“Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering ‘it will be happier’…”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
These are the dog days of winter. The long, cold, damp days of winter. The never-ending, interminable days that seem to mark this season.
While skiers race down pristine white slopes, twisting and turning against a sparkling white backdrop … while snowboarders somersault, tuck, and spin in a pure blue sheet of sky … while countries around the world are tucked in snugly under a thick blanket of snow … while all of this is happening, winter in Norfolk is a much more sombre affair. Winter in Norfolk is a muted symphony written in sustained notes of grey and brown.
This morning is no different; grey skies hang low over the hedgerows and water droplets cling to every surface. There’s no cheerful crunch beneath my feet, just a sea of unrelenting brown with sticky, squelchy mud taking a firm grasp of my wellies, reluctant to let them go. Damp smears of bracken line the path. Hawthorns are bedecked with the limp, tattered brown rags of last year’s leaves. Even the fungi are waterlogged and faded.
But, when I look just a little bit closer, all around me a quiet revolution is taking place. Trees are silently preparing to overthrow the oppressive weather* and unleash spring. The tiny, fuchsia tassels on the hazel branches are poised to be pollinated. The lime green and deep purple of elder buds are bursting through their reddish brown casings; slowly and furtively unfurling their leaves in the shadows. Beech buds seem to be a clearer, more shimmering shade of copper than they’ve been all winter, festooned with liquid silver droplets. The colour of aged whisky caramel, slender twigs of white willow glow like lanterns along the edges of the path. On the branches of their goat willow cousins, rough brown buds are splitting to reveal silver satin nubbins which will soon be heavy with dusty sunshine. Faded lilac alder buds are stealthily splitting apart amid tightly closed, deep purple catkins and the lacy skeletons of last year’s cones. Along the length of a wild rose stem, nestled in the shelter of vicious, battle scarred thorns, the tender red buds of this year’s growth are waiting to accelerate.
It’s a subtle rainbow, but it’s there. Spring is springing, albeit slowly, secretly and silently. It’s going to be upon us any day now … or at least, that’s the hope I’m clinging to.
*There’s a possibility that the language of ‘Animal Farm’ that I’m studying with Year 9 at the moment may be sneaking in here …
“The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.”
– Ray Bradbury, ‘The Halloween Tree’
Pigeons scatter across the car park like unruly children.
Amongst the fiery oranges and reds of autumn, a single pink rose blooms on a tall stem.
Huddled in a corner, above a doorway, a bat slumbers deeply, oblivious to the mobs of children that pass beneath it all day.
Two geese gossip their way across the leaden skies.
As I turn on the Angers match, a raging torrent of French is unleashed; tumbling and bouncing between consonants, my brain frantically tries to make sense of at least some of the words.
Man, French people talk FAST!!
Crouched beneath an oak tree, photographing fungi, I am brutally bombarded with acorns.
I look up at line-up to see Dylan holding a piece of card from which a gigantic orb-weaver spider dangles. For one brief moment, I believe it to be a Halloween figurine …. until it wriggles. He grins as I order him to put it on the grass and leave it there.
Fog lies heavy across the field, illuminated from above by golden sunlight.
Ivy stems, mottled brown and grey, slither like serpents along the trunks of the fallen trees.
Autumn snowflakes fall in flurries, forming gold drifts in the darkness of the forest floor.
Above the chaos of the M62, a kestrel hangs, adjusting the angle of its wings in minute increments; an oasis of calm in an increasingly frantic space.
Beech leaves glow like banked embers against the ashy-grey skies above.
Long skeins of geese unravel untidily across the evening sky, their noise flapping along behind them.
The house is surrounded by a blank curtain of grey, as if someone pulled down a blind to cover the view.
Startled by what sounds like the barking of an irritated dog, I look up, only to see two black grouse whirring away across the hillside.
Larch needles lie in thick drifts along the edges of the road; sunshine cushions against the encroaching cold.
A startlingly bright rainbow arches across the charcoal sky, echoed faintly by a second inverted arch to one side.
In the thermals above the A1, a buzzard soars in lazy circles to gain height.
