Deep in the furze

Up betimes, and out of the door by six of the clock. Or, more accurately, out of the tent flap. Packed and left the conifers without breakfast. It was a long hard slog over to the gorse field with so much to carry. Definitely more weight in the packs since I arrived but probably less on my body.

It was a still and silent morning, a thin mist softening the landscape like a watercolour wash. A pheasant erupted from almost beneath my feet with loud carks of alarm and the drumming of woodpeckers accompanied me for the first mile through the woods. A long hard pull up to an escarpment edge and then two counties were laid out before me, as indistinct and imaginary as an ancient map. 

The gorse field is separated from the woods by a rusty barbed wire fence whose untensioned strands hang from rotting posts. Hardly a barrier for determined livestock but awkward to negotiate. Lowering the packs over the fence, I wriggled underneath it and then surveyed what appears to be an impenetrable barrier of spiny, prickly gorse. At my feet a very faint track led through last years dead bracken between some trees and vanishes from sight. When I followed the track delicately, a small fox-sized and fox-scented opening appeared in the vegetation. Like Beetle,  pursued by Stalky, I wormed my way into the gorse, through a fairish tunnel that after a few twists and turns, opened out into quite a large grassy clearing. Perfect.

With the maturing day, the clearing is a warm and sunny spot and there is enough room for the tent, a fireplace sunk in the turf and to loll around with a book, undisturbed by gamekeepers. However, rations were low and  so the afternoon was devoted to a trip into town and a search for internet access.