
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Above: leaving the river meadow.
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Above: most years a neighbour opens her grounds for the National Gardens Scheme, and the overspill from her greenhouses has been a good source of stock for the giant herbaceous bank we laid out at Ty Isaf. I only purchase when wearing a jacket with capacious pockets to carry home the greenery.
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Above: Gazing back at at the view of ‘God’s own country’. (Well, we can’t let the New Zealanders have it all, though I’ll pass on abbreviating ours to the Kiwis’ ‘Godzone’!) Here in the hill-sheep pastures high above the valley, rainwater ponds form where occasional flocks of Canada geese can be found, exotic additions in this landscape of buzzard, red kite and rook. Looking at this is it any wonder that I never want to leave!
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Above: at the summit we turn into the track that takes us past a neighbour’s free-range chicken farm, down through Pantmawr Livery Stable and onto the lane to Ty Isaf.
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Above: the home stretch.
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Above: Ty Isaf.
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Ready for breakfast!
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Goodness, such a lovely walk for Jack, I love your account, particularly the memento mori element with the dying rabbit. Lovely touch.
Thank you.
Oh, that view! It reminds me of central New York, where I grew up, just a bit hillier. Yes, no wonder, Clive.
Thanks for that Clive, it does me good to walk with you. Oh that scream , though, horrific! We occasionally hear it in the night and it makes my blood curdle. I also heard it at Vergt marrket, when an old woman was carrying a rabbit she had just bought for the pot. It turned heads I can tell you. I felt like striking her down and running off with the rabbit in my arms, but she would only have bought another – SO glad I am a veggie!
Paradise indeed – you captured the mood as well as the details in your stunning photos of a stunning place. And Jack…well, I want to kidnap Jack. His serious, intelligent little face and body….too loveable!
Thank you for your comments. I think the two top photographs are not bad, the rest so-so, but fine for a record of the walk.
Natalie, I’m sure Jack would be happily kidnapped by you. He’s quite profligate with his affections and throws himself with enthusiasm into his social life. You’d only have to whisper the words ‘walk’ or ‘frisbee’ to him, and he’d be at the door in a blink, bathing you with a gaze of the utmost adoration and expectation.
What a perfect start to the day Clive – and no rain!! I have just got in from doing two evenings of year 6 school productions involving way over 100 costumes and lots of quick changes, so was feeling a tad jaded. Thought I’d check in to see if there was news from you, and as the lovely lady from the Sketty B & B said when we arrived “Well there we are then.” I feel very refreshed having trotted alongside you on the pre-breakfast jaunt. Thank you for that. Beautiful photos and what marvelous turbulent waters. Shame about the birds. I hope some did survive to remember where they have traditionally nested. We will watch this space with interest.
I’ve been rather missing my morning walks of late, but I’m making the effort to get back in the habit. The torrential rain had put me off, though it’s nothing that can’t be braved with the right kit. Must do better!
I’d be surprised if none of the pheasant chicks survive. The hens are very good mothers, cautious in the extreme but heroically protective when up against it. Last year Jack unwittingly strayed too close to a nest in the long grass of the lower orchard, and the hen came at him like a screaming gargoyle with gaping beak, feathers puffed out and wings spread wide. She even scared me! Jack vanished, up the drive and through the front door like Old Nick was on his tail! He wouldn’t venture into that orchard for a fortnight!
What a glorious trek!
Wasn’t it, Thom. One day you must come and do it with us.
So it is written, so it shall be!
I have to say that you have one handsome Jack Russell.
I am afraid my own lurcher has been responsible for the untimely demise of a few rabbits, and I know what you mean about that scream. But the last one he got was so badly ‘mixied’ that I think it was a merciful release. Round here there are kites and foxes so I know that others will get the benefit of his hunting skills.
He has chased a couple of hares, but they completely out run him!
Where do you live, by the way. It looks so beautiful.
Well, lurchers do what lurchers do. Jack Russells too, though mine is the exception that breaks the rule, a sweetie who has never killed anything in his life. The wild pheasants in our garden jostle around him like chicks round a hen. Quite unlike his mother who was a regular killing-terror in her day, though age has rendered her sedate.
We live in the Ystwyth Valley just outside Aberystwyth. Paradise.
Truly idyllic, I can see why you would never wish to leave this place. Thanks for the lovely walk!
Join me any time, Marja-Leena! (-;
Lovely to take another walk with you, even if it wasn’t quite as vivid and sweet-smelling as the last one…
You have such a gift for conjuring, that I’m sure you can fill in the absences.
what lovely, lush photos…what a lucky man!
the rabbit breaks my heart, though.
Nature is almost entirely without mercy. In the animal kingdom the vulnerable rarely survive for long, and when you live with it all around, as we do here, it’s necessary to take the long view rather than to succumb to despair. I recall long ago in our garden at Aberporth a sparrow hawk hurtling like a cannonball into the bird-feeder, scattering the dozens of birds gathered there before making off with its prey. There was a lull of about five seconds before one bird returned, and then another, and another, until the feeder was as thronged as it had been before the lightning-attack. A drift of tiny feathers floated among the daisies, but it was business as usual for the many that survived. One sacrifice, and straight away the gap left by an absence closes and is forgotten.
Likewise Jack in the river meadow, his attention nailed by the sound of the dying rabbit. I watched his eyes, and though they were sharply focussed and attentive in the direction of the attack, the moment the sound ceased it was as though a shutter came down and his mind switched to the business in hand. Nothing remotely like sadness or empathy blighted his walk. Tail up and a brisk trot. Dogs are very good at being in the moment, and in such matters I think they’ve got the right attitude. (Though I wept for that little star-gazing frog earlier this year!)
Such views always remind me of Blake…
“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my spear; O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.”
Substitute “Wales” for “England.” ; )
AM
I’d forgotten how beautiful those words are, as is the sublime tune they’re sung to. I have no faith, but they nevertheless stir the heart.
I quite enjoyed taking a morning walk alongside the two of you! Beautiful photos of a wonderful landscape. Sage and I go out in the mornings too. The terrain is even a little similar – paths along a rushing brook, through meadows bordered by dense hedgerows, with rolling hills and glorious skies in the distance. There is no better way to start the day!
Well it was nice to have your company, and Sage’s too. (-;
I agree about the ‘no better way’. A good walk gets the blood going and that kick-starts the thinking mechanism for me. Plus there’s the inspiration of the landscape and all the creatures that inhabit it. Maybe one day, Bev, we’ll get to walk together in the corporeal rather than the digital world. I’d like that very much.
So would I! (-: