UK – Marshfield – April 14th – May 7th 2020

Lucky in lockdown

So, on 14th April we packed up our belongings from Karen’s bedroom and garage, loaded up our car and drove to our new temporary ‘home’ eight miles up Tog Hill to the Cotswold village of Marshfield. We did so during lockdown without anyone stopping us to challenge whether our journey was essential. Karen had also loaded her car with our boxes and was on hand to tell anyone who asked that the journey was, indeed, very essential! 😉

I was born and raised in ‘the Marsh‘ which I left to be with Glen 35 years ago. This was two years after we met, and I have never returned to live here before now.

Ever since I met Glen I have enthused about how I grew up roaming the valley and bridle paths to the west of the village in an area known locally as Bulls Hills. However, for some reason I had never taken him there. It had become a bit of a family joke over the years, so I could hear a drum roll and applause in my head as we finally climbed over the stile into the first field. 😆

We once fished for newts in what is now just a dribble of a stream.

We haven’t walked the entire length of Bulls Hills to Cold Ashton yet, to Glen’s frustration. To be honest I’m too frightened of coming across some cows! I will have to wait until after lockdown, when we can walk with other people….. safety in numbers and all that.

As a child, living in Marshfield it meant we could happily roam around exploring the countryside for miles around, all day, armed only with a bag of sherbet from Ada Jones’s shop next door (now, coincidentally, converted into the house, which we are staying in now) or Rouse’s Sweet shop in the village. The tangy coloured sugar was served in a little flimsy white paper bag. We licked our finger and dipped and double dipped our grubby hands in to the bag all day without any thought of germs. (Oh how I miss my pre-OCD days!)

When I was a bit older I would take my penknife to whittle sticks without a second thought of it having the potential to “have my eye out!” Those were the days, no worry about someone abducting you or running you over or getting lost. Carefree days.

My friend Kay and I would make perfume out of flower petals, having collected them in a matchbox. When we weren’t doing that we would walk to Ashwicke to a barn which we believed had a shrunken head in it! (I obviously had a vivid imagination even back then.) I ran along the little lanes around the village pulling the seeds from the ends of the long grass on the verge until I had dozens of tiny ‘cuts’ from doing so. I loved living in the countryside.

As a teenager the fields and bridle paths felt more of a barrier to the exciting world of Bath and Chippenham, with, annoyingly, the last bus leaving Bath before the pubs called last orders!

Now all grown up and having explored much further than the initial pull of nearby Bath, I can see the benefits and delights of living here. I am certainly seeing it all with fresh eyes. We both feel very fortunate to be spending lockdown in such a beautiful village with magnificent countryside on our doorstep.

We have the added bonus of living next door to Mum and Dad so we can see and speak to them over the fence during their enforced shielding, observing the 2 metre lockdown distancing rules…. although Glen said he feels the need to get a cattle prod to enforce this at times! Also, it is lovely to be able to see my brother and his family, as they live at the other end of the village. Happy days during these difficult times.

Now what was I supposed to be saying? Ah yes, the wooden post below, which we came across on a footpath, confirms that we are in the “Cotswolds – an area of outstanding natural beauty”. Like I said, we are ‘lucky in lockdown’!

The sight of a cow in a field off Green Lane, or coming across the local grey cat which meows by Mum and Dad’s window to be fed treats, was not a surprise.

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To have come across a field of wallabies at the bottom of Sheepfair Lane, however, was a tad unexpected!

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The spring flowers, trees and hedgerows full of blossom in the very unseasonably warm sunshine was a lovely welcome back.

Since moving here last month we have been on so many walks in every direction around the village. We’d often seen white bluebells but didn’t think much of it until we read that they are extremely rare in the wild. So, we spent several days re-tracing our steps to find them, to ensure we hadn’t imagined it. One day we walked 8.8 miles searching for them. We finally found them and took a photo.

On the other hand this Arum maculatum is a common woodland plant species.

I’ve just read that ‘…it is known by an abundance of common names including snakeshead, adder’s root, arum, wild arum, arum lily, lords-and-ladies, devils and angels, cows and bulls, cuckoo-pint, soldiers diddies, priest’s pintle, Adam and Eve, bobbins, naked girls, naked boys,  starch-root, wake robin, friar’s cowl, sonsie-give-us-your-hand, jack in the pulpit and cheese and toast. The name “lords-and-ladies” and other gender-related names refer to the plant’s likeness to male and female genitalia symbolising copulation.’

I used to call it cuckoo-pint as a child, not sure why. I’m not convinced that the above list of names are all as common as the above piece claims. You never know what is true and what is ‘fake news’ these days….. well actually you could never be sure that any written word or verbal claims are/were true, not matter how long ago they were written, but we wont go there.

When we saw this tractor in the distance I thought the farmer was watering the newly planted crop in his field. Glen said he thought it was some sort of chemical/pesticide being used. When the tractor drove right by us we could see that the driver had a mask on. Now either Glen was right, or the farmer was just very concerned about the coronavirus despite basically social distancing himself by being some 6 metres from the footpath, let alone 6 feet, seeing as he was in the middle of nowhere.

