March on the Edge

A typically windswept March afternoon on Wenlock Edge. The hedgerow’s a tangled mass of hawthorn and blackthorn. Filigree leaves of varied ferns carpet the area and Jack in the Hedge is poised to spring into growth. Through the gothic tracery of bare branches, you can look along the backbone of the Edge, before oppressive pines close ranks. There, above the ominous roar of Harley Bank, I hear the shrill cat-like mewing of buzzards. Ten appear, hunting in a pack like Harris Hawks from Arizona. One turns, drops, dives, captures something, swoops off. I am once again alone.

            The path narrows, meandering around spooned out hollows, with Dog’s Mercury spearing through the fallen debris of last autumn. I spot a huge colony of Hart’s Tongue ferns clinging to a quarry face, their leaves reflecting the last of the sun and catching the percolating water. Weaving between silver birch, under a drapery of catkins I pass another huge quarry, where the strong buttress roots of yew and willow cling like talons on the precipitous Edge.    
             Everywhere the scars of industry have been stitched over by nature: limestone quarries becoming bird baths, nesting grounds and grassland. Dark, satanic remains of old quarries and kilns, alongside the green and pleasant land of Shropshire’s hedges and fields - it’s what makes Wenlock so interesting.