On The South Downs

Francis William Bourdillon  also wrote a poem about the south country, entitled "On The South Downs", albeit somewhat shorter than Swinburne's work, and in my opinon a little more accessible. Bourdillon lived at Easebourne, near Midhurst.

On the South Downs

Light falls the rain
On link and laine,
After the burning day;
And the bright scene,
Blue, gold, and green,
Is blotted out in gray.

Not so will part
The glowing heart
With sunny hours gone by;
On cliff and hill
There lingers still
A light that cannot die.

Like a gold crown
Gorse decks the Down,
All sapphire lies the sea;
And incense sweet
Springs as our feet
Tread light the thymy lea.

Fade, vision bright!
Fall rain, fall night!
Forget, gray world, thy green!
For us, nor thee,
Can all days be
As though this had not been!

To The River by Olivia Laing

The River Ouse looms large in Olivia Laing's life, and like so many of us she navigates towards the familiar when she finds herself in the middle of a 'minor crisis'; deciding to walk the course of the river from it's source to the sea as the year ticks past the changing-time of midsummer. 

Solvitur ambulando, is the Latin phrase - it is solved by walking, and Laing sets out on this forty-two mile pilgrimage with this foremost in her mind.

What follows is a tale of journeys, several journeys. Each meanders around the other, flowing like tributaries, following their own winding path to the river that is the whole. The past flows into the present, and slides dreamily on into the future - the author absorbed by her surroundings in such a way that other people are inconsequential - half-heard conversations harsh in their profanity clash markedly with the softness of the beautifully observed landscape. 

She reflects on the futility of man holding back the tides with ill-judged plans to restrict the freedom and flow of the river, and how doing so clogs up the sewers and floods the modern towns with shit - a metaphor maybe for the way modern life clogs our freedom of thought and expression - leaving it to run unencumbered allows it occasionally to overflow; the indescribable beauty of which is left to Virginia Woolf herself to reflect upon. 

The title of the book itself draws heavily from Woolf's own To The Lighthouse with Virginia and Leonard Woolf casting their long shadows over the text; for this is the place they lived, loved and eventually died. Woolf was famously consumed by the very river she loved, and Laing returns to the couple over and again, as her writing tumbles out; thoughts and emotions flowing now fast, now slow, like the changing pace of the tidal river itself.

Only someone who has walked for long periods in solitude could connect with Laing's outpouring of thought; words collide and seemingly unrelated and disjointed topics flow into each other, beautifully and seamlessly joining the apparently unrelated in an almost subconscious flood of wonderfully descriptive language. Laing manages to convey this perfectly.

There is also some reflection on the impermanence of man, that no matter what the expense, or the how great the effort;  no matter the course of our journey we are here for only a tick of the clock. Man and everything he creates reduces eventually to nature, weeds recolonise, walls fall down and all man's marks are consumed by that he tries to tame.

Laing's background in herbalism is evident as she effortlessly names every plant in the hedgerows and verges in a manner that suggests it is done with the merest of glances as she passes through; in that easy way that those confident in their environment do as they move through the landscape.

There is a certain melancholy, as there always is at a time of change, and a sense of loneliness and solitude; but as the river quickens towards the sea, its route now fixed and straightened so Laing's solitude becomes almost joyous. The recounted memories move from the regret of not taking a house with her then love, Matthew; through a separation of her parents so complete she is almost unable to imagine them together to recalling a friend singing in the beauty of Southease church. 

As she crashes into Newhaven ugly modernity litters the roadsides, and the freedom of the Downs, however neat and parcelled off they may be, is replaced by the fear of the hemmed in urban pathway. The restriction of vision created by high hedges and ugly council estates forces Laing to break into a brief run, as if the restriction itself is too much to bear after the freedom of the prior days walking. Once free of Newhaven again and back in the open she describes herself as 'as purely happy as I have ever been'. 

Had this been a walking guide to the Ouse I would have dropped it like a hot coal, but it's so far removed from that. I know this path well, but I also know the journey Laing takes to the freedom of the hills, and unrestricted thought, where the fragile joy can be snatched away by the presence of other souls. 

