I finally got out for a good walk yesterday – it’s been too long. I climbed Shutlingsloe – the odd little crooked pyramid that dominates the south-east corner of the Forest – after crossing the peaty moorland you can see in the photo. Not a great picture I’m afraid but at least it gives some sense of the spaciousness of the approach.

It was good to hear the almost continuous highpitched warbling cry of curlews – rare these days but the conservation efforts here must have been working because I could hear them almost all the time – and also the high pitched continuous tweeting of skylarks. I tried once to describe this in a poem as ‘larks scribbling their songs on the sky’ – the best I could do in words!

In the forest the bluebells were just starting to come out,  and there were a surprising number of peacock butterflies, though not the orange tips which are generally so common a little later in the year. 

Later I discovered this spring, which I think I’d missed in the past. The water was just emerging straight from the hillside. Such places give such a sense of elemental life it’s easy to understand how they can be felt as sacred. It was a delight to find this one. The photo can’t give the full sense of life, but at least it may communicate something.

In late afternoon I found this rough stone gatepost, probably pierced just so a pole could be put through the hole to meet a similar post on the other side of a gap or path – or maybe to take the hinge or fastening of a gate. The low angle of the sun brought out beautifully both the texture of the stone and especially (at lower right of the stone) the bench-mark so expertly carved into the rock during the making of the Ordnance Survey of Britain.

People talk about ‘benchmarks’ all the time in political discussions. I wonder how often they know what a bench-mark is? It’s actually a horizontal groove where the end of a surveying instrument was rested, plus an arrow beneath to indicate the line and what it is. It creates this beautiful hieroglyph which has quite a mysterious appearance. I love finding them – they’re all over the place, nearly always overlooked – including in cities. They’re always beautifully cut, and yet I’ve never seen any discussion of the expert stonemasons who must have accompanied the surveyors to cut them. This is a lovely one.

[27.04.23]

Just started going out walking again in the North-West after months away from Manchester.

The part of the Peak District just east of Macclesfield has a special magic for me. I made an easy start this time, walking from Tegg’s Nose over to the Forest, then around the Forest and up to the summit of Shuttlingsloe.

To my delight I heard a cuckoo in the forest – the first I’ve heard this year, and given how rare they are now it could be the last, though I hope not. There were also great clouds of orange tip butterflies, though they were so restless that the only sharp-focus picture I could get shows one on dead leaves, rather than the flowers where I tried in vain to catch them!

Maybe the most memorable sight was the vast drifts of bluebells covering hillsides under the trees; and these are the old English bluebells, the frailer, gracefully drooping ones, rather than the stiffer and apparently more robust ‘Spanish’ ones – lovely though these can also be.

A great day anyhow; and it’s good to be back writing this blog after such a long absence.