Bluebells in Harrocks Wood
(Woodland Trust)

Totteridge pond

Mists on a Sunday walk: notes from a rambler

London in bright sunshine, but in the Vale of Aylesbury, mist. Not a walk for great views in these conditions, but companionable wrapped in the grounded clouds.

Vestiges of a castle - but it's just imaginary: a 18th century folly, complete with manufactured ammonites embedded in the walls. Vestiges of medieval strip farming - three different sites along the walk. Vestiges of the local fauna - a skeleton stripped clean, a skull. One of us takes a shine it - possibly from a badger - and slips it in her rucksack to take home. Vestiges of a sun, appearing soft-focus, watery. 

Though it hasn't rained for six or seven days, the fields are sodden. Some fields are ploughed bare and now are just mud slicks; it's like walking in treacle. It's easier where the ground is fallow or where the stubble has not been turned. 

A complex sett lies just off the footpath - a badger's claw marks distinct in the fresh spoil.

We stop for wayside refreshment. Brief hopes of the sun breaking through, burning off the mist - but no such luck. The spiders' webs on the trees and hedgerows are silver strands, each silk thread in a hard case of ice.

Tracking down a bridlepath towards a farm, we come across an amusing sign - "free range children & animals".

Crossing a muddy field, not far from a newly built pheasantry, shotgun cartridges lie abandoned. One of them is personalised, the five arrows of the the Rothschilds from the Waddesdon estate. How odd to want to advertise a love of killing.

Late in the afternoon, the mist evaporates.

Walk organised by the Finchley & Hornsey group: Dinton, Wichendon, Cuddington, Haddenham

Email: walking@ramblers-herts-northmiddlesex.org.uk