Quieter times

If I have time to spare I’ll avoid the motorway and get home via a more interesting route. I figure I may as well enjoy time behind the wheel rather than suffer the monotonous drudge of mainlining.
Today I cut through the Cotswolds after visiting Banbury.
It’s sometimes hard to believe that we live on an overcrowded little island.

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas:

Yes. I remember Adlestrop

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat, the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.


The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name


And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.


And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.