Today, I thought I would take you on one my favourite walks.
If you read Seductive Lanes, you’ll know this walk – but I thought you might like to see it.
Waking early on Wednesday (May 10), I couldn’t resist the temptation of clear skies, the promise of hawthorn blossom and lanes newly lined with cow parsley.
So, with an iPhone in one hand and a dog lead in the other, I set off on a three-mile wander, condensed here into two minutes of wobbly video.
There’s something special about walking at dawn; it’s other worldly, almost spiritual.
The word ‘saunter’ is appropriate because its etymology is ‘sainte-terre-ers’ or ‘saunterers’ – pilgrims on route to ‘holy land’.
For me, it is the sense of nature euphoria that makes a dawn walk irresistible. I hope you enjoy walking along with me…
Morning Has Broken
A story about the kindness of strangers…
In March 2021, an Instagram correspondent Emma Kay (@emmakay612) posted a picture of her linocut print of Alfriston Church, Sussex.
The hymn ‘Morning has Broken’ was written in the village in 1931 by poet and children’s author Eleanor Farjeon and set to a Scottish Gaelic tune.
Alfriston has always been a special place for me – I proposed to Mrs F in the meadow* behind the church – and returned in October last year while walking the South Downs Way.
I asked Emma at the time if the print was for sale. She declined, modestly explaining she had only recently started to linocut and wasn’t entirely satisfied with it. Also, it held a special meaning to her as ‘Morning has Broken’ was her much-loved Gran’s favourite hymn.
Fast-forward 18 months and, seeing my posts about a personal pilgrimage along the South Downs Way to remember my late brother, Emma sent me a message out of the blue to say she wished to gift the print to me.
I was dumbstruck. Why would a stranger do something so kind?
The print then arrived in the post.
It now hangs in a prominent position in our kitchen in Rutland and is a daily reminder of Sussex – and an extraordinary act of kindness. (Thank you, Emma.)
• If you’d like to read more about my 100-mile walk from Winchester to Eastbourne along the South Downs Way, I wrote eight daily blogs with lots of pictures on my personal Instagram page @garyfirkins, starting October 23, 2022.
(*For more about Alfriston and the Cuckmere Valley, Dirk Bogarde’s memoir ‘Great Meadow’ offers a beautiful evocation of an idyllic childhood in the late 1920s.)
White Rabbit
On another early walk this week, I spied something rather unusual: a white rabbit.
It wasn’t first of the month, I wasn’t in Wonderland, but it was most certainly a white rabbit and it was in the old quarry opposite The White Horse pub.
Whether it is an albino or an escapee, I don’t know, but spotting this ghostly little creature in a field of giant dandelions was rather surreal.
Apocalypse? Not Now, Please
More surreal sightings… An extraordinary storm cloud loomed over the village on Thursday evening.
Mrs F and I were walking Lyra along Back Lane when a beast from the north-east rolled in and blocked out the sun.
“I do hope it’s not the apocalypse,” I said. “We haven’t had tea.”
We survived, but an Instagram correspondent in Oakham (@thespottywren) said she had never seen rain like it.
I’m not sure we have seen a spring like it, either. It was 12C yesterday and will be 11C on Monday, which means lighting fires in the evening again.
Another Instagram correspondent, gardener and poet @kenblake50 in Somerset, posted yesterday saying, “I think this is the wettest, coolest and least sunny spring that I can ever remember. In the first third of May we have already had 139% of the average rainfall for the month and there were flash floods in South Somerset.”
I suspect spring will arrive just in time for summer this year.
Sunrise Saunter