Laing comes across as a bright, reflective author, with an intelligent and reflective personality, the kind of complex character that would make a walk interesting. I wonder if she's done the Arun yet.

To The River takes it's place alongside Mabey, Baker and Jeffries as a classic of a genre of writing about a place I call the 'edgelands', that place that is neither wild nor urban but somewhere in between. But this is not a book about natural history, or wildlife, it is a book about just "being"; and gorgeous it is too.

http://www.olivialaing.co.uk/
 

The Enchanted Wood

Ebernoe Common

Heavy snow-laden clouds seem to be propped up by the tall  birch trees around the small Victorian red-brick church, and the occasional flurry of snow litters the car park with flecks of white.

To the east of the church a path runs south and then south east, made up in that ancient way of compacted rubble, slippery with mud, ice and beech mast. To the left is Furnace Field, in warmer times a favourite haunt of adders. Now, nervous fieldfares bolt out of hedges to snatch morsels from the iced-fingers of grass.

Further on, across a stream-bottomed valley there stands a restored brick kiln, a reminder that this which nature has reclaimed was once a centre of industry, where the sounds of hammers echoed for miles around, while ther forests flickered with fire.

More evidence of this industrial past lies south-west of the church where a frozen furnace pond supports a small flock of mournful looking mallards. The pond sparkles like glitter has been strewn across it surface, and each clumsy mallard footstep echoes from bank to bank.

Great clouds of blue, coal and great tits engage in what appears to be a competition to throw over the largest leaf as they forage among the beach mast. Suddenly an old English sheepdog appears and sits obediently at my side. For a while we stand together in silence watching the birds before the voice of an unseen mistress calls him away, and with a glance over his shoulder he is gone.

Bemused I turn back to find the tits have left, and a solitary grey squirrel sits where they foraged, clasping a beech nut. I hear what I initially take to be a jay mimicking a buzzard, as they are known to do, when the call rises in volume, incessant and repetitive.

I scan the skies, the squirrel scampers up the nearest tree, and above two common buzzards appear. One is noticeably smaller than the other, who calls constantly. They glide only for short periods and at a low altitude, the cold air probably lacking the thermals they need for their familiar soaring displays.

It is easy to see why in Scotland they are known as the 'tourist's Eagle' with their long fingery wings and gliding flight. After fifteen minutes or more of calling and circling they fly west into the weak sun and are lost over the beech trees.

Across the forest the repetitive beat of a drumming great spotted woodpecker sounds out, loud but unseen, pausing occasionally, waiting for an answer that never seems to come.

Paths criss-cross this ancient forest, tempting the explorer. They are the remnants of trackways that lead to the industrial sites that were once common here, some are hollow-ways, hundreds of years old. It is easy to get lost here, happy care-free lost of a child in an enchanted forest. Following any of the paths north leads to the church, or if not the road that leads to the church, where a welcome flask of soup waits in the car.

Arlington Reservoir

Crepuscular rays cut through net curtains of clouds like a golden rapier, a carrion crow, fingery wings silhouetted against the sun cackles by. Below, the water sparkles like a silver coin dropped in a downland hollow.

Flocks of common gull bicker like hormonal teenagers. The shrivelled remnants of rosehips attract clouds of chattering long tailed tits, and the occasional coal tit. Away to the south over the grey whaleback of the south downs rain heavy clouds rush by on a wintery westerly breeze.

On the reservoir wigeon  gossip happily among themselves, while a gravel voiced jay chases a straying squirrel from a small copse, before proudly preening himself on a sun streaked fencepost.

The sun is obscured and the waters turn the muddy brown of wealden clay, and the clouds lower and thicken with anger.

Coppiced woodland creaks and sways like the mast of ships port bound by woodland storms. Firle Beacon towers above, the highest point of the eastern end of the south downs, the northern escarpment shrinks away in shadow below the humped crown which kaleidoscopes from green to gold to grey and mauve.

