Up on the Beacon Hill

The weather couldn`t make its mind up today. Sometimes the sky was grey with storm clouds rushing in on a north west wind, yet now and again the sun forced through its wintery beams and the woods lit up with golds and greens.

Old Dog and I walked up the other side of the valley in the late morning. Up onto the long hill where beacons have been lit for centuries; where ancient people made hill-top village camps that gave them views from the sea coast to the far inland plains. We walked the lane that would have been a track for maybe three thousand years. We crunched through the beech leaves in the high woods where buzzards nest. We looked down onto the valley where round tumuli show the resting places of some who lived and died here so long ago.

Up in the beech woods. This week`s winds and rain have stripped trees of most of their leaves, but ancient hollies are a constant green throughout the seasons.

A bracket fungus that has grown layer upon layer on the trunk of a beech.

A view across the valley from the wood`s edge.

Glimpsing the far distance and a patch of blue sky.

Old Dog sits for a while in the lane. He has arthritis but loves his walks, which keep him sprightly and happy. We cannot go as far as we used to.