Walking the Apocalypse

Wednesday 15 April 2020

Yesterday was the best day of the year so far, and so deserved the longest walk. I was out for just over eight hours and covered about 25 miles. Never having been a morning (or afternoon) person, I was late getting myself together and didn't leave the house until two o'clock. I got back home at a little after ten. No river walks this time. I headed out in the afternoon towards Preston, veered off past West Wood into Great Offley, and then on through the lanes to Wellbury. At Wellbury House I cut across the field track to Little Offley and then on up to Lilley Hoo and Telegraph Hill. After watching the sunset on the Hill, I walked down the wold valley to Pegsdon, then out over the chalklands past Tingly Wood before taking Wood Lane down into Pirton. From Pirton I walked back down Hambridge Way and Mill Lane to West Mill, then round Oughton Head before heading back home over the Common via Ducklands.

It was a glorious day and a glorious walk. It's at this time of year that the English countryside starts to show at its very best. On a mild sunny day, there's nothing to beat it. And hey, everyone, the bluebells have arrived, lining the hedgerows and carpeting the woods and spinneys in their millions. Ferns are unfurling in the darker, damper places, and trees are budding and bursting into new leaf. I love the greenery at this time of year because it's fresh and young and perfectly formed. Sad that it lasts for so short a time before the summer sun arrives to dry it out and summer diseases come thronging to blight it. But I shan't think about that now. Trees are bursting into flower in the town and turning the sky to nougat, and there is still plenty of frothy white blossom in the hedgerows. Out in the fields the corn is pushing through quickly now, and the rape is already in flower. The porous chalklands have gone from muddy to dry in just a couple of weeks, so much so that the ground is already cracking under the wheat. 'It's the wonder of chalk', as a friend reminded me just last week.

I don't think I've ever seen so many pheasants as there are this year in the fields around the woods. Everywhere you walk you can here them clucking and calling. Their cries remind me of the noise made by a battered old music box I had as a child. It was a cubical tin box, like an old tea caddy, with a very primitive musical movement inside it. The wire handle on one side had a red wooden knob on the end, I recall. (These were the days before plastic.) When you turned it, the box played a rasping metallic tune.

The lambing season seems to have been a little late again this year and the fields south and west of Hitchin are suddenly full of spring lambs, little rubber boned rockets that bounce around their mothers and stare curiously at the strange creature sneaking up on them with his camera. Up on the hillsides near Little Offley I caught sight of hares racing over the plough. They're down in numbers this year, presumably because myxomatosis has recently jumped species and is now decimating them. Everywhere and especially up on the higher ground I notice there is a symphony of bird song. I have no doubt now, the birds are singing more enthusiastically than usual. I think I would be too, if I were a bird.

Once I'd left the immediate vicinity of the town where people were exercising themselves, their kids and their dogs, there was hardly a human form to be seen or a human voice to be heard. If you need to self-isolate, this is the place to do it. Up on Telegraph Hill looking out over onto the Bedfordshire Plain, the silence was like a pressure on the ears and on the mind, and made me aware of the ceaseless mental traffic that rumbles through my head.
I'd planned the walk so that I would reach the Hill just before sunset. When the evening sky is clear at this time of year, the wolds glow with a spectacular golden light. There is one solitary tree in particular on the side of the hill which seems to catch fire in the sunset. I've watched it many times, and thought one day I would get it on camera. Sadly, a haze of cloud muted the sunset yesterday evening and its light was not the best. I can hardly complain, though. The evening light was gorgeous as I came through Cloudshill and Wellbury and on up to Offley Place. All around, the world is drowning in colour.

Planning is of the essence on this walk. If I get it just right, I can catch the sunset on Telegraph and Deacon Hills before hoofing it down through Pegsdon and over the chalk to Pirton, while the sky still holds some light. The way is rutted, and walking it can be tricky after dark, especially as the last half mile of Wood Lane is bordered by tall hedges which shut out the light even when the moon is full. From Pirton back to Hitchin the tracks are more even and the only danger is to end up in a tangle with a teenage cyclist. I hate to use a torch.

