Footpaths

After twenty-one years of living in Scotland, where the 'right to roam' legislation enables ordinary people to enjoy wide access to their countryside, we feel constrained on our rambles by the need to stick to England's footpaths. Rightly, the English are very proud of their footpaths, which are hundreds if not thousands of years old, but there is nothing to beat Scotland's freedom to wander at will, within some simple constraints, across land which belongs, not to the landowners, but to the people.

The wheat is being harvested in the huge fields to the south and west of our house. The harvest began after weeks without rain and was interrupted by last week's storms. Despite the drought during its growing season the wheat crop looks okay but the sugar beet and onion fields, where they haven't been irrigated, have suffered.

So we stick to the footpaths. These sometimes follow farm tracks, sometimes skirt the huge fields, sometimes cut straight across them - presumably a legacy of a hedge grubbed up long ago - and sometimes....

....plunge into the shade of woodland. Our walk today took us along a strip of woodland which hides two ponds, both covered in thick mats of weed, probably encouraged by the rich runoff of fertilizer from the fields. In one of the ponds....

....we came across a young family of mallards pushing through the weed soup as they made for cover, but this young moorhen largely ignored us.

The wildlife is there if you look for it. We continue to find beautiful butterflies, like this comma, and find....

....more and more new dragon- and damselflies some of which, like this darter, I can't identify.