The rhythm of cycling gently, like walking, occupies the mind as you follow the landscape, read the land. But there is time to listen out for birds, to watch for the wings of something different. On the whole it is the songs that tell you who is hiding in hedges and woodland edges. The first swallows were just coming in on Romney Marsh, but 3 days later and they seemed to be everywhere. The first swallow I had seen only on the previous Sunday as we walked down the Barle on Exmoor. Whilst breakfasting under the downs near Midhurst I heard the liquid but rasping song of the Whitethroat; then there was a Blackcap. I would like to say that Duncton wood was full of roding woodcock but the dull evening and cold perhaps kept them quiet although I think I heard one passing over the tall pines. I might have heard the cuckoo, but can't be sure. Green woodpeckers abound in those heathland parts where there is sand and ants. In Romney Marsh I glimpsed over the hedge in a reed fringed field what had to be a harrier. Yet I doubted it. In Vojvodina we see them everywhere, but here they are only locally common. Yes! There it was; a male Marsh Harrier hunting over the meadow. A recently arrived migrant or a resident? A treat.
How Spring has come on in just a week or two. The Sussex chestnut coppice and oak woods were full of wood anenomies. Downland woods were just beginning to shine with bluebells. The blackthorn was out, except for the Blackdown Hills. Cherry blossom was loud with bumble bees. Sycamore flowers were dropping to the floor. Oak were coming into leaf, ahead of ash I think. A magical sight was the boxing of hares; never seen this so wonderfully. Two hares (males?) boxed each other rapidly whilst standing on their hind legs for a good 20 seconds without letup before one was vanquished and chased jinxing off over the spring wheat.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.” declares the Psalmist. It is a profound truth that the very landscape, the earth and its plants, the wild creatures, pour forth speech. There is no finer epic verse, no more exquisite music.
14 April 2009 – A Pilgrimage in the Spring
My bicycle and I have just been on a Spring pilgrimage. I don't much like the leaving home on my own but as we eventually in a rather empty carriage pulled out of Ashford in Kent I felt the anticipation of a parachutist waiting for the green light. Bicycle was laden up with the bare necessities including little tent and a billy, and a pack of maps were carefully packed away with which to meander my way back home across southern England to N Devon. I should say that my journey took me via Paddington which was inconvenient but gave me the chance to peddle to Waterloo via Hyde Park and the Serpentine, Green Park, St James Park, Westminster and along a very crowded South Bank. Easter crowds of tourists and families were out in force to enjoy the Spring sun and blossom. Wheeling a loaded bike through wandering crowds is about as inadvisable as leading a tired moose. No sense of the Great Recession whatsoever.
The green light duly came on at Westenhanger just short of Folkstone where I shot off with the adrenaline of a homing pigeon keen to begin what was to be a 300 mile trek along crooked and less frequented paths. Down into Romney Marsh and a myriad of little lanes, meadows, reed beds, willows coming into leaf, sheep and lambs, swallows coming ashore. No homely woods in which to hide for the night here, so with the sun still up I pushed up over the Isle of Oxney, crossed out of Kent and into East Sussex and found cover in Beckley Woods as lightning flashed in the distance and the evening grew dark with the coming storm. By the time it crashed around me I was supped by a little fire and safely inside my tent. That was a good start to my journey; 25 miles on the first evening and well placed for an early start to get on to West Sussex under the Downs.
Why make a journey like this? If I call it a pilgrimage it makes sense. Cycling in a meandering way following the smallest quietest roads through the most lovely landscapes of southern England might be called a tour. But I want to connect with the landscape, to hear its voices, to feel its undulations and Spring breath,to feel the Green Men of old England peeping at me from ancient leafy forest, and ultimately to pray as I travel and praise the Creator himself for all this splendour, to be thankful to the Lord of the “cattle on a thousand hills” as the Psalmist puts it. To be a pilgrim is to travel a path, to make it sacred as you go, to bless and praise, to acknowledge and know better the Creator, to say daily “the earth is the Lord's and everything in it”.
