where willows weep | around Warwickshire pt.2 (countryside)

The dark moved quickly into the Midlands. Faster than the temperatures could fall, or the trees could drop their leaves and turn the pavements into carpets of foliage in russet, dusky sage, livid amber. Late fall and early winter were cold, my car's windshield would frost over while I was parked at the gym and feathery, low winter sun would dance across hazy northern skies. Early morning and early evening I watch the light filtered through the frosted door of my room, the right mix of moody, melancholy and mellow, diluted to a pleasant consistency, like the first moments of pouring milk into coffee. 

The light streams in through the foggy glass, the city wakes up, I go out. This region might be one of the most populated in the UK but like milk into coffee, the endless rows of houses and superstores seem to dissolve. The ancient hills roll into valleys, one after the other, the basis for the winding roads that veer sharply through the dips. There are signs warning motorists that these are among the most dangerous roads in the country, it's not really so surprising. You are tempted to gaze down the valleys, where the stalks from the autumn wheat harvests run like paling gold to meet with small roads where stone farmhouses spiral woodsmoke. The houses are charcoal and Cotswold stone, like the bridges spanning dark rivers that swell from autumn rains and rush to distant, anonymous villages where willows weep over the water. 

There are the contrasts. Of the pick-up trucks moving hay bales to cowsheds where Hereford herds are ensconced for the winter, their furry faces peeking out out from peeling barn doors as their farmers with caps and collies make their rounds. There are the range rovers and the country clubs, the thoroughbred stud farms where long legged colts frolic, unaware of how much they're worth; amidst the dove-gray skies and gaunt trees. The prosperous farms are lined by cedars and white fences, thinly veiling the flighty horses from admiring passers by. Everywhere around me are horse lovers. It was a windy, frigid Thursday following a night of freezing rain that left country lanes burdened by puddles and fields the deepest cocoa brown. The gusts threw my car door shut and swept the manes of the rescued horses and donkeys across their curious faces at Redwings Oxhill. The fields were so saturated that the rescues had been moved to wood chip-paddocks, where they congregated in cuddly, muddy groups and turned chestnut, roan, and piebald backs to the wind. A nuzzle from a donkey's soft nose warmed my hands, these sweet creatures who had once been such strangers to love gently rested heavy heads on my coat and puffed softly through their noses. A whisper of affection, like November wind, when your back is turned and with that weak sun percolating through sugary clouds. With the dips in the valley I could see those groups of equine friends, the earth tones of their coats somehow melding with the sepia tones of the countryside, as if they had finally found their home.

It will be mid-afternoon that the sun abandons its vain attempts to overcome layers of milky cloud. What light there was will make its last lap around my room; eventually settling on one area of the kitchen, bathing the tiny electric stove in a halo of light that seems wholly unnecessary. But I can imagine the movement of light across the countryside, the forested roads and tumbling fields, and the valleys with the horses returning to their stables before the dark is only interrupted by a thousand burning stars. 

“If springtime crawls out of the wild mouths of flowers then surely, winter crawls out of mine”
- Cecilia Llompart

Places of interest

Redwings Oxhill rescue center (to cuddle the sweet rescued ponies - this charity does such amazing work for horses, ponies and donkeys. You can also adopt one and help keep these sweeties safe 💕)
Charlecote Park
Alvecote Marina & the Coventry Canal
Oxhill & the A422 rural road
Polesworth & the River Anker
Tamworth

stolen time | around Warwickshire pt.1 (towns)

Coventry. Not a place I know so much about, and after a few weeks of being there, I still don't. There are the damp grey pavements, paced so heavily like the sidewalks of every city. The accents you hear, in the mornings, Caribbean, Indian, really local. Puddles displaced by buses and taxis. Police sirens through the night, breeze and phone calls through the day. It's not enough for photos, not enough for more thoughts. In the spare days I had, the stolen time, I left Coventry behind. My car’s rear view mirror traded interchanges and traffic for lolling valleys and forested hill roads. A green and rich countryside, the ups and downs the product of time, and the rain that falls here so frequently. Things are old here, in the heart of this island. Iron railings and crumbling brick, fading summer flowers, villages tucked into the winding roads. Poetry. This is the birth place of Shakespeare, perhaps the timbered buildings that line sloping, narrow streets where wildflowers bloom in sidewalk cracks became his muse. Here the River Avon takes a languid path, gurgling under Roman bridges that interrupt the cobbles and countryside. A certain kind of romance, in the fog and feathery sunshine of October mornings, the old timers strolling to village newsagents with deerstalker caps and ageing Pointers.