The twilight persisted for hours last night though. By the time I reached Westmill on the outskirts of Hitchin, the sky was dark but not yet quite black. I was still feeling energetic, so rather than make my way home through the estate and brave the smell of exhaust fumes on the Bedford Road, I turned up the riverside walk to Oughton Head Springs, and came home across the Common and past Ducklands to a late but welcome supper.

Stay safe

Walking from Hitchin to Wellbury

Spring arrives in Hitchin Streets. I used to dream of foreign places, but these days of lockdown have made me appreciate just how much natural beauty there is close to home.

You can pass the same scene every day for much of a lifetime and then suddenly see it in a different way.  Woodside and Windmill Hill, and the hollow path that leads to the entrance to The Dell, a woodland hollow, formerly an old sand pit.  In the nineteenth century the hill and Woodside were parts of the Hermitage Estate, owned by Fredrick Seebohm.  With the opening of the Great North Railway, Seebohm gave some of his land to the town for the building of a new road (Hermitage Road).  At this time Nightingale Road was little more than a muddy track and the only access to Walsworth Road was via the narrow Portmill Lane.  This took travellers through the slum area that existed down by the river at that time.  And yes there was once a windmill on the top of Windmill Hill.  It was a timber built post mill, and like many post mills it eventually burned down.  Reports exist of local people forming a human bucket chain all the way up the hill from the river in an attempt to dowse the flames, but to no effect.

I caught the first signs that the bluebells were in flower before I had left Hitchin.  Here they were in little clumps in a stand of trees adjacent to  Priory End

The track to Preston on the stretch between Brick Kiln Lane and Maydencroft Lane.

Tatmorehills Lane.  As the lane drops down into a dip it sinks well below the level of the surrounding fields. It takes centuries of  tramping feet to hollow out a lane like this.  The path was once a busy thoroughfare between Hitchin and the village of Preston.  All kinds of folk would have used it: medieval farmers making their way to Hitchin's Tuesday markets; Gypsy horse traders; farm labourers going to and from the fields; itinerant peddlers; women taking their 'scores' of straw plait into town for the Luton hat factories; and in the second half of the nineteenth century, men who worked on the new Great Northern railway at Hitchin Station.


 

Ransoms (Wild Garlic) in the hedgerows at Tatmorehills, now in flower.  It is closely related to onions and chives.  Folk herbalists value it as a remedy for a multitude of complaints.  It's free food: all parts can be eaten. It tastes like onions, and the leaves are good in soup.

All along the hedgerows clumps of bluebells were in flower.  Tatmorehills Wood had a good show. But the first real woodland carpet, I found here in the spinney between the Preston  Road and West Wood.

 

There are pheasants galore this year in the fields adjacent to the woods where they roost.

A solitary blossom tree near West Wood.  A thin line of bluebells persists where the hedge has been grubbed up.  Normally there would be hares in the field to the right in March and April. I have seen none here this year.  The parish boundary between Preston and Kings Walden lies along the raised grassy area in the foreground (formerly a line of hedge).  This side of the tree is Kings Walden, the far side is Preston. 

An off-road cyclist passed me on the track, and turned right up along the margins of West wood. He stopped under the blossom and spent ten minutes staring at the bluebells in the wood. Who wouldn't?

Bluebells in Goodley's Wood.  Goodley's wood is continuous with West Wood and is the corner nearest Offley.

Curious spring lambs near Cornelius Wood

Bluebells in Cornelius Wood

Approaching Harris Lane and the village of Great Offley, where King Offa of Mercia is said to have established a palace in the eighth century.  He fought several battles in the neighbourhood against Beornred, a rival to the throne.  Despite Offa's propaganda, it is likely that Beornred was in the direct line of descent and Offa was the 'usurper'.  In those days, however, the succession was legitimised not by birth but by strength of arms, so Offa's defeat of Beornred gave him the throne by right.

