Looking up and down

After heavy rain Buck Wood is very dank, the ground underfoot coated with layers of leaves and mud. There are streams flowing down some of the paths where springs and ponds have overflowed, and it could all be dismal, except that the newly fallen leaves are bright shades of brown and gold, especially where beeches predominate. And the reflections in the puddles show that the sky is still sunny now and again.

But looking up into the tree tops demonstrates how the autumn leaf fall seems suddenly to have changed to bareness, at least in the case of these birches which are on the top of the ridge and less sheltered than most.

But all the rain gives me a chance to use a favourite word, splorroch, which Joseph Wright, Thackley's most famous son, defines in his Dictionary as 'the sound made by walking in wet or mud'. I think we'll be doing a lot of splorroching during the next few months!

CA