Cow under The Heavens

I finished my business and decided to go for a walk in The Horns valley, right behind the house. I mentioned yesterday about the badgers and their sett across the valley, so thought I should go and have a look at it.

The sky was hidden by thick low lying clouds, which were shedding a thick dew that hung in the air, until occasionally it changed into a very light drizzle. Consequently it was dark and rather dismal, but still enjoyable to get out and about. I forget how much I enjoy my strolls across these hillsides, with their mixture of meadows, pastures, small groves of oak and hazel, old woodbanks and various types of hedges. There are two valleys formed by springs, which join together above Bowbridge before descending together to form a tributary of the River Frome.

I crossed the Lime Brook, then climbed and puffed my way up to Wayhouse, where the old ruins of the house are now covered by sixty years of scrub infestation. In the neighbouring woods, the ruins of the old cottages can hardly be seen at all now, although the vegetation has been scoured by the grazing cows. I walked over the ridge and along past Oakey Grove, crossed the other stream running down from the waterfall below The Heavens and followed the hedge between two fields.

The badgers' sett lies beneath the hedge which has grown around the sett into a quite extensive series of mounds and holes, covered with nettles, elder, blackberry bushes and an old fruit tree. I walked above the sett under the awning formed by the tree and saw a few big badger entrances, but there weren't many that seemed active. They have burrowed out huge amounts of a mix of clay and sand, which I think is an outcrop of the Fuller's Earth for which these valleys are renowned, and that were so important to the woollen industry in former centuries. 'Fulling' was a key process in cleaning and preparing the woollen materials.

I did notice that although the cows were prevalent in the area right beside the sett, and had trampled the clay in any other area that was exposed to the elements, there were absolutely no footmarks of their feet on the mounds above the sett, despite it being very accessible to the cows. I wondered whether the smell of the sett kept them away, or whether they acknowledged the possession of the area by badgers and didn't want to interfere? Who knows.

I then ambled on across another field towards Thrupp and came upon two horses which were rather dishevelled and by the state of their coats they obviously live out of doors. I fed them some fresh grass as they had devoured all grass in their paddock, and they seemed friendly.

I retraced my steps to the badger sett and on towards the head of second stream to see the state of the waterfall. As I approached it I could hear that it was in spate, unsurprisingly given the amount of recent rain, and I tried to photograph it under the deep woodland canopy. But it was rather difficult to get a good position in the wet ground below the waterfall and the light rather defeated me.

When I turned around to head home, I left the protection of the wooded hillside and began to follow the line of the stream. But I started to hear some mewing of what I thought was a buzzard above the tinkling of the running stream. I stopped and looked up to the head of the valley just behind me, the place from which the nam The Heavens comes from, watching the tree tops for sight of a bird. I waited for some minutes whilst the mewing continued every few seconds, until I heard a response from another buzzard a little way away. Turning towards that direction I saw it fly in not far above me and elaborately landed on a bare branch of an ash tree just this side of the tree tops. I did follow it with my camera but the poor light meant that I couldn't get sharp shots to show you. I have always thought that the buzzards which fly in these two valleys, possibly six of them this year including the offspring, must have nests in this part of the valley, so I was pleased to find evidence of their active presence there.

By now it was really drizzling and I walked back homewards. when I reached the old hollow-way, beside which the Wayhouse was built many centuries ago, I looked up to a gap in the hedged woodbank, which leads to another higher meadow. There I saw another group of the cows which roam and graze across all this area, and this fellow asked to be photographed.