I'll avoid an expanded itinerary but I must note the landscapes as I passed them. East Sussex and the Weald is heavy clay, grass, chestnut coppice and bluebells, fine old oast houses (look freezing to live in?) and timbered farm houses. The little town of Lewes nestled under the South Downs was well worth a stop. This is a Transition Town where they have issued the Lewes Pound as legal tender to encourage local trade and suppliers. After feeling pretty chilly the first night I managed to buy a new sleeping bag. Thank goodness; it got colder still! I bought an impressive sandwich at Bill's, the thronging cafe cum organic produce shop just full of everything delicious and beautiful. Well provisioned I followed the lanes along under the downs into West Sussex and made the sanctuary of Duncton Wood near Petworth for the night. Woods are the best places to bivouac. The forest floor is deep and soft in humus and leaf litter, lots of fuel for a fire, no disturbance, sheltered, owls for company.
Taking the quietest lanes, bridle paths and byways you are close to the landscapes as they change with the geology and geomorphology. That sandy heathland of pines and bracken and large fields around Midhurst must be one of the most beautiful landscapes of England. After Storrington I had some luck. Checking my map I was told by a walker to go “through the park”. This was Parham House where I avoided the main road and enjoyed a spectacular park full of huge oaks and sleepy fallow deer. Towards Winchester the Downs spread out and billow with large arable fields and beech woods. The River Itchen brimmed with clear trout rich water but didn't quite make up for the suburban sprawl of Eastleigh leading into Southampton. On to Romsey, skirted the New Forest with its ponies, cropped village greens and pine plantations before breaking out of the heathlands and climbing up on to the Downs and a snug bivouac in Vernditch Chase up on top of a quiet world. Awoken rudely in middle of the night by alarming roebuck which had clearly had its first nocturnal encounter with a bicycle.
After a very murky cold start I knocked on the door of friends outside Shaftsbury and was given a brilliant breakfast and the pleasure of an unexpected catchup. I'd rather trek along with a friend or two, but cycling pilgrims are rare. Perhaps its my age! The Blackmore Vale was another green dairying country only spoilt by unavoidable urban and trafficed Yeovil. Into cider country with distant Burrow Tor with its lone tree on the skyline to the North. My target wood just short of the Blackdown hills was chained and locked up so there was no alternative but to look for a field. A quiet lane with untrimmed hedges around small fields told of an old fashioned farmer where things looked the way they did a century ago. Hidden behind the hedge well away from the road I was serenaded with loud liquid gold by a wren and passed another good night.
The day was cold and overcast but still no rain. I hated to think what a westerly gale and heavy rain would do to ones happy progress. Over the Blackdown Hills. High up, flat, heavy land, small holders on cheap land, rubbish filled farm yards, a little roadside memorial to 27 men killed in an air crash November 1945. How cruel. Out of Somerset and into Devon. Lovely to hear the country accents. East Sussex is a bit of a rarity; “Clearing up naice” said an old boy coming out of his wood yard. They are still to be found in the Weald. Thames drawl seeps along the main arteries into all urban centres, but in the woods and down the leafy lanes the old country voices can be heard. How nice, finally, to find a broad Devon accent on the Blackdowns. The kindest and most friendly are always the smallest, the humblest.
The day cleared up, I crossed the Exe at Thorverton and climbed the ridge past Fursdon to Cadeleigh and on towards Rackenford. What country! So timbered and combed, red earth, fine farm houses, old orchards, but mostly “gentrified” I suppose. And home, slowly along the top from Witheridge where the soil is grey and heavy, the fields are full of rushes, the lanes mucky with cows, greening mobile homes sunk behind thin hedge banks. The soil tells you who lived there and why. And it still does to a large extent. Why live up on top of the world in the clay if you are lucky enough to have some red earth and timber! And so the gentle long route aong that rushy spine of North Devon between the moors to home. Trish in the garden where I left her.
29 March 2009 - A Safe Descent?
I am reading about Permaculture. The name seemed to spring into view only 30 years ago, but the idea is as old as the Garden of Eden. I would define it as a sustainable holistic use of the land that mimics natural habitats. I recognize it immediately as what my neighbours do over every garden fence in our village of Stara Moravica in Vojvodina. When Magda sows her maize crop she will place a bean plant at every fifth place so that the beans can climb up the maize, just as the native Mexicans do. The beans are harvested before the maize. When she finally harvested her maize cobs by hand (to be stored up for the pigs) and cut and stacked the storks (for fuelling the stove over winter) there was a great crop of acorn squash and pumpkins left underneath. Permaculture, like nature, is multi-layered. complex and interconnected, and resilient if respected.
