Project 365 day 263: Bleached

It was another dull, damp and occasionally drizzly day, and I was busy with things that kept me in the house, but this afternoon I managed a quick half hour's walk up the hill and back. At the top of the lane, the hilltop footpath crosses a meadow grazed by sheep, with a variety of trees dotted along the edge of the ridge. This uprooted tree has been lying there for several years, and is now so dried and bleached that it reminds me of bones, the weathered textures contrasting with the thriving nettles behind it. 

It would be unreasonable to suggest that this tree was four hundred years old, but I guess this hilltop and its views were little different four hundred years ago. I have failed to find out, in a rather hasty online search, when sheep were first farmed in the North Downs, but the village church and square are medieval and there are a number of timbered Tudor and Stuart buildings; farming here certainly goes back many centuries. There were no sheep in the meadow today, but the extra shows the traces they leave on trees and fence posts.