Easter Walk: Around St Brides Major

The Easter Monday was pleasantly warm and sunny.  So we drove to the west for a half hour.  At the end of a small village, St Brides Major, we parked our car, and walked up to the limestone hill.

The view from the top of the hill was stunning.  We saw the blue sky and just hills.  The yellow gorse flowers were full in bloom.  A flock of sheep, including new-born lambs, were gazing or lying idly on the grass.  Only a few groups of people passed by.

We walked down the hill.  A sign post for walkers stood at every corner, so that we didn't get lost.  The footpath was quite steep, though you cannot see in the picture.

 What we saw was an interesting road under the water.  On the right side there was stone steps, maybe quite ancient.  The road crossing the small river didn't have a proper bridge, instead, the middle of the river was shallow so that cars could drive through the water.  A few cars came to the point, and the drivers hesitated briefly, then drove in the water to the other bank.  A woman with the dog, in the picture, who wasn't far enough from the water, got soaking wet just after a car drove away from the water.  But her dog was enjoying in the water.  Why not, it was sunny and warm!

We saw this ancient clapper bridge over the river.  Village people would use for their daily life.  The stream was calm and clear as ever, I think.

As we walked along the river, there were two stone bridge for the railway above.  A girl was riding a pony, accompanied by her mother, when I reached the second bridge.

 

 Toward the end of our walk, we came upon the field, just in the middle of nowhere.  Actually, no.  On the right side of the picture below, we found a small stone cottage with a sigh of 'Eggs for sale'.  We asked the man in the back yard for eggs.  Eggs on Easter Monday were just right.  The eggs were of white and brown leghorns and silkie chickens. 

On the way back home, we drove at the coast, where number of people were walking and playing at the beach, contrasted to the calm paths, where we just walked.

Calendar April 2015: Wood Anemone -Vigorous Windflower-

April: Wood Anemone

Windflower

(Anemone nemorosa, Buttercup family)

In April, we can see the white carpets of wood anemone in a beech woodland nearby our house.  The flower is tiny, about 4 cm diameter.  Bluebells and wild garlic are also blooming neighbouring areas at the same time.  The woodland is carpeted with white and blue flowers.  This is a stunning view, and I look forward to seeing it every year.  

I've never seen wood anemone in Japan, in my mother country.  It looks fragile with the tiny pretty white or sometimes pale pink petal-like sepals.

Another name of wood anemone is windflower.  Wood anemone usually grows in shady woodlands, protected from the wind, I thought.  But, in fact, 'It was said that the flower could open only when the wind blew upon it.', according to a book, Wild Flowers of Britain by B.D. Inglis (Nelson, 1958).  She described that wood anemone was quite sturdy in the bare woods despite the fragile looking.  The weather in the early spring can be rough and windy.  Unless it was vigorous, it wouldn't  appear in the woodland every spring today.

When searching wood anemone on the internet recently, I happened to find a website with an image of the wood anemone fairy by Cicely Mary Barker.  I remembered that I had some old copies of her fairy books.  One of them was the very book, in which the wood anemone fairy was.  As a school girl, I collected points of the sweets, of which company offered to give their customer the books of the flower fairy series for free.  Well, I had to spend my pocket money to buy the sweets.  But at that time it was quite hard to get foreign books in Japan.  Looking at the book, this was edited specially for the sweets company, but it states only 'This edition published in Japan by permission of Black & Son Ltd.' with no published year.  It is mysterious.

The  Windflower Fairy is a slender girl with long curly brown hair in a pale pink simple dress , brown butterfly wings on her back.   She holds two (white and pale pink) flowers in her arm and as if she were starting dancing when the wind blows on her.

THE SONG OF THE WINDFLOWER FAIRY

While human-folk slumber, 

The fairies espy
Stars without number
Sprinkling the sky.

The Winter's long sleeping,
Like night-time, is done;
But day-stars are leaping
To welcome the sun.

Star-like they sprinkle
The wildwood with light;
Countless they twinkle
The Windflowers white!

(Flower Fairies of the Spring, Cicely Mary Barker)

(The first of her Flower Fairies books, Flower Fairies of the Spring was published in 1923.)


The first time I saw wood anemone in the woodland, it was late afternoon, and the flower closed the sepals and faced down to the ground, like violet.  I thought it might belong to a violet family, or a kind of fritillary.  But some time later, having found white twinkling wood anemone in the sun light, coming through the bare branches, I was surprised.  They looked quite different and very lively.

A few years ago, I was walking in the woodland in the drizzling rain.  The rain didn't reach onto the ground, but countless tiny dews were on every single petal and leaf.  It was tranquil there as if the dews had been absorbing all the sound.  The pure white flowers were twinkling on the ground.  The view in front of me was really magical, felt like in another fairy tale than CM Barker's.