Another dawn. Another lane. This time, I am deep in the Herefordshire countryside. The sun is rising over the folds of the land, gilding the bramble tops and setting the oak leaves alight. Wriggle Stream chatters in the valley bottom, silver-tongued and restless. From the hillside I can hear the mooing of Herefords.
It has just gone six a.m. The air is cool and fresh. Almost cold. I pull my jacket tighter as I walk. A week ago I was waking up to the cracked earth and baked winds of Andalusia. There, the mornings came bright and hard, like a smack of light on dry stone. Here, they arrive gently, whispered in through leaf and dew. It is a homecoming of sorts. A returning to green.
I leave the lane and climb a bridle path up onto the hills. The ground is cracked and rutted underfoot, baked hard by days of sun. Already, even at this hour, the paddocks are summer-hot and dry. A few sheep move slowly across the slope, heads down in the long grass. Their fleeces are yellowed at the knees and twitching with flies. Their bleating merges with the screech of pheasants, startled into the air, and the distant mooing of Hereford cows echoing across the fields.
Behind me, the lane vanishes into green shade. Ahead, the hill opens up: a patchwork of gold and green under the high July sun. I pause, draw a long breath, and taste the dust and pollen of an English summer. It’s a world away from Andalusia. But this, too, is a kind of brightness. Gentler. More forgiving. Threaded through with memory.
At the top of the field, the bridle path joins an ancient sunken lane. The banks are steep and shaded, overgrown with what I think are holly and ash. Roots clutch at the path like old hands. This is a holloway: a lane worn into the earth not by design, but by time. A thousand years of hooves, feet, and wheels have carved it slowly, deeply. Each passing figure has left a trace, imperceptible on its own but part of the long erosion that made this place. Now it lies almost forgotten in this quiet corner of England. Known only to badgers, foxes, and the early risers who still walk.
The path leads me on, through the hush of shadow and root. It opens again. Another gate, another lane. I step out onto the tarmac and lean against the wooden bars. My shadow stretches long across the parched earth, thrown west by the rising sun. Beyond the gate, the hills of Herefordshire roll away in gentle waves: green fields, dark hedgerows, light playing on the barley.
There is no traffic. No people. No sound but the ticking warmth of day beginning and the distant call of a skylark. Just me and my shadow. Watching the light move across the land. This is the kind of morning that feels as though it has been waiting for me all along.
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