A muddy early spring walk

As I’ve got older, and my eyesight has deteriorated you’d think that there was less for me to enjoy. Yesterday’s walk is a good example to share (16th February 2024).

All photo collages described in the text beneath them.

Flowers

Left is a large photo I took by laying my iPhone under the snowdrops and using my Apple Watch as camera remote (hence the yellow blob at the top against the blue sky).

Top right light purple crocuses. I knelt to get this photo big mistake as I nearly couldn’t get back up again. Sometimes I wish someone would follow me round filming as it must have looked funny as I’m guessing I looked like a foal learning to stand for the first time.

Middle right Wordsworth’s daffodils and a drift of snowdrops trumpeting Spring’s first fanfare on a grassy bank.

Yellow winter aconite and more of the light purple crocuses on the same grassy bank.

Landscapes

I may be seeing blurry blocks of colour rather than the fields, trees, sky and clouds that others see but I also get to see what my brain interprets those things to be.

Imagine the photos top left, top right, and bottom left as a continuous panoramic shot from the houses at the far left of the first photo of this huge field; to the hedgerow with it’s trees shielding the bridleway and the houses the other side in the second photo; and then looking to my right where more hedges form the divide from other fields as we look towards the woods on the crest of a hill.

Photo 4 (bottom right) had my brain shouting “T Rex!” Of course that was just the Charles Bonnet Syndrome as it’s a tree or something with that cartoonish T Rex shape.

https://wasthatadinosaur.wordpress.com/2021/05/15/charles-bonnet-syndrome-bites-back/

Architectural landscapes

Here I’m thinking of walking up to St Peter’s church

Bottom left:- seeing the wooden fence separating the driveway from the from the road. The information board and an old fashioned lamp (makes me think of the ones described in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) under the Yew tree.

Top left the impressive long drive with the church at the end, bordered each side by clipped hedges and verges.

Top right:- the war memorial being the centre of the turning circle in front of the church. We’re facing the oldest wall (north wall built around 1068).

Bottom middle:- poppy wreaths still remain on plinth (2 more around the back).

Bottom right:- the west door at the base of the clock tower/ bell tower. The clock bell rings on the hour.

Architectural interiors

Some places I walk I can go into the buildings.

Top left:- looking towards the altar and the stained glass window behind it. Until I come home I only see a blurry pattern of light and colour (bottom left) and have no hope of reading stained glass below the pictures which reads “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith”. When I see the expressions on the faces, and the fine flower and sprig of leaves in the panes that look blank I’m in awe of the artist and his skills.

Top and bottom right:- this window is on the wall next to the altar with the sun streaming directly in. The words in the stained glass banners above figures read “Enoch walked with God As seeing him who is invisible” in the left panel we have Enoch and the right Moses carrying the 12 commandments.

The middle pair of photos are stained glass windows on the east wall above the small altar in the side chapel with the prayers for Ash Wednesday open on the cushion on the right. The light on the wood panel comes from one of 2 abstract stained glass windows added in 1963 both are similar in colour but are different in design. The bottom photo is one of the windows.

Surprises and new routes

I never know when I’ll hear sheep and be able to locate them to take photos like these pregnant ewes on the left making contented sounds as they munch.

I never know when a detour will show me a new route like this triangle shaped grass bank with trees, daffodils, snowdrops, crocuses, aconites, and a sign pointing to a public byway (also known as a byway to all traffic) that leads back into a field I’ve often walked through not realising I could walk through that area to get to the road.

The byway runs in front of 3 or 4 houses before it gets to the field hence the fence on the left which has gates leading into the front gardens.

The best thing about this is should the route I intended to take to St Peter’s be too muddy instead of walking on road like yesterday I can backtrack the byway as the entrance/ exit involves a short walk along the road instead (about a quarter to a third of the distance).

Any walk will do

This morning I only went as far as the shops but still I got the pleasure of nature (birds are singing almost constantly), and the flowers were those growing in the gardens, and the blackthorn blossoms on some of the hedgerows (no leaves), some of the other thorny hedges are hawthorns (leaves come first and blossoms after in a few months).

Until next time.