‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’ - yesterday’s glorious sunrise was clearly a herald of change, as today I’m met by low cloud and gusting winds.
Despite the less pleasant weather, I’m still greeted on arrival by the cheerful serenade of our resident Song Thrush, the ‘storm cock’ stoic in the face of unsettled conditions.
Less welcoming is the grumbling chatter from a Magpie squatting in the Hawthorn, who rebukes me before sailing away over the Learning Centre roof.
The paths are well and truly waterlogged after last night’s showers, and no sooner do I enter Field 34, the ‘slots’ of a foraging Roe Deer are clear in the soft surface of the soil.
Though markedly more temperate than the biting northerly wind that began the week, today’s more usual sou’westerly still buffets and dampens me as I cross South Field.
I stop to watch and listen beneath the Holm Oaks in Small Copse, but our small passerine birds are showing their wild wisdom today, hunkered down and quiet in the National Nature Reserve’s thorn hedges and Bramble scrub.
A patch of welcome colour amidst the gloom as I enter Saxon, the irregularly-flowering Gorse putting out a profusion of yellow blooms. Slipping and sliding my way across to Lighthouse Field, I rejoin the Herston Trail, our Hereford Cattle hunkered down in the leeside of the wind-sculpted Hawthorns, the Gully below me wreathed in a cloying mist. Turning west, I head towards the top of the meltwater-carved valley, seeking shelter.
Arriving at the sheltered wooden bridge, the wind is stilled, and I hear the clatter of Pheasant, the croak of a passing Raven and the constant patter of moisture from the sodden Wild Roses, Blackthorn and English Ivy surrounding me.
As my last diary before the festive break, I’d like to wish all readers a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!