On top of the hill

A lane leaves the road almost opposite our house and climbs straight up the hillside. It has houses alongside its lower stretch, then climbs more steeply between hedgerows and opens up to meadow land at the top of the ridge. From there, the lane becomes a narrow track and then path into the woods, and a stile gives access to the footpath across the fields and runs along the ridge before meeting a different lane which takes me back down to the village. It's our closest walk, and even when I dawdle and take lots of photos it takes less than an hour, so I really should do it a lot more often. Being on a hilltop always lifts my spirits - something I learned from my Dad, who loved to take us for Sunday afternoon walks on the hills at the edge of the Cotswolds amongst which I grew up - and I need the exercise too.

I was looking for wide angle views of the natural environment, and had plenty to choose from, but as I walked I reflected on what is natural in this environment: I was surrounded by green spaces, with plants, trees and lots of sky, but the landscape of the North Downs, like much of our English countryside, has been shaped and formed over centuries by the generations who have lived and worked in it, planting the now ancient hedgerows, clearing land to create fields for cultivation and grazing, developing old tracks into ever-bigger roads, and setting sheep to graze the more exposed and less fertile hilltops. The path I was following runs through a meadow which until just weeks ago was grazed by sheep; they have been moved on for now, having shaved the grass to the desperately dry and hard ground, and the grass is now greening again thanks to the recent rain. Over a high stile, the second field is very different, as it has not been grazed for a number of years. The green path in the main photo runs between large areas of grass, wild flowers and rapidly growing tree seedlings and brush. It's a lovely area in which to enjoy huge drifts of flowers, grasses and seed heads, and I guess that if it remains ungrazed, over time it will become scrub land with a growing number of larger trees. I always enjoy the variety of colour and texture here. Ahead, the fields in the distance are a mixture of grazing and cultivated farmland, probably to be planted before long with winter wheat, and the many substantial hedgerows with their hawthorn, blackthorn, elder and hazel support a lot of wildlife. 

The extra is my view looking back as I reach the top of the hill. I can see the same hillside I observe and photograph from our back door, but from up here the view is wider and more layered. The curve of the hedgerow and field is created by topography and (mostly) not by my lens. I love the shapes of this patchworked landscape, and as we enter our tenth year here it has become a part of me, just as the hills I saw from the window throughout my first eighteen years are forever in my mind. Filmmaker Agnès Varda's words resonate with me: "Si on ouvrait des gens, on trouverait des paysages". (If we opened people up, we would find landscapes.")