In Edward Thomas Country - Wild Flowers on Ashford Hanger

Last week, on a hot, late April day, I walked with friends in the wooded lanes above Steep, in Hampshire. We knew that we were walking the lanes and woodland tracks beloved of the poet Edward Thomas, who lived with his family in Steep during the years before the First World War. Thomas wrote of the English countryside in both prose and poetry, but his acceptance as a poet and public acknowledgement of his greatness came after his death in the Battle of Arras, aged thirty nine, on 9th April, 1917.

After a morning exploring the village of Steep, we drove up the high, winding road to the lane above Ashford Hanger. Out along the narrow lane we walked, with birdsong all around us, and the scent of blossom mingling with a sharp, garlic tang of wild Ramsons on the hot, noonday air.

A cottage gate fringed with honesty and chickweed flowers.......

...violets by the lane edge.....

...and then the glorious seas of wild garlic, in flower by hedge bottom and beneath beech trees.

Yellow Archangel......

Yew branches mingling with the bright green of new beech leaf. Yew, beech and oak have grown together on these ancient hills for millennia.

Through a gap in the hedge, Spring wheat grew dark green in downland fields.

Wild clematis, in Autumn the Old Man`s Beard of Thomas`s poem "Old Man", tumbled fresh and green through a tangled hedge and up the nearest tree.

Holly blossom......

deep blue Germander Speedwell.....

...and everywhere, twisted roots of tree ivy ........

....and holes were leading underground from the bases of ancient trees.

Ramsons in a veil of white blossomed beneath the coppiced trees.....

......and shared the shade with Archangels.....

...in a wooded lane where felled branches lay to rot amid uncurling ferns.

We reached the junction of two tracks and carried on along Old Litten Lane.

Through a tunnel of leaf and dappled shade, buzzing with insects........

...until we left the track on a footpath through the trees.....

....looking back through the silent years and feeling that something of the poet remained with us still, in these wooded English hills.