Beauty Spot

Rain has cleared dust from the air. Bright sun and a brisk west wind, blowing light, white clouds upstream, showed the Stour valley at its best today. The views were hyper-real, high-contrast, over-saturated colour, distances foreshortened. Cycling through it felt like being in a drone-camera sequence in a BBC nature documentary - heightened awareness of the foreground moving against the background, everything in perfect focus

Goldfinch erupted from the hedges in mini-explosions as I passed, a kestrel was casing a field below me as I rode out, and still working the same patch as I returned two hours later. Skylarks were rising from long grass, but staying low - weighing up whether to drop again - to their nests, I assume - or try to draw me away. I fear for them, if the field is to be cut

Some people would consider this an eyesore, detracting from all that beauty. I quite like it; a reminder that the landscape is not in any sense 'natural'. It is maintailed by machines that leave behind their cast-offs. A collection of stories in an untidy scatter; a remnant of 'if-onlys' and 'just-maybes', a moment's relief from all that green