The interminable rain has gone for a while and I've come out of hiding. Since parking The Ashes at a secret location in the Highlands at the end of March - in a glorious week of sunshine, the like of which I've never known in Scotland in springtime - I've been under a stone. Wet, wetter, wettest three months on record: I nearly send for the Ark Construction kit.
And suddenly the jet stream snaked northwards again, back to where it's meant to be and summer has come to the Moor.
On the first day, the farmers cut the hay. On the second and third, they turned and turned it and yesterday the tractors and balers turned up like manic dinorsaurs to roll up carpets of it into massive, tight, round bales. Neighbour Mark got the job of spiking them onto the back of his tractor and carting them away to the Ox Court and Easter barns to 'make' for a few months. Last year this top field yielded over 150 small bales, this year only a dozen or so large rounds. The wet spring held the quantity back and, because the grasses had seeded, also a little of the quality. Never mind, at least we've got something!
I've been riding out at 6am each morning in this heat. Today, up on the Dunster Path on the shoulder of Dunkery, I watched a red deer hind lead her calf out of the birchwoods and onto the open sunlit Moor. It was an enchanting moment: the hind was completely unfazed by the presence of my horse and me and simply stood watching as we passed. Minutes later two buzzards appeared over the horizon, gliding and sliding around the far blue yonder, calling to one another, quartering the ground below them for edibles.
The dew was heavy on the spiders' webs, some as wide as eighteen inches across, many of them dipping from heather height to an unseen undergrowth attachment, giving the impression of lace shrouds cast over bushes to dry. Of the spinners and weavers I saw nothing and, from the size of those webs, am glad I did not.
Down on the shaded ancient, stony track that leads home, I felt a different type of web break against my face as I rode through. Another kind of spinner had sent out trapeze wire traps for unwary insects, slung five feet across the path and seven feet above.
And finally, when I'd freed Hoss for the day, I went to work and by chance saw a sparrowhawk break cover at speed from a laneside hedge in pursuit of some hapless bird.
We all have to eat: I must earn money and the sparrowhawk must kill. Good job the two don't get muddled up.