“A Clerk could tell what years have flown SinceAlexander fill’d our throne, (Third monarch of that warlike name,) And eke the time when here he came To seek Sir Hugo, then our lord: A braver never drew a sword; A wiser never, at the hour Of midnight, spoke the word of power: The same, whom ancient records call The founder of the Goblin-Hall.”
– Sir Walter Scott, ‘Marmion’
Unlike most of my wanderings which are spontaneous to say the least, yesterday’s walk was a full eight months in the making. I first heard of Yester Castle about eight months ago, when someone sent me a video of a walk to a ruined castle, deep in the woods, with a creepy underground hall called Goblin Ha’. I immediately wanted to visit (why wouldn’t I?), but when I suggested we visit in December, I was scathingly informed that the path would be neck deep in mud, and I was an idiot for even considering trying to walk down it.
Families are fun!
Cut to yesterday and it was a nice day in Scotland, so what else would we do, other than go looking for a mystical castle that was reputedly built by goblins, at the behest of a necromantic sorcerer? The weather having been approved by both mum and Katie 🙄, we set off for Danskine Loch. The journey across the Lammermuirs was beautiful; the heather was just about to burst into full purple, the grass was still a brownish shade of green, and the Rosebay Willowherb added a touch of bright pink. With the white of the newly shorn sheep and the swathes of equally white wind turbines, it was nothing short of picturesque. We parked up at the southern end of the loch and then followed the path away from it. I still haven’t actually laid eyes on the loch itself, but I saw the pathway that allegedly led to it.
The path we followed was wide and gravelled. It led through an area that had clearly been decimated in one of the frequent storms that pass through this area, had been clear cut, and then replanted with saplings. We debated how hard it would have been to plant anything on the steep sides of the valley and decided that, if it had been up to us, there would still be no trees! After a few hundred yards, we entered a wooded area with both coniferous and deciduous trees, including some yew trees with fabulous columnar trunks.
The path, as well as being more shaded here, was definitely holding on to considerably more of the previous day’s rain and was a little squelchy underfoot. Secretly, I decided that if it was this wet and muddy at the end of a heatwave, they had probably been right not to visit in December. Not that I would ever admit this to them, even under torture! Just because they were right on this occasion, doesn’t mean I want to set a precedent of paying attention … they’ll only get big-headed!
We carefully picked our way through the mud descending alongside a small, fast flowing stream that meandered along, trickling over rocks and constantly switching which side it was on. Our path crossed numerous bridges, each of which was beautifully built out of stone, bedecked with moss, and draped with plants. I don’t know whether I just had goblins at the back of my mind thanks to our destination, but it was beginning to feel a lot like walking through fairyland.
We eventually reached a fork in both the path and the stream and struck out, over yet another bridge, upwards again, following the new stream which, slightly disconcertingly, seemed to be flowing the wrong way. Here, the trees were predominantly beeches, huge old giants, gnarled and twisted, but soaring above us in emerald splendour. These were Tolkein’s ents made flesh (including the one in the final photograph of this series which had run out of puff half way up the hill and stopped for a rest!) Given that we were heading sharply uphill, the ground underfoot had dried considerably, and tree roots provided some traction.
After following another steep downhill path to cross the stream again and then an immediate uphill, we finally came across Yester Castle. A tall hillock on our right was surmounted by unmistakable stonework. Not a lot was immediately obvious, but after scrambling like mountain goats up a precipitous pathway, the extent of the castle started to reveal itself.
The approach ran under a large stonework arch, with a fireplace built into the left-hand wall and a large arrow slit to the right-hand side. Once we passed through this entrance, we were suddenly faced with one of the biggest expanses of stone wall I’ve ever seen. It must have been four storeys high and stretched fifty feet from end to end.
Cut into this wall were several openings; a huge open archway leading back “out” of the castle, a couple of windows, and then, down a long flight of steps, two barred windows which looked into the underground Goblin Ha’.
Having done my research, I knew that the door “out” led to a narrow path that wound down the side of the hill and around to the entrance tunnel to the Goblin Ha’. This is the section of the castle that is said to have been built by an army of hobgoblins on the orders of one Sir Hugh Gifford de Yester, known as the Wizard of Yester. Sir Hugh, or Hugo as he is called in some records, was reputed to be a necromancer who made a pact with the Devil to gain control of the hobgoblins which he then used to do his bidding and build the castle at some point prior to his death in 1237.
