"Of shoes and ships and sealing wax" *

A walk I often take at this time of year involves a ramble around the old church than still stands beside the sealed perimeter of the wartime naval arms depot that swallowed up a remote valley along with all its family farms and crofts.

The place ticks many boxes for me.  Along the fence of still-forbidden zone some interesting lower life forms include this unusual Cladonia lichen  which at this time of the year produces these bright red 'fruiting bodies' like tiny blobs of sealing wax. You have to look hard to find them.

In the churchyard, where clumps of primroses are already coming into bloom, most of the graves belong to the folk who were born, and lived,  in the rural serenity of valley before their land and homes were requisitioned in 1937. Most died here too but not all. The land could not support every son and many went to sea in ships instead.

One moss-encrusted  obelisk records the deaths of two of them who lost their lives far away:
Seth Evans, mariner, died March 10th 1866 aged 25 in Sierra Leone,  Africa, and was buried there.
Levi Evans, mate, left Troon on 25th June 1875 bound for Cuba and was never heard of again.

So much anticipation, hope, and despair when the news reached home - or never did.

Of the settled members of the community many lived to a great age, others perished as infants - sometimes several in the same family, all listed in order of their deaths.

I was glad to see the first green shoots of wild garlic, always early in this sheltered spot, as we walked away.

(More about this place in a previous blip.)

* Lewis Carroll,  The Walrus and the Carpenter