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puddleshark
I made my way to Lyscombe, through no skill of my own, following a faint path in the grass...
An early start - the Met Office said it would be hot later. Left the car parked on the verge by Folly Farm, and took the muddy farm track up the hill.
Someone has been making hay while the sun shines...
Mist still lying over the Blackmore Vale.
Set off along the hilltop, following the strange curve of the hill, which forms almost - not quite - a perfect circle around Lyscombe Bottom.
Lyscombe Bottom.
Yellow July grasses, and Ragwort flowers. I used to spend all July and August uprooting poisonous Ragwort, back when I had the ponies. What a vain task that was. The ponies are long gone and the Ragwort is still ablaze everywhere. But I forgive it. It's very beautiful (when it's not growing in your hayfield).
A path through the long grass, soaking wet with dew, and crunchy with snails.
Dorset Wildlife Trust recently acquired Lyscombe as a nature reserve, which is good news. But the slopes of the hill have long been managed for nature. There's a stunning variety of grasses and wild flowers, and Meadow Brown butterflies and tiny white grass moths fly up at every step.
Meadow Brown (Maniola jurtina). It was too early in the morning for other butterflies to be on the wing, but Meadow Browns are damp-proofed. They don't mind dew, or even drizzle.
Self-heal (Prunella vulgaris).
At regular intervals, deep ditches with a bank to either side run across the hilltop: cross-dykes or cross ridge dykes. Thought to be Late Bronze age / Early Iron Age. And thought by some to be land boundaries, though that explanation makes little sense at Lyscombe, where there are nine cross-dykes concentrated around the hilltop. I suspect a ceremonial function. But the truth is, we'll never know how Bronze Age inhabitants perceived this landscape, or why they built the cross-dykes.
Foxgloves, a spooky flower, on a spooky prehistoric earthwork.
Pink patches of Yorkshire Fog grass, adding a hallucinogenic air to the landscape.
Where the bridleway splits, I took the road less travelled. At first I was doubtful I would find the path at all - the waymarker seemed to point straight off the side of the hill.
But - hurrah! - I was not the first to take this path, and there was a faint trail in the grass to follow.
The path.
Still following the path, with a promising-looking gap in the hedge ahead, and Lyscombe Farm in sight.
Butterfly count:
7 Meadow Browns
4 Marbled Whites (who were too busy looking for LURV to stop to nectar on the thistles and have their photo taken).
Looking back over my shoulder, Lyscombe Bottom. On the opposite side of the bowl, the ridge I walked along earlier. Buzzards nesting somewhere nearby, the mewing calls of the youngsters travelling down the valley.
Along the valley bottom, a spring where the Little Piddle, a tributary of the River Piddle, rises.
Lyscombe Farm.
Ruined cottage.
Lyscombe Chapel.
According to Ronald Good's The Lost Villages of Dorset, the now-vanished village of Lyscombe was mid-way between Milton Abbas and Cerne Abbas, and "it seems probable that it was closely associated withe the wayfaring life of earlier medieval times." Even today, if you half-squint at the Ordnance Survey map, you can see a strong line in the landscape - bridleways, farm tracks, land boundaries - that runs straight from Milton Abbas to Lyscombe.
12th century chancel arch. By the 17th century, the building had been converted to a farm cottage, and by the mid 20th century, it was derelict. Sensitively restored in 2005. The door was locked, so I couldn't go in, but that was alright. There was a wooden bench in the churchyard, and I sat in the sunshine, surrounded by wild flowers, serenaded by goldfinches. And these things are just as sacred as musty silence.
I've seen this described as the Priest's Cottage, but I think that's wrong. It looks later. Looking at the upstairs window in the chapel, I think the priest's accommodation was originally part of the chapel.
From Lyscombe, back up onto the chalk downs. (No, I didn't paddle through the ford. My feet were soaked already, thanks to the dew on the grass. If you nip up to the farmyard, there is a way around...)
An uphill climb through a millefleur tapestry. The sunshine growing warm now. Fortunately or unfortunately - I cannot decide which - I had ear-wormed myself with a Border Morris tune, The Cuckoo's Nest. (I thought I would teach myself to play it on the tenor banjo, but the B part of the tune has a scattering of unexpected sharps, like tin-tacks, and after you have played the tune through twice, you can never get it out of your head. It does have a nice marching rhythm though...)
I began to see bumblebees at last; Buff-tailed Bumblebees on the Musk Thistles, Red-tailed Bumblebees on the Bird's-foot Trefoil. Not as many as in normal years, but at least I'm seeing some.
Welcome shade on the hilltop.
Almost back to where I started...
Open the gate to Folly!
Back down the track to Folly Farm.
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