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]

St Patrick’s Cave: interior, with view out to sea

Just back from Anglesey, where we stayed near Camaes Bay with our grandchildren. There’s something magical about Anglesey: a strange, subtle and beautiful atmosphere that feels as if you’ve entered an enchanted Otherworld.

Much of the countryside looks dull from a car; but get out and walk a hundred yards and you’re in fields and woods that seem out of another era. It’s as if nothing has changed for centuries, and you can just step into it. I always find it very inspiring for poetry too.

Having meadows and seacliffs right next to each other is wonderful too. You go from sheets of bluebells and blossoming hawthorn thickets to sheer cliffs with lichen-covered rocks and clumps of seapinks, with a sheer drop to the sandy beach,  in a mere footstep or two.

The cave mouth is the dark shape left of centre. The Dalai Lama, visiting a few years ago, said it was the most peaceful place on earth!

This time we stayed in an old house beside a church built in the mid-5th century. Just round the corner and down the cliff face was St Patrick’s cave – where the saint is said to have taken refuge after shipwreck. It looked precarious but I soon found out that it was easy enough to climb down the cliff into the cave. A wonderful place to meditate! And, as local legend says women used to go to a sacred spirng there to wash their faces and become more beautiful, it seems likely that in preChristian times it was sacred to a Goddess – no doubt Bride, the Celtic Goddess of springs and wells. A magical place!