I was not used to seeing the Edge from this angle; it was like becoming the view looking back at myself or casting a shadow. When views to the west were lost in fog or hidden behind trees, I would often stand between the fields and wooded scarp slope looking south-east to the Clee Hills: a strangely self-contained land with its two mountains, wide open commons and isolated history. Now I was there, standing on Clee Liberty, a common of close-cropped turf and bracken the colour of stone, covering several square miles of the Brown Clee hill.
The twin hilltops were capped with cloud and only a small tear in the thick grey sky revealed any orangey January sunlight. With my back towards Brown Clee, a 30-mile panorama swept from The Wrekin, in the north, along Wenlock Edge to Caer Caradoc in the South Shropshire hills and the hills of Clun Forest and beyond.
Looking at it from the east, Wenlock Edge lost the drama of its wooded brow and instead the gentler dip slope, with its wonky grid of hedged fields, rose out of Corve Dale like a 20-mile-long wave, the weight of England behind it, racing to break against the misty hills of Wales.
We followed rutted tracks and grassy walks across Clee Liberty to a plateau jutting westward. On this stood Nordy Bank, a ring earthwork known as an Iron Age hillfort. To walk the bank was to follow the imperfectly circular nature of time and wonder what this place was and what of its original meaning and purpose survived today. The sky lifted and shone with a blue and pink opalescence, and the long view cleared enough to feel closer to it. Ravens flew in to Nordy Bank, calling out the same secrets they revealed 2,000 years ago when the rampart was raised.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/26/country-diary-wenlock-edge
Economic policy Mark Bright TV ratings Electronic music Burlesque Arsène Wenger
No comments:
Post a Comment