Merry Hill
Merry Hill consists of wooded meadowland owned and maintained by the Woodland Trust. Along with Attenborough's Fields and Little Hartsbourne Wood, the hill is part of a green oasis surrounded by urban and suburban development, though nearby Bushey retains much of its village character. Wildlife is plentiful and includes green and greater-spotted woodpeckers, skylarks, redwings, jays, kestrels, buzzards, red kites and other varied birds, long-eared bats, foxes and many varieties of butterfly. Rarer breeds of cattle are grazed here during the summer.
Burnet moth.
Cinnabar moth.
Wildflowers.
Track rising to the SE and Merry Hill.
View NW from Merry Hill. As level as the horizon appears, it is actually the Chiltern Hills. Happily, for now, the landscape hides nearly all urban development in the intervening 15 miles.
Dead tree, Merry Hill. There used to be several of these bleached relics but extreme weather over many winters has brought most down.
View NE along ridge of Merry Hill. This is early spring with the blackthorn just coming into blossom.
Recently mown field on the hill. There are plenty of swifts, swallows and even kestrels to be found here.
Easy to see why the kestrels like it: ideal hunting ground.
Fields on the west of Merry Hill. This is where I saw a red kite hunting. Strictly speaking, I was trespassing to take this photograph (and the previous two). I fear for the future development of this part of the hill.
Late, western view from the hill.
Disused hay barn to the east of the hill, near the entrance from Bushey Heath.
Camouflage/stealth cows at a partially overcast Merry Hill.
View south from Merry Hill to Little Hartsbourne Wood. The view is somewhat marred by the comms tower, visible centre of image. This field is especially good for skylarks. It's really quiet up here, though wind direction makes a difference: a westerly, or north-westerly will bring the sound of traffic circulating on the M25, though it's an unobtrusive susurration. Commercial aircraft are pretty high and quite infrequent overhead, though it's possible to see 'planes taking off from, and landing at, Heathrow Airport, about 15 miles away to the SW. Occasionally, there are helicopters to/from the NATO base at Northwood, and light aircraft from Elstree Aerodrome, but the former are very rare and the latter infrequent enough (and actually a cheerful and somehow nostalgic sound). Again, with wind direction, trains on the Euston-Watford and West Coast Mainline services can be heard but, as (Paul) Simon says, "everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance".
A few more pictures from a very pleasant day. The close ups are of teazles and of sloes—the latter useful for flavouring gin or vodka (the red berries behind are haws). In the direction of the far horizon in the third "gate" shot is Heathrow airport.
I wonder what rating the bench would receive (it's one of many in and around the local fields).
The end of August and its Bank Holiday are usually the cue for me to do a little foraging, something I used to consider a great treat to myself when my son was of younger school age and I could persuade him to join me for a walk in the sunshine. It was usually a harbinger of the end of his summer holiday/recess, and it was a nice thing to do together before he went back to the education machine. I mostly still do it, but on my own, now.
Really, I can't fully express how much I enjoyed my day's foraging this year. Warm sun, blue sky, gentle breeze, quiet, shaded woodland and mown,
hay-scented open fields, while the very few people I met en route either exchanged only a brief greeting or totally let me be (I have made the
realisation that, as much as I love my friends and family, I am supremely contented in my own company). Nearly every experience and sensation of
the day was delightful—and reminiscent not only of my days sharing my son's childhood (whose absence I do feel), but also of the days of my own.
My thoughts for the entire duration of the exercise consisted of my pleasure in the day, and I can't remember the last time I experienced that.
I returned home tired (though I'd walked no more than five miles—I'm badly out of practice) but thoroughly relaxed, as though I'd had an excellent
fortnight's holiday.
My haul for the day consisted of apples from the orchard in Merry Hill Fruit Field (available to all, and also a source of walnuts, quince, crab-apples, damsons and pears, which I didn't gather) and blackberries from the brambles around Merry Hill and Little Hartsbourne Wood. I take few each from brambles over a wide area, ensuring that there are plenty left for wildlife in any immediate locale (though the hedgerows are additionally bountiful in haws, sloes, rosehips, wild cherry and rowan berries). I also discovered a source of sweet chestnuts for later in the year. Here's the haul:
The only significant misgiving of the day was the contemplation of the potential development of land on the western side of Merry Hill, which—if progressed—would take at least some of the following landscape:
Enjoy it while you can, here come the developers:
Part of Merry Hill Walk.