If you look at this little farm in the drizzle of an August day in the West Serbian mountains you can see the same wonderful quilt-work of integrated crops. There is the maize crop standing; harvested bean vines cure on a stake, hay is stacked up to dry, a potato patch has apparently been harvested, the plum orchard has provided fruit, and any day now you will see smoke from the still, the walnuts have yet to ripen. Perhaps because it is raining the sheep and milk cow seem to be under cover along with their keeper. That is peasant agriculture. It is labour intensive, healthy and sustainable. If only they knew it they are rich by any sane measure. It is very beautiful and admirable.
What really caught my attention in the Permaculture book was a terrifying analogy coming quite conveniently out of a simple graph of oil use. Our extraordinary population growth and industrial and technological revolution matches the extraction of liquid fuel, oil. Sunlight stored up for us over hundreds of millions of years is being exhausted over a couple of centuries. It is an astonishing picture of our development. Holmgren, in his book, likens the ascent of this peak to the dangerous conquest of an extreme peak. We used our oil fuelled ingenuity and exertions to get to this mind expanding and breathtaking summit. From our unique technological and connected-up viewpoint we have an astonishing view of both our primeval origins and our likely destiny. Now is not the time to dally. We have almost certainly arrived at the peak. The economic crisis makes this seem convincing.
But as Holmgren puts it, the descent is going to be more dangerous than ascent and will require all of the skills and ingenuity we acquired on the way up and more. Since the richest in the world have had no experience of living sustainably in a pre-oil world, we neither long for nor even recognize our real home in a far off valley below. But there we must manage to return. If you take Professor James Lovelock's pessimistic view, by the end of this century there will have been a population crash, and those left must cope with the extremely testing consequences of severe climate change. The Archbishop of Canterbury reminded us last week from the Book of Leviticus, God says “the earth is mine and you are but sojourners” or as the Serbian has it, “you are newcomers”. We have a duty of stewardship, which means that me must urgently plan and begin a safe descent.
22 March 2009 – Mothering Sunday
“A wife of noble character who can find?” asks the writer of Proverbs in the Bible, or to put it more practically, “A thoroughly capable woman who can find?”. Since it is Mothering Sunday in the UK I must mark the occasion by acknowledging that the verse continues ...”She is worth far more than rubies.” Well, yes indeed! It is very interesting that this astronomic valuation that certainly defies economic meltdowns, inflation and deflation, is also used in the same book to value wisdom. Both, in other words, are beyond worth. Why? Because they are foundational. They define wholeness. Just as wisdom points us at a proper treatment of the earth, society and each other, so a “thoroughly capable woman” is a part of your very self if you are a man, a son or father.
Spring obliged us by suddenly smiling on these green hills and timbered valleys, cold and bright, lamb skipping paddocks and bird singing dawns. Well here is to the wholeness of beautiful things, to noble women and sturdy wisdom, kind men and fertile fields!
8 February 2009 – How to build a cabin
Since Tom our son is a timber-framer I have been keenly following the exotic life and three dimensional genius of his tribe. I shouldn't sound surprised or mystified. Medieval buildings from barns and cottages to massive cathedrals were built by these skills and our English oak and ash and chestnut. Extraordinary to think that our land was once full of craftsmen who could imagine the the shape of the world with their instruments and tools, who could hold the dimensions and their startling complexity in their heads. They could then choose the right material for every one of thousands of different timber parts, hand craft their complex joints, finish them in a workshop or out in the woods, and then “raise” it all on the final day, and it all fits together. I am going to watch The Witness with Harrison Ford again to remind myself what the Amish still know how to do.
Well actually, Tom, Gabriel, Kit and Harvey also know how to do it. And they have just built a cabin in our Devon plantation of spruce and Douglas Fir in the middle of winter to prove it. They began in darkest December, enjoyed the coldest frostiest New Year seen for years, and raised it triumphantly in February. Inspired by U-Tube films of hand hewing of logs in Romania, cabin building in America and shingle cutting in Croatia they have been following the ancient crafts. But not quite obsessively. When the rain is coming down, snow blocks you in, and everything is deep in mud, a little generator and some power tools can successfully reassure you that the project might reach a conclusion.
