Walking On The Edge

Hello and thank you for calling in.  Were you able to make the most of the bank holiday weekend?  It was so cold on Friday and Saturday evenings that we lit the fire, which is almost unheard of in May, but on Monday the weather was sunny and mild so The Teacher came over and she, the Best Beloved and I went to Wenlock Edge for a walk.

 

It was SOOOOOOOOOO beautiful up there yesterday.  Even the hedges are beautiful - look how you can peep through here straight down to the horses in the barn at the bottom of the field -

 

 

 

 

And then we rounded a corner and found apple blossom in the hedge -

 

 

 

There were so many flowers in the hedgerows: violets, wood anemones, buttercups, jack by the hedge, stitchwort, herb robert, bluebells, cowslips... we didn't take enough photographs.

The Best Beloved did capture this, though, and asked me what it was -

 

 

 

"Peacock," I said and they laughed and said that I could have said anything and they would have accepted it.  For the rest of the afternoon it was referred to as the Medusa Butterfly, the Unicorn Butterfly, the Persephone Butterfly, if I had said any of these they would have believed me.  After a while, we left the track and crossed a field  -

 

 

 

Now, my camera has a "super vivid" setting, so I thought I would experiment.  Here is the same view in "super vivid" -

 

 

Wow!  When I looked at this one on the camera I thought that it looked daft, a bit cartoonish, but actually, that is how I remember it.  At this time of year, the new green growth is so bright and vibrant and in the sunshine it really did seem this, well, vivid!   Those yellow flowers in the grass are dandelions but these in the next meadow -

 

 

 

are cowslips.  They are everywhere around here, in the meadows and  in the hedgerows, reminding me of John Clare's poem The Cowslips, which you can read here, which says that "all the meadows turn from green to gold".  Would you like a close-up, courtesy of the Best Beloved? -

 

 

 



Through the gates and down the tracks we went -

 

 

 

This one's not in "super vivid", those lush, new, green leaves on the trees were exactly that lush.

 

So that was our walk on Wenlock Edge yesterday afternoon.  It felt like a perfect English spring walk - sunshine, new green growth, a patchwork of fields and meadows, flowers and birdsong. Yesterday evening I kept saying, "I loved it up there today," because I really did and the wonderful views were still in my head.  We'd like to go back soon, very soon, while the flowers are still out. 

 

See you soon.

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x