Evening walk

Sometimes the urge to sit down at the end of the day is strong.  I sit and read blogs and watch "Location, Location, Location" and potter about on the internet trying to find the name of a rose I planted up by the swing where I have yet again unaccountably lost the label.  But every now and then we have an evening so beautiful that it is a crime not to go out into it and walk into the view, a still, warm evening where the sky is so blue it might never go dark.

Up the drive we go and over the fence the cows lift their heads as we walk by.  They were indoors all winter.  When they were let out a few weeks ago I was working in the field planting out sweetpeas.  I suddenly heard a distant bellowing and then the ground seemed to vibrate.  I walked up to see what was going on and the cows were thundering down the field in a huge galloping arc.  I have often seen horses run for the sheer pleasure of the movement but never cows before.  They are used to the grass and the outside now and they are slow and quiet again.  They swing back to their gentle rhythmical chomping.

Up the hill everything is lush and green, even high up here where the hawthorn is only just flowering and the trees take their shape from the wind, everything is quiet and still and warm.

Just a few months ago this was another world, cold and sharp, with a wind which cut to the bone.  Hard to imagine now how it could ever be so cold that you just had to keep walking, gloved hands deep in pockets, scarves wrapped around the mouth to stop the cold air taking your breath away.

Now it is warm enough to sit by the path at the top of the hill, looking out over the Vale of Clwyd, the long view disappearing gently into the heat haze towards the mountains of Snowdonia and down to the sea.  Warm enough to lie on your back on the grass and watch a hot air balloon drifting over.

We walk back slowly.  There are still bluebells in the verges up here although even where we live a little lower down they have already gone over.  There is stitchwort as well and bracken unfurling.

And back at the farm the crops are growing too.  The whole world is growing.

I lived for a while in Cumbria and worked in Whitehaven.  Driving home from Oxford on Wednesday the news on the radio made my throat thick.  Cumbrians are lovely people and Cumbria is a beautiful place.  Walking in my own beautiful place, the shootings are still impossible to comprehend, but somehow there is solace in natural beauty, for me at any rate.  Too early for any sort of solace for Whitehaven I suspect but the place and the people are very much in my thoughts.