The grounds of Offley Grange, now a conference centre.  I occasionally attended meetings here when I worked for the local authority. It's interesting how different it looks to me now that I can view it as a private person, not a 'corporate' official.

The Green Man pub at Great Offley with its magnificent chestnut tree.

The land around Birkett Hill, looking out over the plain towards Royston.  The seasons and the changing light play wonderful games here with the landscape.

I just liked this tree at Birkett Hill

Bluebells at Summer Wood

Bluebells at Wellbury Lower Wood

The Lodge at Summer Wood

The colours of the fields on the far side of Wellbury Lower Wood caught my eye.

 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.

Walking the Apocalypse.

Still building this post.  Bear with me.  Should be ready in a day or so.

Walking the Apocalypse

Coping with Covid-19

 I count myself lucky, these days,  to live in a small market town with direct access to the countryside where I can walk for hours every day if I wish and never see another soul. With the coming of the Coronavirus and the lockdown in the UK, I began taking regular walks, exploring the local footpaths and trails. At the beginning of April I posted an account of one of these walks on facebook and was surprised by the amount of positive feedback I received, so I did another, and then a third. People started sending requests for more until gradually my occasional posts turned into a blog. A friend in Georgia suggested the title and it took off from there. After the first post I began to take my camera with me and record the coming of spring in the North Hertfordshire countryside.

Spring is here in Hitchin.

Here are the first four blogs posts.


Thursday 2nd April 2020

I'm kicking myself that I decided not to take a camera on my walk today over the fields. Up by West Wood I came across a herd of young deer. Deer are not a particularly unusual sight around here. What was unusual was the size of the herd. I counted at least 65 individual animals. There were probably a lot more as they were running two and three abreast and I was unable to spot them all. They ran directly across my path only ten yards in front of me, emerging from a gap in the hedgerow into the open cornfield. They were badly spooked. That didn't surprise me. Earlier in the day, as I walked up Tatmorehills Lane, I almost stumbled across two guys lying on their stomachs under cover of the hedge and squinting into the sights of rifles with silencers. Given their Barbour jackets and tweed caps I took them to be farmers. The early corn crops (that's wheat and barley if you are American) are coming up now with the milder weather and deer love them at this time of year. A few minutes after seeing the herd, I heard the loud phut, phut of rifle fire. The hedgerows are now white and frothy with blackthorn blossom, and the fields around West Wood are thick with pheasants, but there are no hares this year. Usually the big open fields around the wood are full of them, all going crazy, careering up and down as hares do at this time. I'm told that myxomatosis has skipped species from rabbits to hares, so their absence is worrying. I did see a couple later on near Cornelius Wood, and Chalk Hill, which cheered me up. I'm rather fond of hares.

Hitchin in April

April Blossom and Holy Saviour Church, Hitchin

Ransom's Rec. Community Garden

Walking the Apocalypse

Thursday 9th April 2020

People seemed to like my last walking post, so I'm writing up another, and since I remembered to take my camera with me this time, I have some photos to share. I walked out to Pirton today through Cadwell and Ickleford, and came back over the fields to Westmill then home via Oughton Head, a distance of about ten miles. In the space of three hours I saw at least five people. Since the lockdown, it's getting like Piccadilly Circus. But spring is definitely springing up all around The blackthorn is frosting the hedges with blossom, and even the hawthorn is out too in some places.