This should be a model for greener saner ways of living. Why not have a summer house in the garden where you can write or paint or make love? How about a holiday cabin in the woods? Their living arrangements also followed the time honoured tradition of all woodlanders. An impressive structure was erected with plastic sheeting to keep the rain off. An outdoor kitchen was constructed around a well equipped camp fire. Pheasants, hares (all road kill of course) found their way into the pot. Recession busting and reducing your carbon footprint start here.
The rhythm of cycling gently, like walking, occupies the mind as you follow the landscape, read the land. But there is time to listen out for birds, to watch for the wings of something different. On the whole it is the songs that tell you who is hiding in hedges and woodland edges. The first swallows were just coming in on Romney Marsh, but 3 days later and they seemed to be everywhere. The first swallow I had seen only on the previous Sunday as we walked down the Barle on Exmoor. Whilst breakfasting under the downs near Midhurst I heard the liquid but rasping song of the Whitethroat; then there was a Blackcap. I would like to say that Duncton wood was full of roding woodcock but the dull evening and cold perhaps kept them quiet although I think I heard one passing over the tall pines. I might have heard the cuckoo, but can't be sure. Green woodpeckers abound in those heathland parts where there is sand and ants. In 
Romney Marsh I glimpsed over the hedge in a reed fringed field what had to be a harrier. Yet I doubted it. In Vojvodina we see them everywhere, but here they are only locally common. Yes! There it was; a male Marsh Harrier hunting over the meadow. A recently arrived migrant or a resident? A treat. 
with bumble bees. Sycamore flowers were dropping to the floor. Oak were coming into leaf, ahead of ash I think. A magical sight was the boxing of hares; never seen this so wonderfully. Two hares (males?) boxed each other rapidly whilst standing on their hind legs for a good 20 seconds without letup before one was vanquished and chased jinxing off over the spring wheat. 
My bicycle and I have just been on a Spring pilgrimage. I don't much like the leaving home on my own but as we eventually in a rather empty carriage pulled out of Ashford in Kent I felt the anticipation of a parachutist waiting for the green light. Bicycle was laden up with the bare necessities including little tent and a billy, and a pack of maps were carefully packed away with which to meander my way back home across southern England to N Devon. I should say that my journey took me via Paddington which was inconvenient but gave me the chance to peddle to Waterloo via Hyde Park and the Serpentine, Green Park, St James Park, Westminster and along a very crowded South Bank. Easter crowds of tourists and families were out in force to enjoy the Spring sun and blossom. Wheeling a loaded bike through wandering crowds is about as inadvisable as leading a tired moose. No sense of the Great Recession whatsoever.
The green light duly came on at Westenhanger just short of Folkstone where I shot off with the adrenaline of a homing pigeon keen to begin what was to be a 300 mile trek along crooked and less frequented paths. Down into Romney Marsh and a myriad of little lanes, meadows, reed beds, willows coming into leaf, sheep and lambs, swallows coming ashore. No homely woods in which to hide for the night here, so with the sun still up I pushed up over the Isle of Oxney, crossed out of Kent and into East Sussex and found cover in Beckley Woods as lightning flashed in the distance and the evening grew dark with the coming storm. By the time it crashed around me I was supped by a little fire and safely inside my tent. That was a good start to my journey; 25 miles on the first evening and well placed for an early start to get on to West Sussex under the Downs. 
Why make a journey like this? If I call it a pilgrimage it makes sense. Cycling in a meandering way following the smallest quietest roads through the most lovely landscapes of southern England might be called a tour. But I want to connect with the landscape, to hear its voices, to feel its undulations and Spring breath,to feel the Green Men of old England peeping at me from ancient leafy forest, and ultimately to pray as I travel and praise the Creator himself for all this splendour, to be thankful to the Lord of the “cattle on a thousand hills” as the Psalmist puts it. To be a pilgrim is to travel a path, to make it sacred as you go, to bless and praise, to acknowledge and know better the Creator, to say daily “the earth is the Lord's and everything in it”. 
