Open Field
By markle
Words about the natural and the human.
See also my blog at openfieldblog.wordpress.com
- 1587 reads
Low Land (2): Iffley Meadows, South Oxford
I don’t often do a full circuit of the Meadows. Most often, my route is down the riverbank with my family to the Isis pub/café.
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- 494 reads
Iffley Church
(So many of these images are in winter.) The door of the church opens, and a child enters the gloomy space.
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- 592 reads
Low Land (1): Iffley Meadows, South Oxford
This piece has built up accretively, a handy but accidental way of writing about flood meadows.
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- 619 reads
Open Field
The more I think about the countryside, the more machine-made it seems. But I still feel something irresistible urging me out there.
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- 565 reads
Rain Pleasures
Never mind snow – rain transforms the sensory world with the same force, which some people insist on calling “magical”.
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- 935 reads
Hanchurch
Hanchurch is a word covered in pine needles.
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- 2914 reads
The Green of East 14
I’ve done a lot of exploring in London. Sometimes it’s led me down some dubious roads. At others I’ve turned a corner into a blaze of visions historical, social, beautiful.
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- 1286 reads
Of Place (1)
The painter Paul Nash (1889-1946), the Wittenham Clumps, and place. See www.nashclumps.org for most of the pictures mentioned.
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- 550 reads
Of Place (2): The View from Folly Bridge
My own “place” is not far away, and on the same river as that of Nash, the Thames (see "Of Place (1)"). As the Abingdon Road approaches Oxford city centre, it crosses a bridge.
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- 524 reads
Tree Cover
The sound of rain on our coats is enveloped by the sound of rain in the trees, which is itself soon enveloped by the great noise of the river in the valley bottom.
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- 1050 reads
High Water (1)
Just after the solstice, dark still comes down hard in late afternoon, and the ribbon of the towpath is barely visible at first.
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- 501 reads
High Water (2)
A sequel, two days later. I take the river way again. In the meantime water has consumed our garden for the second time this year, but it’s still a long way from the house.
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- 613 reads
Wren Writing
A late summer evening, when night was pushing the last indentations of heat from the air, the sinking dark was speared by an insistent call. This is my first “real” memory of the wren.
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- 541 reads
Paths Back – Behind St Clement’s Church, Oxford
Traffic noise is always a given in Oxford. So much of the place is not-quite-city, not-quite-country, not-quite-suburb. At the foot of Headington...
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- 1329 reads
Bank and Lowe
When I’m walking, I watch the landscape change around me. I try to read its past in its present shape. Sometimes there’s a line of trees that used to...
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- 780 reads
Sound Quality
“He laughed like the most serious child I ever knew, telling me the story about the country where everyone was deaf.” – Ilya Kaminsky Walking across...
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- 560 reads
Mount Edgcumb Barrow
On top of the burial mound, a puss moth. It lay between the long grass stems, white against yellow, furry among the clean lines of the plants. In the...
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- 936 reads
Mornings and After: Port Meadow
There are other places I love at least equally, but I’ve rarely seen the sun rise over them. When I was at university I followed each all-night “...
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- 891 reads
Necropolitan Journeys
In the road tracery of my old A-Z Tower Hamlets Cemetery is a green fingerprint. It has its own cross-tracks of dotted lines indicating paths, but...
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- 2164 reads
Water Ways
Dust on my shoes, heat. Figures approaching, disappearing. These are my main impressions of London’s artificial waterways. I know best the stretch of...
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- 1001 reads
Leaf-fall
There was time to look at the leaves before the rain arrived. It was one of those days when we should have listened to the weatherman – showers, he...
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- 496 reads
The Climb – Parc Carmell, Barcelona
The city has peaks, as the distance does. In the north of Barcelona, Parc Carmell backs onto the famous Parc Guell. In early November it was still...
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- 1174 reads
Of Herons
A heron is a bird made for rain. I say this as a metaphor, but then I think of the one I saw today, on a pier of the oldest bridge on the...
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- 1259 reads
Built on Sand
It was a weekend of rituals. Guy Fawkes’ Night as ever combined the ancient practice of bonfires with the recollection of seventeenth-century “...
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- 966 reads
River Music – The Ravensbourne
el agua siempre encuentra su camino – Victor Rodriguez Nuñez, thaw/deshielos Back along the Ravensbourne – that was my plan, although part of me was...
