NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

One evening, many years ago, I was in a pub with work colleagues when out of the blue one of them stood up (slightly the worse for wear) and let rip in a strong, deep, Northern Irish voice: "It's alright for you feckers, you know where you come from. Me? I've got a Belgian father, a French mother, was brought up in Belfast and have lived most of my adult life in London. What does that make me? Who the feck am I?" He had a point. He didn't feel an affiliation to any one single place, let alone a country. It got me thinking, and 35 years later I still think back to that outburst and how, when I came to consider the question of belonging, realised that I too would find it hard to pin myself firmly to one spot. The more time I spent weighing up the past the stronger came the realisation that I had in fact attached myself to several. The ease with which I have done so suggests that I'm easily persuaded and that my patronage is not hard to secure. Shall we look at t...

Sometimes it is the simplest of things that can arrest you. A frosty morning had largely been burnt off by the warm sunshine, but there were one or two frost hollows on Epsom Downs that are just that touch colder than the surrounding land. Whilst walking across a mixed ploughed/stubbly field, a twinkling from the ground alerted me to the iced chunks of chalk on the surface, not unlike large un-cut diamonds. It was some sight, a veritable carpet of jewels laid out across the Surrey downland. Bird wise it was a fair session, with a minimum of 135 Skylarks in the Epsom/Walton Downs area (including a flock of 70), plus a surprise flushed Common Snipe and seven Red-legged Partridges. Thrush numbers have fallen even further. STOP PRESS I've just noticed that this is ND&B's 200th post of the year - where does all this drivel come from? Four out of the past five years have now hit the 200+ posts. I obviously have too much time on my hands, suffer from Tourette's of the ...

It's all Robert Macfarlane's fault. I read his book 'The Old Ways' and was spellbound. I reviewed it here.  Apart from his writing about my beloved chalk downland, he also introduced me to two other champions of that special landscape - the artist Eric Ravilious and the author/poet Edward Thomas. Both lived short lives in which their artistry burned brightly. One of the first things that I did after finishing 'The Old Ways' was to buy 'Eric Ravilious: Artist and Designer' a good place to get a flavour of his artistic output. If you look into his work called 'Chalk Paths' you can feel the wind and hear the Skylarks calling overhead. There's most probably a couple of Yellowhammers halfway down the track, just by a stand of last summer's Carline Thistles. This is South Downs country, much more open and barren than my North Downs. Or is it Wiltshire, close to Pewsey Downs? Edward Thomas's 'The South Country' is what I am curr...

I was looking through some chalk downland images of mine after having read Robert Macfarlane's book The Old Ways, when I came across this old favourite of mine. Can anyone guess where it is? There is a prize, but I will not reveal what it is until it has been won...