Once Mrs C had been safely delivered to her place of work, I put my new Nick Drake CD on and drove Little dog up to the Forest for her exercise. The haunting tunes and lyrics from this talented but doomed musician seemed very appropriate as an accompaniment to the dismal claggy weather outside of the car. Little dog was fast asleep in the passenger foot well with her paws clamped firmly over her ears; she has no taste.
There were no other vehicles in the car park at Stonehill as we pulled up leaving tyre marks in the soft grass and mud. Little dog was now fully awake and frantically trying to clamber over me like a dog possessed in her attempt to get out of the car. Having finally realised that she was not going to be left behind she calmed down; apart from her tail which was wagging fit to bust.
I love mornings like this as all the fair weather walkers stay at home and so we have the Forest to ourselves. As we set off down the Misbourne Valley towards the Airman's Grave the only sounds that I could hear were the call of a distant cuckoo followed by the disembodied bleating of a lonely sheep somewhere lost in the fog. Little dog took no notice, she had her nose stuck firmly to the ground following an interesting scent.
We were accompanied by a crow flying low from tree to tree. I love these birds in their sleek black shiny plumage, they are very intelligent and mischievous. However if I was at all superstitious I would probably be less happy with it's presence. In celtic mythology the crow was believed to be an incarnation of the Morrighan, the goddess of battle and war. She was the one who decided if a warrior walked off of the field of battle or was carried off on his shield. There is a lot of superstition surrounding crows and ravens, in some mythologies they are seen as divine messengers of the gods and in others they are believed to be harbingers of death.
A couple of years ago I was walking in the South Downs near the village of Telscombe, a pretty little hamlet in a steep sided valley (not what I would readily call 'Deliverance' country). As I walked through a farmyard I caught site of something black out of the corner of my eye, it was a dead crow hanging from a post. Looking across to a tumble down barn I saw several other similar black corpses hanging from the eaves. I felt my hair standing on end and thought that I could hear the faint sound of duelling Banjos, needless to say I didn't hang around. In folklore hanging up dead crows was meant to ward off other birds from crops, I assumed that this practice had died out years ago but evidently not.
Anyway back to our lonely silent walk in the fog. We continued down the ridge when in the distance I noticed a sudden movement in the middle of the wide track. I initially thought that it was a couple of sheep but then as the cloud parted I could see that it was a pair of Fallow deer. They saw Little dog and me at the same time but because we were a good hundred yards from them they did not immediately bolt. I had my camera with me and was able to get a few pictures before they disappeared into the dense gorse. The photographs are very grainy as they were taken at maximum zoom into the murk. I like the effect however as they remind me of impressionist paintings, not quite up to the standard of Monet or Sisley though.
I circled around the valley in the hope of sneaking up on the deer from the opposite ridge but without any success, they were staying in the deep wooded valley well away from an excited Little dog. Back home there is a thick claggy fog building up in the bathroom as Little dog sits glumly in the bath while I wash all the muck out of her coat. It's a tough life being a scruffy Spaniel!!!
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