The countryside in March
Sarah Ryan ventures into the Peak District where the landscape reveals subtle signs that spring is on its way
When I vIsIt the Peak District for a walk, the hills are still humps of brown against a chalky white sky. The air is milder now, but spring’s stirrings are slow. I begin outside a homely, stone-built pub and imagine a glass of whisky nestled in my hand; the scorch of the liquid across my tongue. I am tempted to curtail the walk and push straight past the heavy door to the snug warmth within, but know that the spirit is best served with a blast of cold wind and dash of rain. The stony track leads up past the pub on a gentle rise, before a footpath splits off to the right. It is narrow, descending immediately to a tree-lined gorge. A set of muddy steps leads to a footbridge across a chuckling stream, and I pause halfway across. Below my boots; below the greening wooden planks, the stream gushes and leaps. I watch it pass, then turn to see it flow, jumping downhill. It is in a rush today. I thump across to the other side, my fingers trailing the rain-thickened wooden handrails, then climb the stile and a few steps to emerge from the trees. Previously, I could see only the tops of the hills, sprinkled every other day with a light snowfall. Now, I am at their feet, a spur swooping down ahead of me, making a graceful line against the sky. The path is a line of huge slabs, some cracked and sloping, leading up past the trees on the left, across trimmed grass. The scent of pine resin comes in drifts, and I brighten every time I catch it.
“...the breeze, That loves to ripple o’er the rivulet, Will play around thy brow, and the cool sound Of running waters soothe thee” Robert southey, ‘For A Tablet On The Banks Of A Stream’
Hidden life
Soon, I enter a small woodland: really just a tiny thing; a gathering of trees. A fallen trunk lies in a clearing, home to innumerable bugs and beasties. Most are still in hibernation or lingering in eggs, but they will emerge soon. The trees are bare and twiggy, their buds clamped shut for a few more weeks. I wander between them, passing through a kissing gate at the far end, which bumps to a close behind me. Ahead, a narrow bridge crosses another sprightly stream. A rowan tree stands alone at its banks, holding out its pale branches against the weather that must beat it again and again. It stands amid collapsed heaps of russet bracken, spears of tough grasses and clumps of moss. The sheep and their lambs browsing downhill are gone now. By passing through the gate, I have entered the moors.
Birds flit above my head, busily collecting twigs for constructing their perfectly messy nests which will ensconce a clutch of small eggs. A wheatear bobs and tweets nearby before shooting off, displaying its snowy white rump. The path, if I follow it, will lead to the top of the hill, overlooking farmed fields, grids of heather and dark stands of pine. But I will not go that far today. I am content to walk a little way, following the banks of the brook which flows from the peat hags above. It gurgles, ale-coloured and spraying to a white froth where it hits the boulders, their gritty forms gently rounded after centuries of being pounded by its passage.
Heralding spring
I kick past clumps of brown, flowerless heather and more slender rowan saplings. It still looks like winter, but there is promise in the longer hours of daylight; in the gradually warming air that has melted the ice from the hilltops and which now comes sloshing downhill. Near the pub, when I get there, a bunch of daffodils stand boldly upright; brazen in their merry welcoming of spring. It may still look like winter, but life is stirring and in places, leaping out.
“Till at thy chuckled note, Thou twinkling bird, The fairy fancies range, And, lightly stirred, Ring little bells of change” Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Early Spring’