A cormorant skims the surface of the waters, twisting and turning, feet inches above the choppy waves before rising off to the north and joining fifteen more forming a soldiery shoreside line behind a bemused corporal of a grey heron. They watch common and herring gulls wheeling in dogfights across the waters.

This place feels like what it is, forced and managed to the n'th degree, where signs welcome but guard against having too much fun. Algae and animals are out to harm us, and the mud is soft and dangerous, unless, it seems, one is angler or boatowner. In places black bags of dog shit decorate the branches of trees like the remains of some macabre Xmas celebration.

 As I leave a skein of canda geese honks its noisy arrival, and the sky comes alive with the fire of sunset

Cissbury Ring

Near the car park conspiratorial ravens chatter in electronic voices, mattock beaks silhouetted against the skyline . A magpie argues angrily with them before alighting in a conifer which flexes as he scolds me for too close an approach, I salute him theatrically and he turns his back in disgust.

As I toil up the steep slope night falls like a shroud slowly covering the sleeping land. Cobalt slides into slate into black.

Sulphur, magnesium and neon sparkle in the valley below, while to the north all is black, all is silent. Man is emasculated, stripped of a sense. The vulnerability of the apex hunter is absolute here. Darkness is everything.

Senses become muddled, the air tastes of spring; but smells of autumn. Smoke rises from backyard fires as christmas smoulders and drifts away on the breeze. A cloud of blue tits trills a lullaby from shrubs hard by the path, where sad posters beg for news of lost friends.

An woodland trackway lives with the sound of the night as feet slide in a muddy gravy, feeling for friction,  the incline increasing before giving way to springy downland turf. Here and there under skeletal trees a smattering of freshly dug chalk sparkles like fresh snow in the moonlight. A barn owl screeches as it wakes, ravenous, the sound is everywhere, without sight the ears are sharpened.

The only other sound is the breathless labour of ascent. 

Ancient ramparts rear up into the black, the prows of chalky ships against a black sea. In the northwest corner the remnants of flint mines sink into the earth, their shrubby hollows tempt unwary ankles to twist.

Once there was no turf on these ramparts, stripped bare the chalk would have shone like a beacon for miles around on nights like these; this capital of an ancient downland kingdom.

Far below downland sheep pick over a brown field, white felt on a children's playmat. On the horizon Chanctonbury's regal crown of beech crests the horizon. In a coombe below a solitary green woodpecker laughs manically at some hidden joke, before flying drunkenly into the nearby copse. A tawny owl welcomes the night with it's horror-movie call.

Suddeny, just below the rampart, Chalkpit Wood erupts as the owl wheels and stalls, hovers and plunges, bringing terror in a thrashing of feathers and fur, a slicing of dagger-talons, and then: silence.

A horse's head of cloud canters across a full moon, and trees become human, stalking in the night, with fingery roots grasping up intent on harm.

This is an old landscape, a place of ancestors, long since swept away on a tide of revolution, a place of life and industry, of loves and losses; now reclaimed by nature.

Protected now, preserved forever, no-one will punch a high-speed rail line through here, destroying all that matters for the benefit of the few who chose to live far away from their employment, to the detriment of those that chose the simplicity of a slower life.

Far away someone ignores a car alarm.  In this moment I live forever.

02.02.12

Amberley Wild Brooks is marked on some maps as Amberley Swamp, and there's a sign warning of 'dangerous marshes'. Whether its brook, swamp or marsh matters not, they're all the same when they are filling your boots with cold, black wintery water. Stonechats converse nosily, with voices that sound like stones being tapped together. They remain a sight unseen, hidden perhaps among clouds of blue tits, great tits and coal tits, as here are there a small flock of long tailed tits flash by. No sign of the Bewick's swans that bought me to this boggy playground, the low marsh and high shrubbery restricting visibility to only short distances.



I follow the route back, and recall a calamitous navigational error that had me jumping ditches, climbing fences and being chased by cattle a summer ago. A new signpost saves others from the relationship ending arguments that such mistakes can lead to. 

Although only January 2nd, daffodils decorate the roadside here.

