At Brampton abbots: Harvest is Coming......

Evening light, setting the barley alight with colour. I love being on my bike on a evening. I have my dad to thank for that. As someone who shares a passion for the outdoors, we walk or cycle together. My dad has always passed on how to important it is to have a feeling of freedom in your life. A chance to mentally and physically escape your daily grind.

Before I set off I watched the swallows dancing in the sky around the farm. Their young have learnt to fly now. Like joy riders at the controls of speed jets, they turn and dart, low level flying at break neck speed. Swallows seem so small and fragile too, but they are superbly made with their forked 'go faster' tails.

As I peddled away from the farm, I thought about their next journey to some far flung country. What they would see on the way? How lucky they are to have continual change, freedom to be or become whatever or wherever their tiny wings take them.

I reached the river, not quite as fast as that little swallow might have done, but certainly enjoying the exhilaration of the speed. I stopped at the brow of a hill, to walk and take a picture. There was a man with his dog.

We chatted about how wonderful the sky was, how the deer barked and how the otters in the river are moving their young down stream at the minute. Their squeaks can be heard echoing down river. We both wondered about how anything else could be more lovely than witnessing those things. He was a lorry driver. He said that he needed this walk every night with his dog, some times he would cycle. He had many years ago, cycled "to the arctic circle, by accident". I laughed, "by accident?" He had got on the wrong ferry and landed at Denmark! "That's what you could do in those days." He laughed.

I admired his sense of freedom, it reminds me of my dad. He would have commented on the golden barley this evening and the swallow's too....x