Читать книгу Walking in Kent. 40 circular short walks and day walks онлайн

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Shortly after parting with a handshake, we found a log in an elm tree’s shade, and perched ourselves on it to eat our picnic of home-made bread with cheese and salad from the allotment, drank a flask of tea and basked in the gentle warmth of late July. The head of a green woodpecker appeared from the meadow grass. Then it disappeared to attack something unseen by us, before rising with a yaffling cry and flying away towards a line of willows with that familiar riding-the-waves swooping flight we’ve seen so often on our walks.

There was not much in the way of birdsong; summer is too far advanced for that. But the air was thick with other sounds – the soft buzz and hum of insects that are all too easily dismissed as ‘silence’. There was the summery smell of the countryside too; warm grass and honeysuckle, almost – but not quite – overpowered by sheep dung. (This is a sheep-grazing county, after all.) And there were no distant views to be had from our log seat; just a half mile of meadow, then a block of trees to deny us the hills we’d walked along in the morning. But we were happy, and we knew it. We needed nothing more.