New discoveries along the road to nowhere

An evocative reminder of the flowering wayside

Michela Griffith

Jul 25, 2024

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Greetings from the moss, it’s good to have your company. For a second day, it is feeling like summer. To be fair, the rain has been good for the garden, and we have the unexpected bonus of plenty of wild raspberries. In this week’s letter:

A walk along what could be described as a road to ruins (abandoned hill crofts and farms). This week’s voiceover has some extra atmosphere.
An opportunity to ask me a question for a forthcoming ‘On Landscape’ podcast discussion with Tim Parkin and Joe Cornish.

A richness on the road to ruins

The night’s torrent has ended; we wake to clear skies and the sun calls me out. I rescue drowned marigolds* before heading down the path, where I meet a toad. Eyes drawn upwards, the clouds are artfully arranged, soft brushstrokes of white on cerulean.

* supposedly deer do not like the scent of marigolds, otherwise they would not be in my garden! Unfortunately the deer are too, much too often, and they haven’t read the list of plants they’re not supposed to eat - in which case they won’t have read about smell either.

Sweet the wren’s song amid the pine… [in audio]

The air is cool on the road to nowhere, but will soon warm. There are pale buds on the ling but I struggle to ignore the verge. Despite serving only one unoccupied farmhouse the lane is on someone’s schedule and in the last year has been top-dressed in summer, snow-ploughed and gritted in winter. And now cut. The dancing grasses we enjoyed last week are gone, leaving only the staccato of soft rush.

The thistles pull me to one side; the lure of a dream, softness among spines. It’s a theme I will return to another time.

I meet a young roe deer on the path: the briefest of glances, a few jumps, and it’s gone.

The bridge offers the soft fascination of water; from the rare freedom of The Den the burn (stream) faces the prospect of confinement ahead. No wonder it is agitated downstream… [in audio]

On the other side the water is quieter and icebergs of foam trace circular eddies.

The rain has washed cut grass down the lane; elder hang heavy with red berry. The way steepens under the weight of the hillside. I pause to catch my breath, pleased to be reaching the end of the macadam. The route splits and I take the path less travelled though neither track is in regular use, the farm now an empty home, its owner absent.

This is my favourite wayside, climbing gradually up into the hills. There’s been the occasional forester’s visit to the plantations of young fir that now march across the farm’s fields, but otherwise it is little used and there is a lush wildness of damp verge that is eager to reclaim the track. Grass reaches in, the softest of touches, and the surface is studded with ambitious opportunists. The burn in the valley below again provides a soundtrack; there are accents of busy bee and insect. There is a richness here of flying pollinators and photobombing- each time I focus the lens I meet someone new.

The way is still in reverie to the night’s rain, water spills down either side in a soft echo of the burn. Sunlight dances across the stones, and sparkles on foam caught by rushes… [in audio]

The more I walk here, the more I notice, and each time there is something new. In June it was marsh orchids, earlier in July I was delighted to find yellow rattle going to seed in the same patch. Today’s discoveries include marsh woundwort and green alkanet. Along the way there is:

Harebell - Lady’s bedstraw - Tufted hair grass - Field Thistle - Yellow vetchling - Red clover - Nettle - Green alkanet - Ragged robin - Self heal - Cat’s ear - Scottish thistle - Horse tail - Meadowsweet - Marsh thistle - Marsh woundwort - Wild Angelica - Lady’s mantle - Hard rush - Jointed rush - Raspberry - Slender St. John’s wort - Monkey flower - Water avens - Lesser stitchwort -

These names in number amplify their quaintness, and hint at past uses.

Several flowers later…

This is a place full of life and each turn of the lens reveals a new insect enjoying the flowers - below, clockwise from top left, is a dance fly on meadowsweet, a brown ringlet butterfly, a green bottle fly on field thistle and a soldier beetle on green alkanet which has blue flowers! There are many more. It is a reminder of what we have already lost, and what with better - gentler - management we might recover in our waysides, meadows and gardens.

It’s hard though not to think that summer is edging past. The week has seen the first yellow leaves of birch on the ground, and there are red leaves amid the green of the verge - clover, cow parsley, raspberry. I wonder, did July last year wear this face?

As I return through the pine trees, the birds are still singing… [in audio]

Do you have a question? Podcast with Joe Cornish and Tim Parkin

On Landscape is running a podcast series hosted by Joe Cornish and Tim Parkin, based loosely around BBC Radio Four's "Any Questions". Next Wednesday 31 July I’ll be chatting with Joe and Tim for their August edition.

It’s possible we will discuss working locally, water - not so much as a subject but how it changes vision - and of course writing, but it’s up to On Landscape subscribers to decide what they’d like to know, and OL have kindly agreed to let me ask you too.

So, if you have a question you’d like to ask me, please comment on this post or email me at info@michelagriffith.com no later than 9pm BST on Monday, 29th July.

If you’d like to catch up with the On Landscape podcasts and listen to previous guests you can find them here.

Featured Photographer for On Landscape: Len Metcalf

Over the past few weeks I have had the pleasure of working with Australian artist and educator Len Metcalf. Our conversation will appear in On Landscape as one of our ‘Featured Photographer’ interviews. There’s much to enjoy in what Len says and this morning this line has snagged my attention; it expresses it so well.