Heading back through Quell's farm there are some gaps in the treeline that afford a peering view down onto the shining waters of the Arun, now on it's ebb. On the opposite bank a chocolate Labrador barks at nothing in particular, and flushes the falcon peregrine from the reeds just below me; three silent, hefty wing beats and she's away, lost behind the trees. I am right under the perch where I saw her on my last visit, and can see why she chooses this spot, with it's high view out across flooded marsh where a hearty menu of wildfowl await a hungry hawk.

The short eared owl's are big news now and  Waltham Brooks  is busy with heads popping up from behind every bush. Here the Arun starts to run fast as it heads for it's gap in the South Downs just south of Amberley. Suddenly the peregrine flashes past, flying low, and turning hard south after crossing the river, calling in in what seems sheer delight at her flight. She rises up into the sun, like a fighter pilot preparing for ambush. It's like looking into a fire trying to follow her and she's soon lost from view.

No-one in the field reacts, so hard-wired are they into finding their target species they fail to see this perfect hunting machine not twenty feet above their heads. Thirty years ago these creatures were dying out in our country, but now they are recovering. The peregrine has evolved so effectively, so perfectly that her qualities are incorporated in the design of modern fighter jets.This individual is large, her white underside flecked with fine dark spots, and her back is a fitting RAF blue. It's a curse that the sun is the wrong side for anything more than a blurry silhouette of a photograph.

Seeking out a wet and boggy seat to provide cover for photographing owls  a merlin is flushed and he swoops away, sending up great clouds of assorted tits and starlings. Behind me, and across the field the owl-watchers ignore this rare and stunning bird, the smallest of our falcons.

A short eared owl quarters the field right next to me, he hunts me, my size diminishing to that of a vole, his eyes fix mine, I cannot tear my gaze away, he closes, his mottled feathers merge with vegetation, only his eyes have colour, bright amber staring, fixed and then, suddenly, he's away. He veers dramatically west, dropping one wing and away, into the sun. Three feathers rest lightly on the ground hard by the hawthorn.




He calls his shreiking call, and hastens his pace, swinging towards the flood defence bank over the old canal lock.  He drops low, skimming reed mace and rises to confront a nearby male who has strayed onto his territory. They grapple mid-air, shreiking and calling, tussling with talons raised, before my male breaks and with fast beats to propel him away glides into nearby shrubbery to lick his wounds.

There are six owls here today, the most seen since November when they first arrived and they put on a show for the gathered twitchers. One rises right in front of a waiting photgrapher, vole firmly clenched in knife like talons. 

Three Bewick's swans honk as they pass overhead, signalling the coming of sunset, and short splash across fields to a waiting flask.

29/12/2011

 Waltham Brooks

Clouds so heavy with rain they look as if they could fall from the sky crash past on a bitter winter wind. The kestrel battles to hold his position against the gusting easterly as a solitary short eared owl wheels low over the wind-bent grass.

A mile further along the Arun a second short eared quarters the field by the old canal lock, both fly lower than I had seen before, making their acrobatics all the more spectacular as they twist and turn just above ground height. Does the wind carry the sound of the voles away, so the owl hunts closer to the ground?

The wildfowl pay no attention to hawk and owl, but scold as feet splashing in the grass disturb winter slumbers.

Wet feet force a retreat to waiting warmth.

24.12.2011

Waltham Brooks

The fire still rages behind the Downs, the sky burns the orange of an early winter sunset.

A walk along the flood bank to a further field brings the solitude of a lone tree. Rushes abound on a small island, just south of the canal entrance, and a distraction here spoils a photgraphic opportunity when I rise over the bank to disturb a large male short eared owl with a water vole firmly grasped in his talons.

He rises up and scolds me as he seeks the cover of the shrubs 500 metres west. Clouds cover the sun and the colours change to tired greys.

The trouble with owls is that they are the colour of bark, and hide in trees.

I glass the length of the shrubbery for a  few minutes unsuccessfully before one, then a second, takes to the air. They dogfight over some imagined slight before one retreats, wisely chooing a hawthorn further west as his perch. Battle is spectacular, with twists and turns, screeching and aerobatics; all bluff and bluster, neither wishing to retire hurt on such fertile hunting grounds.

