On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
A.E. Housman

There’s no doubt about it, the English Countryside is looking glorious at the moment. I was grateful for this weekend’s trip to the Cairngorms had to be cancelled but I did manage to get out overnight for one glorious walk in Shropshire.

Warm air, sunshine and rain have all combined to make this the most lush, verdant and vibrant summer than I can remember in years. I walked on along country lanes shaded by the canopies of aged, spendid, trees and through secretive paths, hidden from view by hedgerows ripe with summer blooms. Streams and rivulets sparkled in the late afternoon sun. I set up camp just before evening storms but the bouncing of rain on fabric seemed the perfect soundtrack against which to finish the novel that was stashed in the pack. It was a gentler rain that fell during the night, the kind of rain that soothes the soul and lulls the camper off to sleep.

An early morning stroll across high moors was just as splendid. Others had not yet risen for the day. The views were long and the vistas wide, seen through the shimmering haze so characteristic of the English summer. The moorland was alive with fresh, green, foilage and the air filled with a happy chorus of bird song.

Mid morning found me at the high point of my walk. I set up my shelter to dry in the now fierce sun. It was still too early for the first ramblers to have reached my spot from the car parks below but I chatted to a local mountain biker out to shake away the cobwebs of the weekend. Had I camped at this point? He’d always wanted to. We discussed bivy spots, lower down in secluded valleys. I have bivyed here once, many years ago. Water had to be carried up from below but I was rewarded for the effort by a stunning sunset descending in the general direction of Ofar’s Dyke. My companion and I reckoned that this summer might just be the time to revisit a night here in a bivy.

I had wondered about a mammoth walk, joining together all of the high points here in a kind of giant circle. But the day began to get busier and company put me in a more mellow frame of mind. Suddenly it seemed preferable to amble down to a quiet village and to sit in the pub garden with a pint of fine ale and a Sunday newspaper.

The pub is in a fine location. Familes with small children had made their way from the campsite up the road. The play of the children was a charming and as carefree as the birdsong on the moor.

I doubt that there was a better place than this — and a better time to be there. But the newspaper spoke of other places, of strife, struggle and war; of soldiers dying in far off lands. I recalled Housman’s poem. I imagine him sitting in a place like this on a day like this, delighting in the wonder of a Shropshire summer’s day but dwelling on the horrors of places far away.

On the idle hill of summer,
Sleepy with the flow of streams,
Far I hear the steady drummer
Drumming like a noise in dreams.
Far and near and low and louder
On the roads of earth go by,
Dear to friends and food for powder,
Soldiers marching, all to die.

East and west on fields forgotten
Bleach the bones of comrades slain,
Lovely lads and dead and rotten;
None that go return again.
Far the calling bugles hollo,
High the screaming fife replies,
Gay the files of scarlet follow:
Woman bore me, I will rise.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)