Hanbury Lane, between Ickleford and Pirton

I didn't see any deer on this walk - they tend not to be found this side of Hitchin - but I did run into a couple of highland cattle having a boss fight on Oughton Common

Two Highland Cattle on Oughton Common

It might be my imagination, but wherever I go out the birds seem to be singing more enthusiastically than usual. I'm starting to feel like I'm the intruder now, venturing into their world. They are no longer just an attractive backdrop to mine. I reached the common as evening was falling. The crows were flocking together in the skies and settling down to roost with their raucous whistley cries. I love that sound. As a child I lived in a house on the edge of a village surrounded by woods and spinneys. There were several huge rookeries in the nearby trees. I went to sleep every evening listening to their calls. As the skies over the common darkened they became full of bats, and I had to step carefully to avoid frogs socialising on the paths. I usually time my walks so that I get back into town when the night is coming on and there are few people around. The big show this evening was a spectacular lunar eclipse. As I came down Grays Lane, the moon was round and full and a gorgeous deep peachy colour. My camera unfortunately was unwilling to be convinced, and it turns out rather pale in all my photos.

Lunar eclipse over Grays Lane, Hitchin

Saturday 11th April 2020

In the early 1970s, I took a small flat in Holborn, in the dead centre of London. I was 23, full of hormones and looking for excitement in the big city. It was a disaster. Within weeks I was having nightmares. In them I'd be running up and down endless escalators or frantically climbing over concrete walls looking for a green field. After six months I left The Smoke and came back home to North Hertfordshire, relieved. I did try living in other cities after that, but it never worked out. Now, with Covid-19 on the rampage, I'm glad that I live in a small market town where I can get out into the isolation of the countryside. If the 'government' limit our movement further as they are threatening, then at least I have access to a couple of nearby parks.. I was going to restrict myself to posting photos once a week. Self-discipline, however, has never been my strong suit and I had such a great time today walking around Hitchin's green spaces that I couldn't resist sharing a few more. My route around town was one that Di and I used to take regularly back in the day. It avoids crowded pavements and passes through most of the town's parks. Celandines and forget-me-nots, are bursting out now in Ransom's Rec. Community Garden and all along the river path to Cadwell. Here and there, I even saw the odd bluebell poking through the loam, and one solitary orchid. Spotted Woodpeckers were hammering at the trees by the river and I'm pretty sure I heard a green woodpecker calling in the distance. As I was taking a photograph of the culverts which carry the Hiz and Purwell rivers under Grove Road, a small bird came and posed for me on the dividing wall. I thought it was a greenfinch at first but now that I look at the photo, I'm not so sure. In Walsworth Common, I came upon woman gathering Jack-by-the-Hedge (Hedge garlic). When I asked how she was going to use it, she told me that she was going to make a pesto. I can stay away from other people in the parks and out in the countryside, but undoing the latches on gates poses a problem. (The virus hangs around on metal for up to three days.) I pondered this one for a while, and thought about bringing a soapy spray with me, then realised that the simplest solution is to avoid the gate altogether and climb over the adjacent fence. Much more fun. On Windmill Hill, I met another guy with a camera, trying to get the same shot as me. We had a deliciously British conversation, whingeing about everything we could think of, but most particularly about the 'government'; a word I am writing in inverted commas these days. (Better still if HMG went away altogether, but hey, that's a different blog.) The need for 'social distancing' however, has brought out a lot of unBritishness in the British. It's forcing us to be more aware of one another. To cope with this outrage, or to deal with the embarrassment we seem to be smiling and talking to each other more. We even start a conversation now and then. Strangers have even been heard asking each other how they are coping with the lockdown. We soon revert to type though. I had to queue yesterday for the supermarket. (They were only letting people in one at a time to maintain 'social distancing'.) There were about 100 people in the queue, patiently standing two meters apart in almost total silence for an hour and a half. Someone in the Grove Road area is putting up notices on walls and railings. Attached to the notices are little strips of paper, each with a word written on it like, 'courage', 'good humour' 'friendship' and so on. The notices say: "please take what you need". Over the last few days all the strips have disappeared, except the one which says 'passion'. Not a British thing evidently. Be cheerful folks.



