At Helsington Church I meet a friend and we stand in the sun, looking north where snow gleams on distant fells. Here the escarpment descends by Wells Garth, that settlement hidden in the trees where springs burst from the limestone and gardens grow lush. We listen for the sound of falling water, always a surprise after the limestone of Scout Scar. Zwartbles graze in the pastures where springs bubble up and a beck flows down through an orchard of damson trees, budding and with the first flowers of the season. Zwartbles from Friesland, dark ewes with a white blaze on the face. At Park End Farm the limestone meets the mosses of the Lyth Valley and we are close to the pools recently created to attract water birds- a habitat with reed beds.
An English hedgerow in April is a joy. Last summer’s climbing plants interweave the stout structures of hedgerow shrubs and the white flowers of blackthorn show well before the leaf buds open. One spring day we came off wild weather on the fells to Kentmere Hall and a hedge where snowflakes fell upon the white flowers of blackthorn. There's such colour within those pure white flowers . All the while the faint buzz of pollinators wove through the hedge.