These Days, Those Days

Now I find myself remembering rural walks in England and Wales, and I was going to spin a few words but then discovered that my daughter had captured the essence of our side trips, one in particular, so much better than I ever could!

Please click on her post, Notes on Reading Geoff Dyer in Devon and it will be as though you went there with us, served up with some literate musings on nostalgia.

A few more images, then. Above, the River Wye etching its way through the green.And that's Miranda, briskly ascending one of the steep hills of the Brecon Beacons area of Wales......which is exactly where Monte and I walked together in 1985. Yes, that youthful duo in the self-timer portrait above is us at Brecon Beacons in the days when hills were not so steep.There's another view of the Devon coast, the area Miranda wrote about so beautifully here.

And this is a place I could not truly capture in photographs...a field of red poppies in Little Tew. It was lightly raining and then clearing, sometimes both at once, and I was watching for rainbows when I saw in the distance a bright orange swath, and when we drew near, we beheld this great expanse of poppies. Stunning. It took our breath away.

That particular day was so magical, in fact, that I am going to attempt something I have never done before: I am going to post a tiny video. It was taken on a trail we traversed in Great Tew through a silvery-green field of wheat, and it was raining intermittently, sparkling beads of rain bouncing off my red umbrella...or is that a parasol?...and then everything gilded in sunlight. Let's see if this works: Great Tew Walk5