Walking the Apocalypse

Walking from Wellbury to Pirton

 The lane running down to Wellbury.  The world is full of pastel shades here.

Oilseed rape field beside the lane at Wellbury.  Thirty years ago when rape began to appear in English fields, its bright yellow flowers were considered an eyesore. Now they are a familiar and colourful part of the landscape.

 

Cottage at Wellbury

On the field path to Little Offley 

Looking back towards Wellbury from Little Offley. Saddle Plantation on the right.  I saw two hares here, scuttling away when I turned the corner of  saddle plantation.  It pleased me to know that they have not all been killed off by myxomatosis. 

                                                  Shrubbery at Little Offley House

The back of Little Offley House

Gardens at Little Offley House

Emerging from The Baulk, a small spinney, onto Telegraph Hill, the highest point of Lilley Hoo.  Telegraph Hill is so named because during the Napoleonic Wars it was the site of a signalling station, one of a line that ran across East Anglia and Hertfordshire  from the newly established naval port at Great Yarmouth down to the Admiralty in London.  With the use of improved telescopes and a system of signalling boards, messages could be relayed from station to station to warn of an invasion. The station immediately to the north of Telegraph Hill was at Baldock (possibly located on the top of St Mary's church tower.)  The military personnel on Telegraph Hill would intercept the message from Baldock and relay it on to the next station on Dunstable Downs. From there it would continue on its way south to London.  (Thanks Keith for doing the research on that.)

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The Icknield Way at Telegraph Hill.  The origins of the Icknield Way have been disputed, but it is generally regarded as England's oldest road, in use centuries and perhaps millennia before the arrival of the Romans. Some argue that it was a neolithic trading route that ran along the tops of the chalk hills from the Western counties and up into East Anglia, avoiding the marshier land in the valleys below.  At this point the lane forms the county boundary between Hertfordshire (to the right) and Bedfordshire (to the left)

                               Looking back towards the fields at Wellbury from Telelgraph Hill

Looking along the chalk ridge towards Deacon Hill.  A smoothly curving wold valley, characteristic of this chalky landscape lies to the left

 

The other cow's grass is always greener at Telegraph Hill

 

Telegraph Hill is one of the last peaks on the chalk ridge of the Chilterns.  Some three miles to the east, the ridge dips down under an area of surface glacial deposits, before rising again a few miles further east as the grandly named East Anglian Heights.  this dip is occupied is known as the Hitchin Gap, and is occupied by the town of Hitchin.  The chalky heights then curve northwards through Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire, and finally terminate in the East Yorkshire wolds. To the west of Telegraph Hill, the chalk ridge of the Chilterns runs on down through Hampshire and Wiltshire where it finally spreads out into the expanse of Salisbury Plain.  Chalk is relatively rare in the world.  Most of it lies here in the South of England.  I've lived in various places in the UK, but apart from three years living in Manchester, I've lived all my life at some point or other on this same chalk ridge.  I feel a kind of special kinship with it.  The photograph looks north out across the Bedfordshire plain, an area of intensely cultivated lowlands mostly composed of gault clays.

  Following the track down to Pegsdon.  This tree at Noon Hill  turns into a blaze of fiery light in the right kind of sunset.  Not today unfortunately.    A gracefully curving wold valley lies to the right.

                                           The Chiltern chalklands near Tingley Wood

Sunset near Pegsdon

The chalklands near Wood Lane.  The 'soil' here is little more than soft crumbled chalk.

Sunset, looking across the meadows from Wood Lane

Cowslips in the chalklands between Pegsdon and Pirton. I have a complicated relationship with cowslips. They used to grow on a grassy bank at a point where I caught the school bus into Hitchin every morning. I hated school.

Wood Lane by twilight, with the lights of home in the distance.  Still a long way to go.