Downland thistles

 After an appointment at home about J's communication aid and a lot of jobs in the house, I went for an early evening walk up the hill. The hedges are full of blackberries and hazy with mauve thistles (which are my extra). At the top of the hill, where the lane becomes a muddy track into the woods, I turned left across the hilltop meadow, which runs along the ridge. The first field is used as grazing for sheep, but the second does not seem to have been in use for a few years and is full of wild flowers and developing scrub. Here, the thistles had largely become thistledown, bright and creamy in the low, hazy sun, between golden ragwort, the rich russet seedheads of dock and the vivid pink of willowherb, and grown through with dry, seeding grass. It was a beautiful expanse of subtle colours, above the varied greens and warm beiges of the Exted valley. This farm is home to Hawthorne Trench, a reconstruction of a first world war trench system from the Somme which hosts school visits and occasional open days. It also has a campsite in a large meadow surrounded by trees; there are rarely more than a couple of tents there, and it looks a lovely spot for campers who want a peaceful, rural retreat and don't need lots of facilities. I continued over the hilltop and down into the village, then back home along the road, about fifty minutes walk including quite a lot of dawdling and photography. It was lovely, the first dry and reasonably bright day for some time, and the flowers lifted my mood after days of gloom and rain.