I'll avoid an expanded itinerary but I must note the landscapes as I passed them. East Sussex and the Weald is heavy clay, grass, chestnut coppice and bluebells, fine old oast houses (look freezing to live in?) and timbered farm houses. The little town of Lewes nestled under the South Downs was well worth a stop. This is a Transition Town where they have issued the Lewes Pound as legal tender to encourage local trade and suppliers. After feeling pretty chilly the first night I managed to buy a new sleeping bag. Thank goodness; it got colder still! I bought an impressive sandwich at Bill's, the thronging cafe cum organic produce shop just full of everything delicious and beautiful. Well provisioned I followed the lanes along under the downs into West Sussex and made the sanctuary of Duncton Wood near Petworth for the night. Woods are the best places to bivouac. The forest floor is deep and soft in humus and leaf litter, lots of fuel for a fire, no disturbance, sheltered, owls for company. 
Taking the quietest lanes, bridle paths and byways you are close to the landscapes as they change with the geology and geomorphology. That sandy heathland of pines and bracken and large fields around Midhurst must be one of the most beautiful landscapes of England. After Storrington I had some luck. Checking my map I was told by a walker to go “through the park”. This was Parham House where I avoided the main road and enjoyed a spectacular park full of huge oaks and sleepy fallow deer. Towards Winchester the Downs spread out and billow with large arable fields and beech woods. The River Itchen brimmed with clear trout rich water but didn't quite make up for the suburban sprawl of Eastleigh leading into Southampton. On to Romsey, skirted the New Forest with its ponies, cropped village greens and pine plantations before breaking out of the heathlands and climbing up on to the Downs and a snug bivouac in Vernditch Chase up on top of a quiet world. Awoken rudely in middle of the night by alarming roebuck which had clearly had its first nocturnal encounter with a bicycle.
After a very murky cold start I knocked on the door of friends outside Shaftsbury and was given a brilliant breakfast and the pleasure of an unexpected catchup. I'd rather trek along with a friend or two, but cycling pilgrims are rare. Perhaps its my age! The Blackmore Vale was another green dairying country only spoilt by unavoidable urban and trafficed Yeovil. Into cider country with distant Burrow Tor with its lone tree on the skyline to the North. My target wood just short of the Blackdown hills was chained and locked up so there was no alternative but to look for a field. A quiet lane with untrimmed hedges around small fields told of an old fashioned farmer where things looked the way they did a century ago. Hidden behind the hedge well away from the road I was serenaded with loud liquid gold by a wren and passed another good night.
The day was cold and overcast but still no rain. I hated to think what a westerly gale and heavy rain would do to ones happy progress. Over the Blackdown Hills. High up, flat, heavy land, small holders on cheap land, rubbish filled farm yards, a little roadside memorial to 27 men killed in an air crash November 1945. How cruel. Out of Somerset and into Devon. Lovely to hear the country accents. East Sussex is a bit of a rarity; “Clearing up naice” said an old boy coming out of his wood yard. They are still to be found in the Weald. Thames drawl seeps along the main arteries into all urban centres, but in the woods and down the leafy lanes the old country voices can be heard. How nice, finally, to find a broad Devon accent on the Blackdowns. The kindest and most friendly are always the smallest, the humblest.
The day cleared up, I crossed the Exe at Thorverton and climbed the ridge past Fursdon to Cadeleigh and on towards Rackenford. What country! So timbered and combed, red earth, fine farm houses, old orchards, but mostly “gentrified” I suppose. And home, slowly along the top from Witheridge where the soil is grey and heavy, the fields are full of rushes, the lanes mucky with cows, greening mobile homes sunk behind thin hedge banks. The soil tells you who lived there and why. And it still does to a large extent. Why live up on top of the world in the clay if you are lucky enough to have some red earth and timber! And so the gentle long route aong that rushy spine of North Devon between the moors to home. Trish in the garden where I left her.
