I wake up in a meadow just outside Misterton. Crows are fussing loudly above my head. Caw. Caw. There’s something urgent about them. Then the soft lilting of pigeons. There are minor changes every minute. There’s a Scots pine above me and the first light is amongst the branches like a fire that is just starting. A shower of elderflower catches the sunlight, turning the white splashes to peach. I’m outside Crewkerne and an early train is passing. It makes a gentle oooo like the hooting of the owl. It’s a small dawn chorus. It’s 5.30.
There is no sign of bunting in Seaborough. Just the drunk hum of bees in lime trees. It reminds me of growing up at Church House. In the church a crusader lies prostrate in the church, his helmet on and faded by years. Above his head a dedication tells how Ralph de Vallibus was given Seaborough Manor in the time of Henry III. He was a crusader at the siege of Damietta in Egypt.
Above him a beautifully preserved stained glass window is an inspiration in the morning light.
After I leave the church I look across the gravestones down into the valley where the River Axe in its upper reaches winds its way like a young eel. I will follow it as it grows and maybe even feel its embrace it at Weyford weir.
Approaching Drimpton I walk into a small arena for horses. Four dogs all run towards me barking.
A wiry man in a zip up wool top and jeans walks out of the barn
‘Be quiet!’
Mike Combs is 78 and been working with horses since he was 6 when his brothers forced him onto a pony that they wanted to break in.
‘I was dragged through hedges and brambles. I said I’d never ride again.’
‘Then when I was 14 I went to see a hunt. I said I’d like to have a crack at that.’
He became a whipper in, looking out for the fox and answerable to the master of the hounds.
‘I would go hunting seven days a week. I loved it.’
He has ridden with the Seavington, Taunton Vale and Exmoor and says it’s as strong as ever.
He breeds show ponies. He says he’ll have no rest this weekend as he’s showing at the Bath and West show.
‘Oh, I’m a royalist through and through. We’ve sold ponies to the royal estates.’
He has broken two vertebrae and also has a big scar across his stomach where a stallion suddenly attacked him for no apparent reason
‘I don’t know what happened with him.’
His wife left him for a master of hounds when their daughters were 7 and 10. He brought them up on his own. And he now looks after his 90 year old sister who has dementia. He points towards a static caravan next to the stables.
As I part I say ‘It sounds like when you go to bed at night you can pat yourself on the back.’
‘When I go to bed at night I’m too bloody tired to do anything but go to sleep’, is his reply.
It’s been over a hundred days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We’ve got used to the ubiquitous blue and yellow flags of Ukraine but this week we’ve seen more Union Jacks flapping and flattering in suburbs, city streets and along country lanes.
It’s 70 years since the queen came to the throne this weekend. It’s never happened before and I doubt will ever happen again.
Is it fanciful to think how different would things be if Charles II had been captured and executed in that strange autumn of 1651?
I tramp through the village past cottages and bungalows. A man with white hair carries a large Union Jack on a stick and props it up at the end of his cottage under the wysteria.
‘Lovely day’ I say.
‘Not bad. Not bad.’
The Slow Walker 