Gathering the crop on Ferney Close in Thrupp

I had a good day at the Farmer's Market in Nailsworth, meeting interesting, fun people and selling to the young and old. It was a great relief to have warmer weather with a generally sunny sky.

When I got home, I felt tired after the early starts of recent days. So I lay down for a while after Helena went off to her friends' party and nodded off.

I woke to the distant sound of farm machinery and when I got up I spotted a machine gathering a crop from the fields across the valley which had been mown two days ago. The tractor was towing a trailer which drove parallel to the harvesting machine and they wqere borth surrounded by a haze of dust.

The field in question was called Ferney close on the old 1840s Tithe Map, but as far as I know that name hasn't been used for ages. The large house behind the long hedge is Thrupp House, and was divided into flats decades ago. In the foreground are the trees at the end of our garden on the bank called Powers Hill. That slope drops down to the Lime Brook, which drains The Horns valley, and in which the old oak trees have their roots close to the stream in a small ancient woodland called Oakey Grove. On the other side of the stream there is an interlocking spur between the Lime Brook and the stream running down from The Heavens, a few hundred yards to the left of this picture. Running down its length you can just see a track called a hollow way, which is the remnant of a very old track or way (written as 'weg' in old English) that ran across the very wet and clayey Golden Valley to the high ground on the far side called Rodborough Common, where there was an Iron Age camp.

This is the view from my desk and I thought this was a suitable moment to record one of my favourite places. I liked the great contrast in the view caused by the small dark scudding clouds.