The English countryside

 Apart from a small handful of visits to the UK, my knowledge of the English countryside is entirely based on the extensive literature that describes it, in both novels and poetry. While I am sure that it is beautiful in all seasons, spring is quite extraordinary, with lush vegetation and a constantly changing array of wild flowers and butterflies. I stayed in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire for most of May, and we went for walks nearly every day, in what has been observed as the sunniest spring in recorded history in the UK.

View over barley fields

Much of the English countryside is taken up with farming, but the fields are lined with natural vegetation and interspersed with miniature nature reserves and reclaimed meadows of wild flowers. Even golf courses have natural woodland on their perimeter, fully accessible to the public, and great for walking the dog.

Public pathway adjacent to a golf course

In the south of England, there is a gradual transition from the natural landscape, traversed with cleared pathways, and the adapted landscape. Frequently one finds a natural watercourse alongside a canal, the latter often at a different level to facilitate the movement of barges. 

The river at Berkhamsted

We visited a long-boat (barge) market on a canal at Berkhamsted, near Chesham, which had a river running parallel, but several metres lower down. The entire water network, natural and manmade, is traversed with a multitude of beautiful bridges, many dating from the Victorian era and even earlier.

The Union Canal at Berkhamsted

The most noticeable feature of our walks was the natural flora: when I first arrived, buttercups were everywhere. The bluebells had also started flowering, but we only went on a search for a bluebell wood a couple of weeks later - many of the wild flowers have a very short flowering season, so we thought we had missed this renowned event, but my photo shows that we were still in time to see this spectacle in the Penn Forest.

A bluebell wood at Penn in Buckinghamshire

Just a week later, the bluebells and buttercups had disappeared, and the fields were covered in white daisies! Among the dominant flowers can be found a wide variety of much smaller and less  prominent species, such as scarlet pimpernel and miniature wild orchid. 

A field of daisies near High Wycombe

In this photo, I have included my finger for scale - the detail of this orchid is quite extraordinary.

A wild orchid

Throughout the UK, there is a concerted effort to restore natural meadowland, replacing mowed grass with a much more environmentally responsible alternative. This is also visually more interesting, changing with the seasons and with a far greater variety of species. It also supports a more diverse bird and insect population. It also reduces the need for water in the infrequent dry spells, and the lack of mowing eliminates the pollution from mowers. The signage often associated with this restoration is interesting - no doubt a response to complaints from citizens to their local authority that "the grass has not been mown".

Restored wildflower meadow near the centre of High Wycombe

The other noticeable feature of the English countryside is the cleanliness: we always made a point of collecting any litter we found on our walks to put in the recycling bins, but this seldom amounted to more than a couple of items. Dog walkers are also meticulous about cleaning up their pet mess: this is partly through strict legislation, partly through public pressure and also because there are many conveniently located dog litter bins on the more popular pathways.

The total litter collected on one day's walk

It was such a contrast to come back to South Africa in late autumn, with the yellows, ochres and khakis replacing the lush greenery of an English spring. The change in scale was also quite dramatic - even the natural landscape in England seems to be in miniature, with the exception of some extraordinarily large trees, several centuries old.