With the UK government still advising against all but essential international travel we thought we were unlikely to be anywhere near a runway any time soon…..

But then we came across Marshfield’s very own runway! Gaston Farm airfield at the east of the village.

I am happy to walk through a field of sheep, but like I said I’m not prepared to walk through a field of cows. It’s not helped by the fact that I was once chased by a cow in Bulls Hills and have never got over it, although I remember that I got over the high gate out of the field pretty quickly at the time!

A view on our way to Ashwicke, across the fields.

It wasn’t our intention to walk miles across the fields to Ashwicke, but best laid plans and all that… We had walked down the track to Ringswell and up through the woods and across a field. We could see back to the village which was down through a large field of cows! I told Glen that we had better re-trace our steps back through the woods and up the track as I couldn’t walk through the cows. We could see a a couple of people walking through the field of cows so when they came up near us I asked if that was the only way back without me having to face my fears. They said the only other way was to walk further in the opposite direction though three fields to Ashwicke and then back along the road for a couple of miles. Now this wasn’t a problem as such, because we have been walking for miles each day. Four miles regularly and as many as eight. The problem was that I was already needing to pee! Keeping that to myself I realised I would like to give the detour a go, Dad was borne in Ashwicke. Anyway, the lovely couple kindly proceeded to join us on the beginning of the journey to point out the way across the fields! I hoped and prayed that they did not decide to change their route and walk back the entire journey with us! I felt sure I would have to coupy down to relieve myself at some point!

Luckily they made their way back once they took us to the top of the field. Now, I have heard ways of how to make yourself wee if you feel you want to go but can’t: sniff peppermint oil, bend forward, and other more intrusive suggestions. However, I hadn’t any idea of how to stop myself wanting to go. I said I could never coupy down as a child and I wasn’t going to be able to do so now. Glen rolled his eyes and said that I had coupied down countless times around Asia on squat toilets so what was the problem? Well ramblers walking by was the problem! or ramblers in the distance with a pair of binoculars! 😳 I’m not sure why I am sharing this with you! I think I am subconsciously trying to make up for the lack of temples and exotic food in these UK blogs. 😄

The above photos don’t really need any explanation but the Shoe Tree below probably does.

My brother had told us about this tree. Apparently someone in the village nailed a shoe to it and, well, it seemed that so did a lot of other people over the years. Why the first person did this is the question I would like answered. So if anyone reading this knows the reason/story then please let us know.

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To me, the photos of the little pigs below are not that good and the surroundings uninspiring. However, they had previously run towards us making the most amusing noises of what we assumed was excitement for what they presumably thought could have been someone coming to feed them. We just wanted to make sure we remembered meeting them.

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Everyone is talking about how the pollution has reduced around the world during lockdown and how the sky is now so blue. Well it does seem so here. It’s difficult to show it in a photo. The day we were walking by this field, the clouds seemed to frame themselves around this tree. (Glen had his long zoom lens on so couldn’t capture the whole scene for you, seeing as we were on a bridle path and couldn’t get any further back.)

I have written in a previous blog – when we were in Busan, South Korea – about this ‘sticky’ thing that grows in the UK. It was when we got covered with a similar, if not more painful version, in Korea as we walked up through an overgrown area on a hill overlooking Gamcheon Culture Village.

As I said in that blog, the UK’s sticky version is called ‘Goosegrass, Cleavers or Sticky Willy Galium aparine’. Again I do wonder about the names. 😳😂

I said then how we used to pick these up to feel the stickiness and put them on our clothes or skin not realising that the stickiness was actually tiny hooks and barbs that stuck in to your skin as opposed to it! You can see them here if you zoom in on Glen’s photo.

The pandemic is affecting all sorts of things in everyday life even up here in ‘the Marsh’.

We love how the people in this house in the High Street have put a mask on their bust of Shakespeare and copied out this poem which mentions an infection.

I was delighted to find cowslips. I’ve always loved these wild flowers.

Once back home you just can’t get away from reality.

Or even during our walks around the village.

People in Marshfield are very kind and thoughtful. They photograph and post on the Marshfield Facebook page if an item of clothing or toy is dropped along a path.

As we walk around the streets and lanes we see things that have been left out with “help yourself” signs. I had a very quick look in this crate of books and Glen took a photo as I was doing so. It wasn’t until I looked at this photo when we got home that I noticed that one of the books was an old Ladybird book about Florence Nightingale. I kicked myself for not taking time to look through them all at the time because I would have loved to have looked at it. It is particularly poignant at the moment of course.

You do have to be careful about leaving things outside though, say if you are unloading your car, just in case people think you are leaving things for anyone to take! Lol!

A friend of mine also kindly left this little chap on our doorstep one wet afternoon! No explanation other than to say his name is Sidney!

I love the view as you walk down Weir Lane, and how you can see the fields of Blue Park above and through the old tumbledown building.

At the bottom of the lane is the pond which has tadpoles in at this time each year. It always reminds me of when Mum and Dad used to take the girls there when they were little. One day we came home to find two old sweet jars on our doorstep. Mum and Dad had caught some tadpoles and delivered them to us. I spent the next day, which was very hot I remember, digging a pond in the garden. Happy Days.