Monday 13th April 2020
No walking today. April showers were my excuse, and a desire to lie in bed till 4 o'clock in the afternoon reading Agatha Christie novels.  I'd never read anything by her until a year ago, and them immediately fell for the charm of her writing. She's not a great stylist, but her writing has a naturally flowing and unaffected manner, so that reading her is like floating down a quiet stream on a spring day. It's effortless, almost not like reading at all. And her plots are fiendishly clever. Reading her detective novels is so enjoyable in itself  that I don't really care whodunnit. I'm happy to let Poirot or Miss Marple tell me in the last chapter.

Yesterday was a real spring day, so calm that time seemed to float by like dandelion clocks drifting over the meadows. It's not often in adult life that moments like that return to capture some of the unconscious freedom of childhood. So, I had to get out for a walk. But which way to go? There are so many tracks and footpaths around Hitchin that it is sometimes difficult to choose. In recent days I've been setting out frequently in the direction of Ransoms Rec and the river path to Cadwell. It provides a green corridor out into open country from the bottom of my street without my having to go into town. That's they route I took yesterday too. But there was another reason. I've been waiting for some good light to get a photograph of the Ickleford willow plantation. It always looks a little grey and drab unless there is some evening sunlight slanting across the stream to catch the the boles of the trees and bring them alive.

It wasn't a long walk, just to Cadwell and Ickleford, then over the fields to Westmill, before coming back at evening by Ducklands and the town centre.  After dark, the town centre is spookily deserted in these days of lockdown. It's a lonely experience, walking among familiar buildings in the chill air of night, while the only sounds are those of my own footfalls echoing off the walls andthe striking of the church clock telling the quarter hours.

There's little ground-living wildlife to be seen out beyond Cadwell (if you except teenagers with spray cans making their mark on the world), but in just three days since I last came this way, leaf buds have appeared on many of the trees and more and more plants are coming into flower. I like eccentric plants like butterbur which flower before they produce their leaves. I watch out for them every year in the damp and marshy places they like so much. And there they were  all along the side of the Hiz, their sturdy flower heads poking out from among the other foliage which they will soon overwhelm with their enormous leaves.








I stopped for a while where the river runs under the railway bridge on the main east coast line from London to Edinburgh. Sometimes if you are lucky and you stand quietly here, you can catch the blue flash of a kingfisher darting along the length of the river. But today I had another reason to stop and ponder: which river is it? The bridge lies half a mile downstream from confluence of two chalk streams, the Hiz and the Purwell. But which is the main stream and which is the tributary? Is this then the Hiz or the Purwell? No one seems to know. The Ordnance Survey map says it's the Hiz; Google maps and the plaque attached to the bridge above my head seemed to think it was the Purwell. One thing I noticed, however, was that the river itself was bubbling along happily.  It didn't seem to have identity issues.  The weighty mattedr of the river's name should perhaps be left for the learned debates of philosophers or the political wrangling of town surveyors.  I'm happy to go with the Purwell on this one.  Or is it the Hiz?

I hadn't been past Gerry's Hole for a few years and, on an impulse made a side-trip up to the nearby embankment and took a look. Not a lot had changed in that time.  The Hole is a tree-lined pit, excavated a hundred years ago for material to build the now dismantled Hitchin to Bedford railway. The Hole is not very big, but it's deep and full of stagnant water, its green scumminess broken here and there only by the rotting hulks of fallen trees.  The spot is both fascinating and repellent. I stood on its slippery banks for several minutes weighted down with some heavy thoughts.  It has that effect on the mind.

Gerry was a 'old boy' of the nearby village of Ickleford who, by legend, was walking home after a night's heavy drinking. Being seven sheets to the wind he stumbled into the Hole and was drowned. Who Gerry was exactly has long been forgotten.  What pleasures he took in life and what sadnesses befell him we can only imagine, but his name lives on here in this unlovely place.  His death, as often as not, is  memorialised by the presence of a few discarded beer cans floating among the Hole's fallen branches and matted weed.
        

Gerry's Hole

 The Hiz/Purwell at Cadwell

 The Hiz/Purwell at Cadwell

Scratchbuilt garden shack on the allotments at Old Hale Way