Ancient landscape

                 Ancient Sweet Chestnut Tree                                                    Ancient Lime Tree

Exploring the wessex ridgeway

I travel along the Wessex ridgeway like a highway man flanked by a shrubbery of grey and pussy willow intermingled with old hazel coppice. The ash trees stretch up high above the shrubbery and in the fields ancient oak and  lime have an indomitable presence.

A single shrunken, withered chestnut tree, a relic of noble splendour is hollowed out as a stately home to wildlife reminding me of the poem The Hollow Tree by John Claire:

How oft a summer shower hath started me 
To seek for shelter in an hollow tree:
Old huge ash-dotterel wasted to a shell,
Whose vigorous head still grew and flourished well..

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                              Wild angelica                                                               Sun spurge

I then enter the watery realms guarded by water pepper and angelica creates a canopy of its own.

In desolate places, where dark moisture breeds
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth
John Keats

Then as I emerge from the mysteries only dark and moist places tell, I witness chenopodiums (goosefoots) and cardamines ( bittercresses) scattered in the fields whilst a lone sun spurge decorates the grass amongst white archangel.

                Rosebay willowherb                                                                 Shepherds purse

A purple haze of rosebay willowherb with shepherds purse educates the wanderer of past land management.
Fallen relics of brick arches, woodland tracks leading to pastures edged with melilot, redshank, mayweed and fumitory.
Spongy wet paths support brooklime and drier paths breed flowering chickweed, plantain and wild pansy.
I could be a marauding Viking or a settled Saxon as the timeless Wessex landscape unfolds before me.

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