The goblin sized tunnel (I may not be very tall, but apparently I’m taller than a goblin and had to crouch down for the first litrle bit!) was pitch black and led through the hill for about eight or nine metres, before opening up into a much larger, but incredibly dark space, lit only by the two small, barred openings (and our torches)! The photos make it seem much lighter, but that’s after applying torchlight and camera flashes. The ceiling, which arched way over our heads, was beautifully vaulted. There were a number of niches cut into the walls, most of which contained the remains of extinguished candles. Black, obviously. I mean, what other colour candle would anyone bring into a dark creepy hall built by goblins? Opposite the entrance tunnel, there was another arched doorway, leading to a set of (very crumbled) steps that descended deeper into the darkness. I explored as far as I dared, but the steps had collapsed about twenty feet down, and even I decided that it was probably not wise to push my luck and scramble any further without a proper torch. We were a long way from any reliable phone signal and even further from the emergency services!
We emerged, blinking in the sunlight, and thoroughly satisfied with our explorations. The path through the forest was just as beautiful on the way back, full of plenty of spaces in which a goblin could lurk. None remained visible for us, though, so we had to be satisfied with our imaginations.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
– John Muir
Every so often, something changes and makes you look at things with a whole new lens. Sometimes, you don’t even know what changed, but things just look different. It’s been like that this weekend with beech trees. Autumn has been weird this year; it seems to have taken ages for the colours to change, and even when they have changed, they haven’t seemed quite as bright as in previous years. It’s all been a bit muted, a bit dull, a bit subdued.
Until this weekend, when the beech trees came into their own. They’ve hit that perfect colour when they’ve moved beyond yellow, but haven’t got to their final bronze yet. They look like coals, glowing in the depths of the forest, waiting to be stirred into a higher blaze by a breeze. We have a lot of beeches round here; after all, they are endemic to this part of the world. Not just the UK, but the south-east of the UK. There is some evidence that they were introduced shortly after the last ice age by Neolithic tribes who valued their edible masts.
As I was wandering along the Pingo Trail yesterday, something I read ages ago popped back into my brain, as these things have a tendency to do. The word beech possibly (there is still an argument in certain circles about the veracity of this claim) comes from the Old Norse word ‘bók’ and the Old English ‘bōc’, both of which are early origins of the modern word ‘book’. You can also see the connection in the modern German Buche, meaning beech, which is very similar to Buch, the word for book. It seems that early books in Britain used thin tablets made of beech wood or bark, on which words were inscribed. Because of this, the beech tree is often associated with knowledge and the written word.
In folklore, beech trees are also connected with femininity and are often referred to as the Mother of the Woods, perhaps a nod to the protection they offer with their broad canopies. When trimmed into a thick hedge, the leaves can cling in place through almost the whole winter and can provide a solid windbreak. It could also be a reference to the nourishment provided in the form of beech masts which could be eaten directly or form part of the food available for pigs during pannage. Perhaps this association with food led to the etymology of the scientific name for this species, Fagus sylvatica. Fagus comes from the Greek word ‘phegos’ which means ‘edible’. Sylvatica is a common part of Linnaean species names, coming from the Latin ‘sylvanus’ meaning ‘of the forest’.
As well as providing food for humans, beech trees are an important part of the woodland ecosystem and provide nourishment for countless species of fungi (watch this space for some of the ones I’ve found), lichens, invertebrates and birds. They are also known to improve soil quality, stabilise soils and provide a shaded habitat for numerous plants such as Red Helleborine, Coralroot Bittercress and Bluebells.
There’s something about a beech wood that’s special, regardless of what time of year you visit. At this time of year, their smooth, grey trunks reach skywards, towards the fiery canopy above. The thick carpet of fallen leaves crunches satisfyingly beneath your feet, studded with fungi in a rainbow of colours; pink, red, purple, orange, yellow, white and brown. The leaves change colours dependent on the weather, from a dull brown on a dry day to a metallic bronze when the air is damp. The light, filtered through those gorgeous autumnal leaves, is golden and warm, even on the coldest afternoon.
I may see beeches regularly, but I really shouldn’t take them for granted; on days like today, they really are a joy to behold.
absolutelynotnormal 