There are the villages that have grown in the valley dips, criss crossed by railways that were all glory and diesel fumes in the industrial revolution. It is coal country, and the towns north of Coventry wear their dusty pasts on their sleeves. It’s all embers and ashes now. The rail lines are deserted and overgrown with brambles, the mines are mossy hills. It's as if at some point residents just abandoned upkeep and turned roads and rails over to nature's grip. There's a story here, just not one that I know. But it’s easy enough to write your own, here in dreamer’s country, where whispers from the past tumble through the hills with each biting gust of autumn wind.

I find myself lost and wandering through a mysterious air of general dilapidation, watery spiders' webs dripping with mist on windowpanes; the original window glass never replaced. It's so thin that I can hear straight into the living rooms of those rows of cottages fronting the rail tracks. A dog barks, a baby cries, a kettle rattles, tinny and distant. I feel like I have stumbled into a still-life of heartland England, struggling valiantly to keep with the speed the world seems to move forward. The wind eats into the collar of my coat as it echoes and swirls around, trapped in the valley lowlands. Trapping secrets and stories. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a group of semi-wild horses gallop out onto the marshland, their heavy hoof-falls resonating over fragile ground; manes pressed to their necks from morning drizzle. So much I’ll never really know, in the damp winding roads and rivers and fading towns. But I go back to Coventry, to sirens and traffic and hustle, leaving so much untold.

Romeo: I dream'd a dream to-night
Mercutio: And so did I.
Romeo: Well, what was yours?
Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.

Act I, Scene IV, Romeo & Juliet / Shakespeare

Places of interest

Southam
Stratford Upon Avon (Shakespeare’s home)
Alvecote
Polesworth
Charlecote
Tamworth

flora | Bergen, North holland

My trip to the north of Holland was enveloped in a weekend heatwave, somewhere in the deepest summer, a tangle of clear skied days fading to warm nights that sheltered the symphonies of cicadas. Holland is by no means a big country which is perhaps why each area has seemed to cultivate its own identity. To Bergen. It surprised me as a place that revealed different parts of itself slowly, in the seasons, the shadow and the silence. My visits to the town in winter were punctuated with a sort of nostalgia for the Alps, with the timber-clad houses glowing amber from lamps and thin, frigid air soaked with the smell of wood fires. Cars clattered over the cobbles and silence swept through the wooden eaves. It was richly quiet, perhaps a faded white rose, lavender after spring rains. But in that deep summer it was different. More like trees dripping with lilac jacaranda; or vines of red roses draping a trellis. There was more life, perhaps too much at times. The town of Bergen itself is treated as a stop-off to the northern coast, and the Dutch seem to seek out water almost as much as it threatens to overwhelm them.

The windows of the houses with their wooden facades were thrown open and swimsuits dried on balcony railings. There was that noticeably marine atmosphere of real beach towns; not where sand is washed by warm seas and tourist sprawl lines the seafront, but of those temperate beaches bordered by dunes under milky skies. Small children on bikes wore caps and brought along their buckets and spades; their mothers’ sundresses streamed behind them, colorful as their bicycles. There were the men on their Vespas in bermuda shorts and hawaiian shirts, little dogs rode in bike baskets. This was the surface, what you may expect of a Dutch seaside town.

But there were surprises too. A green woodland, almost overburdened with pine; mottled summer sunlight dancing over the ferns. Flowers, in a clearing. From the heat and sun their luxurious red was watered down; like the bottom of a drink at a beach resort, its color diluted by melting ice. The patches of wildflowers, a muddled harmony of poppies and their late summer counterparts. Wild marigolds, foxgloves, cornflowers, daisies, the green stems and leaves slowly fading. There were petals on the sidewalk, and flowers growing wild over walls, that nobody really seemed to notice. The call of the sea was too strong, the ocean of flora in the last throes of its summer glory was all but invisible.

The sun set late, the aura of a latitude further north. The roads grew quieter. The sunburnt children had come home, bikes over cobbles. The air was still, chickens cooed in a garden nearby, hidden from view by a wall of vines weeping white flowers onto the lawn. The downpour would arrive soon, Bergen’s narrow roads would glisten with pooled rain and the nights would draw in more quickly, draping darkness over the pointed roofs and timber. There would be a reminder of the warm days, in the petals of those flowers, either dripping water, or fallen and dusting the street with summer.

“I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

*all photos were taken with my iPhone so they’re not perfect, but beauty of the flowers kind of speaks for itself.