"Paths to freedom and to childhood dear"

Unbroken sunny days have baked the landscape so dry  it seems that autumn is upon us already.

After a busy day  chez nous we made a brief sortie to the nearest little bay for a swim,  a close examination of kelp, and a run around to snuffle up picnic crumbs, according to individual preference.

The footpaths are dusty and clear of overgrowth as a result of  the drought. This old gate hasn't been opened in a while. I'm repeatedly struck by the absence of animals in the fields and paddocks. Twenty years ago there would have been sheep and cows and horses grazing or seeking shade under trees. Farms and cottages, their old Welsh names changed to something easier to pronounce,  have become holiday homes where strangers park their big cars outside and shout and laugh around barbecues and sun loungers. Small local shops have closed because the big supermarkets are better stocked, and deliver.

There's nothing new in harking back to the past like this. Two hundred  years ago the East Anglian poet John Clare lamented the loss of the moors when the acts of  enclosure gave the rich the right to take over the open land on which the poor grazed their animals and grew their crops, and to carve it up into private fields with gates, hedges and fences.*

Some of our land will indeed return to a state of nature where 'its only bondage is the circling sky' and some will be used creatively by folk with vision  but will there be people with the skills and knowledge to rebuild the crumbling dry stone walls along these winding paths and to remake the traditional hedges that have become such valuable wildlife corridors? I hope so. 

*https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/articles/its-only-bondage-was-circling-sky-john-clare-and-enclosure-helpston