Squabbling Ducks and Lusty Swains

My sleep was disturbed by what seemed to be an extended domestic fracas involving the nearby mallard community. Apart from that, everything is great, I've just woken-up to one of those sparkling, clear sunny Spring mornings when you expect your path to be crossed by ruddy faced swains and buxom shepherdesses flushed from rolling in the April dew. Had there not been a couple of nearby caravans perhaps I would have stood by Maisy, stuck a finger in my ear and burst into a rendition of 'The Lark in the Morning'  in a thin, warbling tenor so loved by amateur folk singers and other victims of Cropeddy. As it was I just stood outside and sang the song to myself in my head, which was the socially responsible thing to do, given my voice is more rutting walrus than Mike Waterson.

"That's a noble abode, sir..and the castle's not bad either."

The day gets better by the moment. Gill is cooking up bacon sandwiches for breakfast., I always think bacon sandwiches are a quintessentially English thing. Perhaps I am the only person to have stood in front of Constable's Haywain and thought, "I bet they had great bacon sandwiches back then!"

Yum....

A fine April morning, birds singing and the waft of fried bacon on the breeze...

After breakfast we took ourselves off for a bit of a wander around the Eastnor Castle grounds - were entertained by the ducks, stared at the sparkling lakes, admired the spring flowers and promised ourselves that we'd definitely return here for a couple nights later in the Spring.

It being Easter week-end, then the place must have had close to 100 caravans and motorhomes dotted about. It is big enough not to feel crowded. Even the corralled vans in the adjacent field - some rally or other of a West Midlands camping club - failed to provoke my usual derisive comments and general bewilderment at groupie tribalism. Though you do have to wonder about the social attitudes and political leanings of quite so many Landrover owners gathered together beneath fluttering St. George flags, I mean it's not just a shared enthusiasm for slip differentials designed in Coventry that's bringing them together, is it?

"There'll always be an England.." come on now...join in!

So far as owning a motorhome is concerned, then there definitely is a 'honeymoon period', and we are still in the starry eyed besotted phase. So I make no excuses for standing on a hill overlooking the camping area and saying to Gill, "OOh that's a nice looking van over there - it's OURS!!!"  We have planned this moment for years and the actuality does exceed the expectation. I can't wait to be able to tour Europe in it for weeks on end - the van is an LMC Liberty - and liberation is what it offers, and time just to stop and stare.

Maisy in the morning

This morning we had time to stare - at a small stream, little more than a ditch really, and just delight in the way morning sunshine lit-up its low bank - "green and golden" as Dylan Thomas said....

Or just be amazed at the glittering water, the reeds and the spring flowers on the edge of the small lake....

And that's before we get to become animated by the small swamp....

Talking of swamps, I was just reading last week Jonanthan Bate's take on John Clare as the poet of disregarded wetlands:

Lover of swamps
The quagmire overgrown
With hassock-tufts of sedge– where fear encamps
Around thy home alone

The trembling grass
Quakes from the human foot
Nor bears the weight of man to let him pass
Where he alone and mute

Sittest at rest
In safety ‘neath the climp
Of huge flag-forest that thy haunts invest
Or some old sallow stump

                  ****

Where uncheck’d the brambles spread
 Where the thistle meets the sight
With its down-head, cotton-white
And the nettle, keen to view
And hemlock with its gloomy hue
Where the henbane too finds room
For its sickly-stinking bloom
And full many a nameless weed
Neglected left to run to seed

Spring sunshine.....bacon sandwiches....John Clare...a perfect morning.