A Walk on the Wild Side

It truly has been a beautiful Spring here on the Devon and Dorset border, with the slopes of the hills blanketed in flowers and the woods resonant to the sound of the world coming back to life. There's been times when I try to capture the sunlight beams shafting through the trees, or the sun shining through the hedgerows – but simply fail every time to capture their true beauty.

Epye Down with its beautiful rolling hills, just outside of Bridport, is one of our favourite places to go walking. A great circular route is to walk via the Secret Garden Cafe down to Eype Beach, then back up to Thorncombe Beacon. On one day the sunlight was lighting up the woods and leaves in a simply stunning manner, like fairys had alighted on the Bluebells, leaving a magical essence of light.

There's magic afoot in the woods at Eype Down

We tried shooting the light coming through the leaves, but failed miserably. I sometimes feel that maybe that's the answer why, that the only way to see the world is to be out seeing it for real. To capture it would ruin the magic, like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Courtesy of Hugh Stoker, West Dorset's answer to Wainwright*, I have been out exploring the beautiful West Dorset countryside which sits on our doorstep. Every one of Hugh's walks takes my breath away, with their surprises at every turn. A walk I expect to be ordinary turns out surpassing my dreams, with its rolling meadows, the unexplored woodlands. The farms where time has stood still, the farm machinery rusting in the hedgerows hinting at an agricultural hey-day long past.

We are blessed with a multitude of long-distance trails around our home: The Monarch's Way, the Wessex Ridgeway, the Liberty Trail, the East Devon Way. All of them seem to pick out the best of our local countryside. One of mine and Purdey's recent day walks was to start at North Chideock, walking part of the Monarch's Way. It was one of those days where the sunbeams filtered down onto an ancient path, a ridgeway route used over the centuries; The holloways (or hollways) of Dorset, that Robert Macfarlane has written about so beautifully. Once again, the camera simply could not capture the day's beauty. Like a secret tunnel of light leading to something beautiful, the only way is onwards...

In the words of Bilbo Baggins, "The Road Goes Ever On".

Purdey questions why we have stopped

*Hugh Stoker was a local man, living at Seatown (home of one of our favourite pubs, The Anchor), who self-published in the mid to late eighties a series of guides to local walks in Dorset and East Devon. I discovered my first one in a bookshop on Honiton for £2, but they're readily available on ebay for next to nothing. I can't recommend them highly enough, with every walk being a joy.

A Good Day

It's not often that I feel compelled to write because of the beauty of the world, but yesterday was one of those days – one that stood out in two week's worth of days that have all stood out, which is praise indeed. Endless sunny days, beautiful blue skies and pinky-orange cotton wool sunsets setting over calm seas have become the norm. Bluebells have filled the woods and the tree's leaves have burst forth into life and light, as has my heart to walk amongst all that we are given but sometimes forget.

The addition of a new member of the family, a five year old young lady called Jadie from Maidstone has brought her own problems, and rewards too. For without her, or Purdey as she is now known, I might have stayed at home, together with the pains in my legs and hips that seem to have resurfaced, mulling the future. But Purdey is keen to discover the world, her senses – all these new smells, so enticing, so confusing – water, water, WATER! A break in the hedge with a stream behind in which to jump is a chance missed can't you see. A stick thrown is even more devine.

Purdey loves water, balls – and preferably balls in water

Together we walked up by the Coly river and up over the hills, through fields of Buttercups and Dandelions, through lanes of Stitchwort and Cow Parsley. White blossom floated from a tree outside a beautiful farmhouse, where a bottle of lemonade sat half drunk on a table. Small streams burbled, with tentacles of streamer weed waving over beds of sunlit gravel, where minnows swam to be alive. Meadows of grass so lush that Purdey had to jump and spring to find her way – her ever gaining excitement a visible sign of the beauty we both felt. Like a dream world, one long gone, written about, but never seen. The thing of tales, the thing that men were forced to fight to protect. Summer, oh glorious English summer. For you are here. And so am I, of that much I am glad.