High on a Dorset heath, where wind rattles the heather

Hardown Hill, Dorset I skirt the old quarry workings, swamped in spring with bluebells and now swathed with rusty bracken

Old Bottom, as the Marshwood Vale was once called, has filled with autumn rain. Walking means slogging, ankle deep or more, through cold, claggy clay, navigating puddles of yellow water overhung with dripping trees. Time to escape the woods for higher, drier ground.

Hardown Hill is one of a circle of hills and forts ringing the vale. Steep sides of deciduous woodland and gaps of rough pasture run up to a flat top of heath where nightjars call in summer. The summit is open, unfenced common land, home to sand lizards and occasionally Dartford warblers. Villagers used to cut the heath for fuel. Gorse was particularly prized in bread ovens because it burned quick and hot before disintegrating into an insignificant pile of fine ash. In Dorset dialect, gorse was furze, pronounced "vurze", just as fox was "varx".