I am reading about Permaculture. The name seemed to spring into view only 30 years ago, but the idea is as old as the Garden of Eden. I would define it as a sustainable holistic use of the land that mimics natural habitats. I recognize it immediately as what my neighbours do over every garden fence in our village of Stara Moravica in Vojvodina. When Magda sows her maize crop she will place a bean plant at every fifth place so that the beans can climb up the maize, just as the native Mexicans do. The beans are harvested before the maize. When she finally harvested her maize cobs by hand (to be stored up for the pigs) and cut and stacked the storks (for fuelling the stove over winter) there was a great crop of acorn squash and pumpkins left underneath. Permaculture, like nature, is multi-layered. complex and interconnected, and resilient if respected.
What really caught my attention in the Permaculture book was a terrifying analogy coming quite conveniently out of a simple graph of oil use. Our extraordinary population growth and industrial and technological revolution matches the extraction of liquid fuel, oil. Sunlight stored up for us over hundreds of millions of years is being exhausted over a couple of centuries. It is an astonishing picture of our development. Holmgren, in his book, likens the ascent of this peak to the dangerous conquest of an extreme peak. We used our oil fuelled ingenuity and exertions to get to this mind expanding and breathtaking summit. From our unique technological and connected-up viewpoint we have an astonishing view of both our primeval origins and our likely destiny. Now is not the time to dally. We have almost certainly arrived at the peak. The economic crisis makes this seem convincing. 
But as Holmgren puts it, the descent is going to be more dangerous than ascent and will require all of the skills and ingenuity we acquired on the way up and more. Since the richest in the world have had no experience of living sustainably in a pre-oil world, we neither long for nor even recognize our real home in a far off valley below. But there we must manage to return. If you take Professor James Lovelock's pessimistic view, by the end of this century there will have been a population crash, and those left must cope with the extremely testing consequences of severe climate change. The Archbishop of Canterbury reminded us last week from the Book of Leviticus, God says “the earth is mine and you are but sojourners” or as the Serbian has it, “you are newcomers”. We have a duty of stewardship, which means that me must urgently plan and begin a safe descent.
“A wife of noble character who can find?” asks the writer of Proverbs in the Bible, or to put it more practically, “A thoroughly capable woman who can find?”. Since it is Mothering Sunday in the UK I must mark the occasion by acknowledging that the verse continues ...”She is worth far more than rubies.” Well, yes indeed! It is very interesting that this astronomic valuation that certainly defies economic meltdowns, inflation and deflation, is also used in the same book to value wisdom. Both, in other words, are beyond worth. Why? Because they are foundational. They define wholeness. 
Just as wisdom points us at a proper treatment of the earth, society and each other, so a “thoroughly capable woman” is a part of your very self if you are a man, a son or father.
Since Tom our son is a timber-framer I have been keenly following the exotic life and three dimensional genius of his tribe. I shouldn't sound surprised or mystified. Medieval buildings from barns and cottages to massive cathedrals were built by these skills and our English oak and ash and chestnut. Extraordinary to think that our land was once full of craftsmen who could imagine the the shape of the world with their instruments and tools, who could hold the dimensions and their startling complexity in their heads. They could then choose the right material for every one of thousands of different timber parts, hand craft their complex joints, finish them in a workshop or out in the woods, and then “raise” it all on the final day, and it all fits together. I am going to watch The Witness with Harrison Ford again to remind myself what the Amish still know how to do.
Well actually, Tom, Gabriel, Kit and Harvey also know how to do it. And they have just built a cabin in our Devon plantation of spruce and Douglas Fir in the middle of winter to prove it. They began in darkest December, enjoyed the coldest frostiest New Year seen for years, and raised it triumphantly in February. Inspired by U-Tube films of hand hewing of logs in Romania, cabin building in America and shingle cutting in Croatia they have been following the ancient crafts. But not quite obsessively. When the rain is coming down, snow blocks you in, and everything is deep in mud, a little generator and some power tools can successfully reassure you that the project might reach a conclusion.
This should be a model for greener saner ways of living. Why not have a summer house in the garden where you can write or paint or make love? How about a holiday cabin in the woods? Their living arrangements also followed the time honoured tradition of all woodlanders. An impressive structure was erected with plastic sheeting to keep the rain off. An outdoor kitchen was constructed around a well equipped camp fire. Pheasants, hares (all road kill of course) found their way into the pot. Recession busting and reducing your carbon footprint start here.