puddleshark

After last week's warm sunshine, everywhere is beginning to dry out at last. No excuse not to go walking in the fields and woods of North Dorset now...

When I tried to walk to Chetterwood from the north back in the autumn, it took me three separate attempts to find it. So today I thought I would set off westwards from Tarrant Monkton, not necessarily searching for Chetterwood, you understand, but if Chetterwood was in the mood to be found, somewhere along the bridleways, then that would be nice.

Bright sunshine, and a frost on the car windscreen this morning. Headed out early, over the stone bridge at Spetisbury, where the River Stour is now back between its banks, looking a little brown and murky, but perfectly innocent. Who'd have believed it was rampaging across the fields all winter... Onto the narrow lane up the Tarrant Valley. Blackthorn in blossom and small birds fluttering up from the hedges. Primroses in flower on the verges. Glimpse of a kestrel swooping by, a small dark rodent clutched in its talons. In fields beside the lane, ponies dozing in the sunshine, their rugs off (finally!).

Followed the lane through the Tarrants - Tarrant Crawford, Tarrant Keyneston, Tarrant Rushton, Tarrant Rawston - finally reaching Tarrant Monkton, and left the car in the car park of the village pub, The Langton Arms.

Cottages, Tarrant Monkton. Pretty, but note the sandbags still piled up by the front door. The Tarrant valley often floods in winter - it's where the river gets its name: 'The Tarrant was first recorded as a stream under the Celtic name “Terente” in the 10th century, a word broadly translated as meaning “flooding river” or “trespasser” a variant of which recurs in the name Trent.' https://dorset-ancestors.com/category/tarrant-monkton/

Someone's got a fancy new ~~wig~~ ridge.

Crossing the ford. (Picture taken, dry-foot, from the footbridge). The water still looks too deep for cars to pass, but luckily there's another route into the village for cars at the other end.

Onto Turner's Lane, the track up onto the downs. It's a slow, shaded, pleasant climb.

At the top of Turner's Lane. Linnets singing their sweet little songs in the hedges.

From Turner's Lane onto the bridleways that crisscross the downs. Lonely tracks through a landscape of huge arable fields and rectangular game woods.

To one side of the bridleway, the woods, where the chaffinches are singing, and bright new leaves are appearing on the hazel & the hawthorn & the honeysuckle (the Haitches are currently winning the spring alliteration derby). To the other side of the track, a silent arable desert. Not a lark singing, or a deer running.

Signs of Spring: oil beetles trundling along the paths.

I missed the bridleway leading to Chetterwood on my first pass and found myself heading in the wrong direction, so sat on my coat beside the track, in the warm sunshine, drinking coffee, and carefully not caring whether or not I found Chetterwood.

But when I turned and retraced my steps, the bridleway to Chetterwood was suddenly there, and so I followed it into the woods.

In-between days. That short window between the black woods of winter ("The woods are lovely, dark and deep...") and the green woods of May ("Under the greenwood tree / Who loves to lie with me..."), when the sunlight is pouring down through the bare branches, and all the spring flowers appear.

Wood Anemone.

Wood Dog Violet.

Beefly, the splendidly named Bombylius major, on the celandines.

The bluebells just starting to appear.

Wandered back out of Chetterwood, slowly, stopping to listen to the birdsong, to admire the flowers, the bare grey branches against the blue sky. Being in no hurry, I found my way out quite easily this time.

Then it was back across the fields, picking a careful way along a bridleway deeply rutted by tractor tyres, and the ruts baked hard in the recent sunshine.

Onto Common Drove, and back down into the valley, in the company of many sulphur-yellow Brimstone butterflies.

Past the walled garden of East Farm.

Back across the ford, and into the village, for a cup of tea at the village pub:

Tea in the sunshine, at the Langton Arms. Very peaceful. The loudest sound, the rooks nesting in the trees round the village. The village of Tarrant Monkton once belonged to Tewkesbury Abbey, hence the name Monkton. These days I believe it belongs to the rooks.