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- 1973 reads
High Water 3
The floods came again, worse than last year (see High Water 1 and 2 ). For a couple of weeks we watched the puddles in our long garden gradually...
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- 1288 reads
Spring Green
Revenants, dragon’s teeth – the earth is haunted by spring flowers. Each January, as if in green recreations of that scene from Carrie, fingers...
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- 855 reads
Frog Spring (1)
Thirty. Or thereabouts. I tried counting heads several times, but every few seconds the surface would froth with legs. A new frog-constellation would...
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- 1138 reads
Frog Spring (2)
This year the water might become a slurry of waving tadpole tails and nibbling mouths, stripping the pond sides of algae. They’re starting towards...
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- 1914 reads
A Silence
I am going to keep things like this. --“Hawk Roosting”, Ted Hughes One of the compensations for my work journeys to Canary Wharf is the walk to...
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- 1350 reads
A Guide
I cannot paint What I then was. --Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey Walking is such an integral part of my perception of the world that it’s hard to point...
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- 4586 reads
North Shore
On the map the causeway out to Holy Island is like an unspooled line of tracery from one of the Gospel pages produced there. Once the car joins it,...
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- 485 reads
Cup and Ring
“Stop the car,” I said, folding the map. “I thought we were going into Wooler,” said my wife. “I know, but stop here.” So we pulled in on a gravelled...
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- 566 reads
Borrowed Time
The river seems different when everyone else is working. One spring lunchtime my wife and I found ourselves looking for something to do – our...
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- 1547 reads
Cezanne on the Pennine Way
“his fortitude held and hardened because he did what he knew. His forehead like a hurled boule travelling unpainted space behind the apple and behind...
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- 1103 reads
Green Lights
It happens more often than I intend, that I’m walking out of Oxford down the Abingdon Road near midnight. A friend once called the walk “the most...
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- 803 reads
Meetings
"Think of this. A sword is like a bird. If you clutch it too tightly, you choke it - too lightly and it flies away." from Scaramouche (1952) It's...
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- 1426 reads
Hilly Fields
The clue's in the name, but I didn't expect the hill. It may have been a result of planning the route on the plane of my ancient A to Z 's pages, and...
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- 900 reads
Walker in the Storm
The thunder mutters louder and more loud With quicker motion hay folks ply the rake Ready to burst slow sails the pitch black cloud And all the gang...
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- 853 reads
Floodplain
Land between histories, mead made by water - look carefully at the land (climb over barbed wire first): grasshopper, harvestman, wasps, the flies...
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- 1215 reads
Floodplain (2)
When I first started writing this piece, it turned into a poem. I circled around, wondering if I was finished with it. Now it seems to have returned...
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- 819 reads
Floodplain (3): Hogacre and On
On the far side of the sportsfield I'd reached at the end of the previous piece is Hogacre Common, a community-run eco park. I'm there quite often -...
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- 1016 reads
A Sort of Pilgrimage - Glastonbury Tor
We'd forgotten about the Tor. It had faded into the grey zone of "life before child" - all the more so because the gap between our trip and our...
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- 853 reads
Hawkwatching
A kestrel hovering is a marker on the sky. Perhaps one thrown arbitrarily, or perhaps an “X” for treasure. Either way, the map of the clouds is...
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- 1952 reads
Low Water - The Draining of Regents Canal
I’ve written before about walking along the Regents Canal, but I was drawn back there again when I heard that it had been drained. Not the whole...
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- 2268 reads
Twenty-One Tumuli
The start point was determined by family history. My wife’s grandma had spent many years living near Brighstone, and so indirectly prompted we had...
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- 827 reads
Night Journey
Whoever hasn’t is still waiting - Niyi Osundare, Waiting Laughters I don’t live near enough any standing stones or barrows to have tried this yet...
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- 891 reads
A Globe of Birds
The lakes were ridged and pathwayed with ice. Its edges broke through the night-colour below the surface, and disrupted the otherwise pristine...
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- 1787 reads
Somewhere Not Quite Known
Some places have a feeling about them – “mystery” isn’t quite right, but there is a sense, even on the clearest day, that it’s impossible to see...
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- 1234 reads
Three Liberations
When I looked out of the pub window, the night had transformed. Earlier, the sky had been clear, but for the faintest vapour of cloud. Around the...
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- 1533 reads
Spring Not Yet Out
As I write, spring is a suggestion, an absence. A few sunny days have slipped into memory, and what’s present now is grey, with a spatter of rain in...
