Spoonhill

I start under chestnuts’ spreading candelabras, through long, lush grass dotted with ladies smock. A cuckoo competes with a skylark. The horizon gleams rape-yellow. At my feet the crop is only just through, but the hedge growth provides abundant cover for blackbirds, finches, robins. The air is thick with St Mark’s flies, their legs drooping lazily. Two ducks and several pigeons break cover, startling me as much as I’ve startled them. Leaving the farmland, I head down towards Devil's Dingle. Celandines, buttercups and dandelions gild the knee high grass. But the real delights are the darkly rich English bluebells in the wood edge. On the skyline, pale poplars contrast with deep coloured pines. And everywhere there’s birdsong. back along the lane, I marvel at the true joy of this walk, the hedgerow, thick with vibrant growth: field maple, elder, holly, sloe, honeysuckle, hawthorn. Frothing below is a mass of flowers: greater and lesser stitchwort, vetch, yellow archangel, red campion, cow parsley. And birds: yellowhammers and goldfinches dart, exotically bright amongst the greens. And peace.

Homer walk

The open woodland holds a joyous orchestra of noise: brooks babble under bridges, frogs croak under the sedge, birds provide a continuous descant. Climbing some steep steps, I’m surrounded by violets and primroses: soft pools of colour amongst last year’s leaves. The gaps in the canopy are steadily being filled in green, yet on the ground there’s only the emerald of euphorbia. Anemones’ eyes watch me from a coppice, or perhaps they’re just admiring the huge cherries blossoming behind. Out of the woods, the land is far from open in the early morning mist, which clings to the trees of Farley and Sheinton. Caging me further are steep hedgerows, which show the first stitchwort, and muffle the call of crows foraging for worms in nearby fields. After 1km I'm into denser woodland. The ground is thick with storm debris and wild clematis tangles the trunks. Bees search amongst the garlic and dog’s mercury for potential nests. I follow one to the base of a huge ash: its muscular buttress roots have quarried away the Wenlock limestone, yet have themselves fallen prey to parasitic toothwort. The hedgerow is filled with pheasants and above me broad winged buzzards block out light from between trees.

Hope Bowdler

Water flows downhill so I decide to head up, onto Hope Bowdler, to try and escape the quagmire which has gripped Shropshire since Christmas. As I ascend the land falls away into a steep gully, which shelters ash trees, which in turn shelter crows - only their calls audible amongst the trees’ dense gnarled boughs. Brown skeletons of last year’s bracken crackle underfoot, yet green gorse and broom suggest a season on the turn. Behind me spectral shadows of Hazler and Ragleth hills rise. The land opens up into a wide plateau, with tantalising glimpses of the Edge to the right and Caradoc to the left, between the three craggy peaks which surround me. The wind is deafening, and yet Caradoc stands strong, raising its three fingers rock to the gale. Turning back, the Edge now comes into view, like a breakwater against the flooded fields below. As I descend down a track to the bottom of a gully, cliffs appear on both sides and I scare a roosting flock of fieldfares from a cluster of holly trees. My feet pump the ground with every squelch and more water trickles into the torrent below. My ears are still ringing with the wind. But even on the most inhospitable of days, with few creatures braving the elements, the Shropshire Hills are worth the effort.

Signs of spring #1 - the coming of the coots

After a winter of wind, rain and very little frost, Spring creeps up on you. The snowdrops suffered from no snow: they're designed to poke their heads delicately through frosted grass, rather than droop wearily in sludge, weighed down and prematurely aged by the storms. For me, one of the regular signs of the season is the arrival of the coots on the pond. Late February, whatever the weather, a pair appear, ready to hold court through the breeding season. Last year was a miserable year for them. Two birds arrived but one mysteriously vanished soon after, leaving a mourning mate. For several weeks it called pitifully and plaintively before giving up and leaving. This year two more coots are now in residence, already busy with nest building. Yes, they're bullies: the ducks have already retreated and the moorhens, who enjoyed the run of the grass last year, will once again get slim pickings. But they're also characters, and they let me know that Spring is nearly here.

Wilderhope Manor

I walk past the back of Wilderhope Manor (at present scaffolded for roof work which can only be done when the bats and swifts are away), to where the land opens up into fields. The squelching mud is today iced over by frosts, cryogenically freezing the landscape into a Bronte-esque windswept moorland. There is a trickle of meltwater nearby and a bullfinch laps it up greedily. The ghostly call of a solitary crow is heard somewhere in the smoking mist. But this is an area of new discoveries despite its ancient atmosphere. Red kites were spotted last year and I find myself double checking the tail of every buzzard for a kite’s wide fan. A cold wind picks up, but the sleepy eye of the sun still just penetrates the shroud of mist. At first the wintry woodland appears dead but I notice tree creepers darting between the hibernating bows of ash and hazel. I walk through a gate and am greeted by a tremendous view. The wind has cleared the mist to reveal a different Wenlock Edge to the one I know. Not the two dimensional wall of limestone seen from Jenny Wind or Major’s Leap, but a rolling, three dimensional landscape of dales and valleys. The mysterious dark side of the Edge - hidden from the eyes of Longville and Church Preen by a dense deciduous cloak. The fields are green, despite the frozen puddles and bare hedges which surround them and in the orchard fieldfares and redwings are greedily scoffing apples. Another corner takes me back to the car park.

Swan Song

The winds have been wild, tearing branches, cracking trunks and driving the rain sideways against the window panes. It blew in something else, bizarrely, Mary Poppins-like. A swan. A swan on a smallish pond is a huge thing. We have a regular heron visitor, it's true, but he stands in the shallows at the edge, preferring to hide his size. The swan sat majestically in the centre, its mere presence enough to scatter the ducks. It wasn't fully grown, its Ugly Duckling plumage still visible, the greyish brown feathers adding to its general sense of despondency. You could tell it wasn't happy. It would periodically scramble inelegantly up the bank and wander round the grass as if looking for something, it's huge feet making squelchy indentations in the saturated ground. And then the wind changed.... and it left as suddenly as it had come.

Wenlock Winter

Winter on Wenlock Edge: a combination of frosty winds and the icy clarity of an idyllic winter's day. The night brought frost. Icy sheets forming across the umbellifers, creating parasols against the warmth of the sun's rays. As I walk the crackling of my footsteps on the iron ground disturbs fieldfares and redwings, roosting amongst the hazels and willows of a nearby hedge. A mixed flock of thrushes dive onto a hawthorn, strpping the berries. If it hadn't been for the mild autumn and early winter they would have been scoffed long before now. My breath steams before me as I round a corner and look on the land to the west, beyond the Edge. Here the air is still cold, but the view is different. The sky is sunny and clear and I can see past the Long Mynd and onwards to the Welsh Marches and beyond. The cold shadow of Wenlock Edge is slowly retreating from the landscape and possibly, as the days are lengthening, so too is the icy grip of winter.