A baleful buzz disrupts the valley of Hope

Abney Moor, Derbyshire Despite the proximity to the Peak District's honeypots, a feeling of remoteness pervades here

Around the musically winding path leading up Bradwell Edge, spring is thickening into its richest texture. The meadows are rampant with cow parsley, the shade is restless with midges and the hawthorn blossom is dense as clotted cream.

At the top of the ridge my friends and I lie on a blanket of grass and look over the Hope Valley. Sunshine swells over the fields and lights up the cement works, while a pair of buzzards drift along the skyline, occasionally stopping still in some unseen updraft with an almost kestrel-like precision. I wonder how it feels to tread air like that, to be your own parachute, senses attuned to the subtlest ebbs and flows of the atmosphere.