The kestrel keeps his solitary distance, drifting south, and higher, watching all the time.

 
Just before four the sun sets and the winds drag the clouds to the east. The sky burns again, and the fields empty towards homes with mince pies waiting for intrepid explorers.

20.12.2011

Waltham Brooks
 

The sky over the Downs glows, as if some unseen fire rages on the southern side, hidden from view by the grey whaleback slopes.

Waltham is still saturated with the rain of the previous few days and flocks of mallards chatter excitedly from the flooded meadow; here and there a gull swoops in to share the waters. Kicking up the soil near the old canal path reveals the foundations of the long-demolished lock keeper's cottage, the rain and vegetation indicating the rod straight canal locks running away towards the Arun.

The school holidays are here and the footpaths are busier than I am used to. Brightly coloured garb, excited chatter and barking dogs do nothing except drive the owls to the other side of the river. One shifts across by Greatham Bridge, and drops into the grass as a child squeals in excitement. Eventually he rises to a post where he can survey this stranger in his domain.

A kestrel quarters the field, settling on a hover near the brooks before plummeting from sight into the long grass.

Darkness brings a chill.

14.12.2011

Wiggonholt Common

Fingers of smoke and mist creeps between the trees on Wiggonholt Common, which smells of bonfires from where clearance works are taking place in Northpark Wood, just over the road to Greatham.

A trio of great spotted woodpeckers swarm over the rotting corpse of an alder, the slightest noise driving them onto the opposite side of the trunk. A bounding Labrador finally flushes them into the canopy and away. 

Crossbills, brick red against the grey mist, chatter nosily as they acrobatically feed from the cones in the evergreen clump. Here and there a robin announces his presence with his whistling song, a melodic warning to others that this was most definitely his territory. It's struggling to rain, and by the first hour of the afternoon it already felt like dusk was coming. 

Waltham Brooks  is drenched in grey, the rain pools on already soaking watermeadow. This is be no day to see the short eared owls that have recently arrived here, and that I watched just a few days ago. The wind and rain a hinderance to creatures that hunt by sound. This is a grey day, a day to be indoors with a log fire, and a glass of something Scottish.

I edge along the riverbank, dropping down to walk at about halfway up the steep slope, the better to disguise my silhouette. A peregrine watches me from a power line across on the other bank. I glass him, and his head tilts inquisitively as we watch each other; the watcher watched.

Falcons never fly when you're watching them.

I look down momentarily and he's gone, slipping effortlessly away into the steel grey sky, his departure belied by the cloud of starlings he sends up to the south.

A grey heron rises with slow, languid, almost thoughtful flight and puts down again in the reeds on the far bank, only his head peering curiously back at me. His expression one of annoyance as if I had disturbed some long awaited table at Michelin starred restaurant.

I try to use the cover of some autumn-stripped branches to approach, but a crack of a branch and a splosh of a boot in a puddle and he's away again, another 300 yards south, and into deeper reeds. He croaks his sore-throated anger at me, and disappears from view.

I climb back up to the flood bank, where the old canal lock used to allow the barques onto the river, and pick up a kestrel, low behind the leafless shrubs that form the shore of the flooded part of the meadows, he rises, hovers, shifts east then west slightly, drops, hovers then plummets from the sky and I lose sight.

Beneath my feet, a pile of neatly plucked moorhen  feathers and a few bones glisten in the rain. A falcon has fed here recently.

I start to retrace my footsteps, tiring of the rain, and he's there again. I see the peregrine glide into the tree, and turn to watch me. He hops along sideways, then stiffens. I seek a tree to break up my shape and watch, and wait.

He rises, and heads straight for the flood waters, climbing slowly, sending up great clouds of waders and ducks, before circling higher into the slate-grey sky and disappearing. After I while I turn back to glass his tree and he's there; as if he'd run the ducks just for fun. I left him sat there, fluffed up against the rainy..