7.00pm 13 Sept. 2000. I have just walked up Adey’s lane to the footpath up the wood, toiled up the beech-hanger and I’m now sitting on the scarp overlooking Rushmire Hill and Synwell. The beeches below me are towering and seemingly impenetrable. In this natural amphitheatre of Coombe and Tyley bottom, the cries of playing children float across the valley from the playground on the opposite slope.
A green woodpecker yaffles somewhere in the thicket behind me, jackdaws squabble below me and an occasional vehicle passes unseen along the Wotton road from Rushmire. There is little traffic about, for the blockade of fuel terminals by lorry drivers is in progress, and all petrol stations have closed. I too have no fuel and await the outcome of this latest move to cut fuel prices.
There is high, almost mackerel sky above a lower stranded layer of leaden cloud slowly drifting Northward. The Western edges of the high cloud glint with gold from the setting sun.
It is approaching twilight, that magical time when the countryside seems to fade into an alternative reality. Twilight does not happen in towns and cities – it just grows dark. Out here the transition lasts, the air becomes almost thick with dusk, it is tangible. The crooks of the valleys are to my left, lined with ancient cattle tracks and the remains of the 15th century vineyard terraces stepping up the hillside. The Telecom tower stands sentinel over it all, quiet and ominous, technology dominating nature.
There have been some very warm days lately and Indian summer temperatures in the mid 80s F., but tonight there is a definite chill to my back as Autumn sidles in unseen.
The hillside abounds in limestone plants. Harebell, cornflower and spurge, wild sage and thyme, hawksbeard and pignut. Here and there sprigs of salad burnet, low-growing on account of the drainage on this sloping ground, poke their way to the sun. The incline is considerable, it must be one in three at least. The hill appears to cascade to the valley floor.
I have just descended the steep slope, a hazardous ploy because of the dry grasses and I have found umbrage under a long-overgrown hedge. The footpath cuts through this gloom to the lower field and I am now sitting on a stile looking over towards Wotton and the Hillesley road. It is appreciably darker now, at 7.45pm. The woodland belt is now on my right, hanging over the fading fields, full of goodnight calls from robins and alarmed blackbirds. A badger sett is several yards from me, just inside the wood edge and a wellworn path runs from it along the centre of the hedge.
Smoke rises vertically from a chimney in the small council estate towards Synwell, and the two poplars in the valley by the road echo the vertical plume.
A wren chitters behind me as two cargo planes thunder over my head, breaking the relative calm of the evening with their mighty pulsating roar. I have sat here before and listened inthe darkness as badgers dispersed from the sett along the hillside, privately and discreetly going about their business, oblivious of Man and his machinations.
Crickets are beginning to sussurate along the hedgerow, harbingers of dusk and the still clement night. Green dims to black as colour is sucked out of the landscape. The pale sunset throws the treetops into strong silhouette and an owl calls his toowhit, reverberating over the woodland.
A stick cracks in the wood. The church bell rings 8.00pm. I can’t believe any badgers would emerge so early, so perhaps a rabbit has blundered on its way.
A very large bat, probably a noctule flapped past me along the hedge, veering out as it detected me. That is the first bat I have seen here larger than a pipistrelle. It really was a heavyweight, flying slowly and ponderously.
The night draws in, and having no torch and a rough pasture to negotiate, I must wend my way homeward.