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- 425 reads
Bomb Shelters
Just north of Greenham Common (see "Spring Not Yet Out") is Bowdown Woods, a longer-established nature reserve. This was where we had meant to come,...
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- 1237 reads
Lights in the Sky
the first whisper of stars is that faint thing that candle sound too far away to read by when you walk outside leaving the door ajar and smell the...
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- 2353 reads
Two Hours
I go out at five o’clock. The idea of staying inside by the windows overlooking the lake is very tempting, but it feels as though there was more to...
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- 1026 reads
Under Water
Here’s a walk without the natural – in a way. The book Underground London gave me various ideas for lunchtime walks as far away from Canary Wharf as...
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- 1280 reads
Down the Track
Everyone had cancelled, again, so I went for a walk. Night wasn’t far off, and rain kept flushing from the uneven clouds. I didn’t take a map, I didn...
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- 1506 reads
A Short Climb
I’m not very good at being in groups, except at the edge, looking out or in. A cousin’s wedding had returned me to a place almost outside my memory...
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- 859 reads
Ants, Ants, Ants
Is one ant an animal? It seems to be one. Formally speaking it may be a member of the species Lasius niger , the common black ant, which lives in my...
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- 1240 reads
Park Views
Some routes become so familiar it’s hard to see them as they really are each time I walk them – every visit is overlaid by all the visits before...
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- 857 reads
Wild Venice
Wild Venice Peter Ackroyd subtitles his book on Venice “Pure City” – which to an English imagination initially seems very strange. Surely Venice is...
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- 4073 reads
To the Bank
“Inaccessible” is far too strong. “Awkward to get to” is more like it. It’s a quirk of the map to show so many lines of communication around a place...
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- 1449 reads
Three Times
1. A bit of time was buried under Oxford’s Westgate shopping centre for 40 years. In the shoppers’ break between the demolition of one mall and the...
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- 529 reads
Walking Interval 1: North Greenwich to Cutty Sark
The first of a chain of lunchtime walks from one of London’s most ostentatiously “new” areas to the site of the Roman London Bridge.
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- 868 reads
Walking Interval 2: Cutty Sark to Canada Water
The second of a chain of lunchtime walks from one of London’s most ostentatiously “new” areas to the site of the Roman London Bridge.
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- 871 reads
Walking Interval 3: Canada Water to London Bridge
The third of a chain of lunchtime walks from one of London’s most ostentatiously “new” areas to the site of the Roman London Bridge.
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- 966 reads
Colouring the Fields
I always pause before signing online petitions. It’s so easy to put you name to something, it could become a reflex, and I would end up supporting...
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- 951 reads
Heron Haunting
Mist on water always makes me feel pursued. Crossing Iffley Meadows during a chill sunset, I never stop glancing toward the river, where silvery...
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- 1204 reads
Deer in the Garden
It was as though a brushful of red-brown paint had been dropped on the grass. Then, as it moved in the winter sunlight its shape resolved, and it...
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- 1343 reads
Opinions on Pigeons
Until recently I never had much time for woodpigeons. They always seemed quite puddingy, birds that galumphed and little else. Once, in the garden, I...
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- 1679 reads
Badger in the Light
It’s like a lamp in the dark field. Not an electric bulb, but a silver flame, always changing shape, pulsing and shifting. But the source of light –...
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- 1016 reads
Summer on Port Meadow
The river ran a ring of ice around my ankles as I stepped out of the thick air and onto the spiky soil of the riverbed. On the far side, the plane of...
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- 1699 reads
Ragwort Life
Ragwort has established itself in a straggling patch of our garden, mixed in with long grasses and a few other flowering plants. Its seeds must have...
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- 2321 reads
Beech Lines
It’s a sight that encompasses many years, to look up the height of a tree from the root bole to the point where the twigs and leaves are splayed...
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- 3031 reads
Four Raptors
Inevitably, it was a red kite. It still strikes me as amazing that such a big bird should be so common a sight over Oxford these days. This one was...
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- 2145 reads
Hinksey Hill Wander
It was a fresh autumn day, the air cool but green still in the leaves. We had crossed the ever-fumy A34 at the South Hinksey footbridge, and soon...
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- 773 reads
Seasons of Hinksey Pool
The last swim in Hinksey Open Air Pool, south Oxford, before it closes for the winter is always a bittersweet experience. For those of us who swim...
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- 1047 reads