Squeaky Boots

It takes me just a few minutes to walk from our cottage to the top of Bishop’s Wood above Caswell Bay.  The unmade up lane leading down to the wood, used daily by horses from a local livery stable, is awash with mud.  In the field above the wood, a new winter stable is near completion and complete with solar panels; it seems that some people think more of their pets than themselves.

There’s no wind, and the weak watery sun has little effect on the damp air as I walk onto the woodland path high above the valley.  A soft, slippery carpet of fallen leaves covers the path, mosses drape oaks, sycamores and old broken down stonewalls, and a multitude of ferns, all make the woodland floor intensely green.  A robin, a distant wren, and the strange rasping call of a grey squirrel break the silence, and a line of maturing beeches attracts a small flock of tits and finches.

Towards the end of the path, I’m almost at treetop level, the sun lights the valley below, and as I break out into the open, I can see over a grey, flat-calm sea towards the distant Devon coast.  A bullfinch arrives in the hedge, inspects the shocking pink-coloured spindle berries, and leaves as quickly as he arrived.  A patch of spreading leafless young sycamores, already head high, will soon obstruct the lovely view from this spot, but an hour or so with a small handsaw is all that’s needed to restore it.

Down in the valley, I pass an old moss-covered log, where for years, an old man put out seeds for birds each day.  There are no seeds, no birds and no signs of the old man.  Deep inside the wood the small community at Holt’s Field enjoys an alternative lifestyle.  Living close together in small dwellings, they’d have been labelled as hippies in the 1960s.  Now their green way of life seems very relevant in an age of over consumption and climate change.

It’s been silent the whole way, save for a few birds, and my constant squeaky boots.