puddleshark

The wispy ghosts of Great Willowherb lining the bridleway to Bucknowle.

A very rough week at work. Flattened by my workload. Decided that fresh air and sunlight might unflatten me, shake out the creases, so took a walk from Corfe Castle along the foot of the Purbeck Hills, out to Bucknowle, and back across the soggy green November fields.

Corfe Castle. I think there must be peregrines nesting there - a very noisy bird of prey was making its presence known.

At this time of year, with the sunrise creeping a little further southwards along the horizon each morning, the serious photographers with their tripods line the hill above the village before sunrise, to catch the sun rising behind the castle. There are always two or three (or more) of them along the skyline. I don't join them. It's a shot that has been done so often and so well, I don't feel like I could compete.

Instead I wander the path that runs at the foot of the hill, with a hedgerow to one side, and the hillside scrub to the other. A path of rose hips and Old Man's Beard and the fluttering of wings in sunlight.

Old Man's Beard (Clematis vitalba).

Sparrowhawk, hunting.

The alarm thump of a hoof in the hedge, and I raise my camera...

The white gland on the hindleg identifies her as a Sika doe.

One last leaf on the Lime...

There's more than one kind of lime:

I walked as far as the old lime kiln, and sat in the arch in the sunlight for a while.

The view from the lime kiln, through the ivy curtain.

The crumbling bricks of the lime kiln ceiling.

But I couldn't stay long. A wren kept thrumming its wings impatiently just outside the door. I was in its house, and it was only polite to leave.

Time to take the track southwards to Bucknowle. A pleasant day for walking, no matter how muddy the ways. The air chill and damp, and the sunshine warm and pleasant. A warbler singing in a hedge. A late bumblebee bumbling about a sunny bank. The ivy is in flower.

Water running along both sides of the path, and the central grassy strip soft underfoot.

Not a good day for landscape photography. The sun low, and the sky a glaring white, and the distances hazy.

Through the fields, and over the old packhorse bridge: