Cycling home at dusk, the lane ahead rises pale like smoke in the fast-dying light, ushers me along, almost mesmerised by its twists and turnings. My eyes search ahead for the far-most point and the tall hedges either side pull towards and past me as if on wheels themselves. Perhaps I’m actually performing some curious circus trick, cycling on the spot while everything around me moves, the scenery shifting silently.
Lane-side oaks describe huge arcs against the sky, their riddle of branches entwined with newly woken stars. Blackbirds and robins sing their last plaints of the day, and I disturb a small rookery sending the throating birds out from their perches. A clamour of cock pheasants flap in overblown panic as I pass. Then the soft, enquiring hoot of a tawny owl from a stand of big oak trees seals the fate of the day.
Passing through Lower Treverward, the big barn on the lane side is unlit. Inside the soft pallid shapes of ewes, some with new-born lambs in quartered pens. It is quiet and calm and the only sound is the soft, sharp rustle of fresh straw and the occasional blurting of a lamb. The barn seems charged with expectation and a sense of quiet occasion
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I press on home, eyes adjusting readily to the growing dark. Sheep are scattered like dim lights on the hillsides. The rhythmic flash of the moon in wayside puddles guides me along and the bats, the moon and I glide down together between the black hulks of hedges.
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