I went out in the van yesterday. The weather didn’t improve, but it didn’t get significantly worse (ie start actually raining) until I was ready to drive home.
In Sainsbury’s I didn’t buy sandwiches, but bacon and baps (as well as dark chocolate and ginger biscuits, and mini Reese’s peanut butter cups – can’t go out in the van without chocolate).
At the country park I went where I always go, to one of the car parks near the ‘dog activity area’, up among the trees. I set off to walk – going downhill, which is not a good plan because then you have to go uphill on the way back, so I circled around, scrambling between tree stumps and bramble patches, moving roughly parallel with the road. This is my usual route – plunge off in between the trees as far as the cycle track, head uphill towards the large car park where the toilets are, make use of the facilities then wander back to the van and put the kettle on.
There were occasional flashes of light between the trees when the clouds briefly parted, but not being a proper photographer, just a point-and-click merchant, my attempts to capture the light shining off twigs or patches of grass were obscured by the contrast between the dark ground and lighter sky creeping in to reduce the exposure. Not a twig twitched in the still air, no rustling in the tree-tops, not even any bird sounds, just the drone of the motorway in the valley.
It looked as though the area where I was had been managed in rotation – there were patches with individual bramble twigs a few inches high, like the ones that pop up in my garden, others where they were spindly bushes maybe a couple of feet tall, still spaced out but close enough so you couldn’t walk between them, and later, up near the toilets, proper overgrown briar patches. I wondered about this, it must have been cleared at some point, presumably chopped back to the ground or uprooted (again like my garden). I didn’t think it had been done by grazing, I don’t think there are any grazing animals in the park, and anyway, does anything eat brambles? Maybe goats – definitely no goats around though.
I went back to the van and lit the camping stove. I couldn’t find the frying pan – must have taken it out to wash up and not brought it back, I suppose, like the cups that other time. But there’s a grill pan – not that I’ve ever used the grill – so I used that on top of the stove. I found the removable handle in the drawer and attached it to the grill pan, but because it was on a slope the pan slid and the flames caught the handle. I managed to grab it in time and blow the flames out, but the plastic had melted so that now the detachable handle doesn’t any more.
But the bacon baps were delicious.