The Magic of February

Elation dressed in white and green

It’s magic time. A denim sky, a soft, if cold wind. Trees beginning to draw up the sap and rattling their branches in the wind, like boys playing sword fighting in a playground. Muddy verges pressed and squelched by cars too wide, with tractor wheels leaving their imprints. A great tit saws the air, a crow caws, winter jasmine hangs from stone walls of country cottages. Legs are still winter stiff and bodies are tightly bound in layers. Yet, its good to be out. Good for the soul. Nothing though, is better for the soul than a road lined with the milk flower of winter, the Candlemas Bell, or as we know it the snowdrop.

A bank of snowdrops lifts the mood

No matter how bad the weather, no matter how hard the ride, a bank of snowdrops lifts the mood, relieves the struggle of fighting the wind and cold. The Roman who brought a bunch with him, carefully wrapped in a terracotta pot, precarious and fragile in his rickety cart bumping its way from the warmth of Italy to the winter cold draughts of England must have thought so too. As they spread quietly across the woods and fields over the centuries, they lifted the mood of the natives with their magic. Monks planted them in abbeys as a sign of purification and hope, cottagers to remind them of the mid-way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, that spring is not so far. Some may have taken them from the woods on dark nights, to eat - the galanthamine within them is said to be a mind altering drug, poisonous too. Today, its chemical derivative, safely made in labs, is used as a drug to relieve Alzheimers.

The Ride

Take the road out of Newbury, towards Enborne and Hamstead Marshall, the downs rolling on either side, copses of green barked oak, hazel and sycamore, their sap already rising, their buds beginning to bulge. The road ambles and twists unhurried, passing clumps of snowdrops, tea green grass, fields farrowed, lumped and brown and horses with coats against the chill, graze. Red kites swirl in the air, a buzzard mews, a sparrowhawk busily darts ahead. Hamstead Park’s huge private estate, with its three mottes and once a home to Queen Elizabeth I, (and where I once broke my shoulder) hides behind woods and walls. Follow the road to Kintbury, where the countryside becomes the embodiment of the landscape painting of Eric Ravillious or John Nash, proper, mystical, English chalk, green rolling hills and cinereous skies.

The rattle of the cattle grid

Kintbury, as ‘village’ as any village should be, thatch, pub, green, cottages once the homes of agricultural workers now ‘desirable commuter residences’, smart, newly painted with modern kitchens and trampolines and large cars to squeeze into narrow lanes. There are crowds of snowdrops along the way, in banks and woods and hiding under hedges. The road continues to Hungerford, over a rattling cattle grid, across the grazed commons which have been commons for over seven hundred years, lined by limes through which medieval strip lynchets can be seen and drop down the hill to Hungerford which is as busy and pretty as any market town should be.

Welford Park

Cross over the River Kennet through Eddington and turn right towards Winding Wood a hamlet on a hill astride the remains of Roman Ermine Street. Down the hill to Wickham whose church tower is at least 900 years old and was once part of the Abingdon monastery near Oxford, whose lands were once bound to provide 40 pounds of wax a year as rent to the abbey. There are more white nodding bells in the February wind, and its along the Lambourne valley to the glory amongst glories, Welford Park. This is the destination. You’ll have seen why as you approached. The winter brown earth covered with winter brown leaves under trees has been turned a foaming white.

Stop and pay the fee

Stop. Park the bike. Pay the small entry fee. Walk on the soft ground in cleats. For all our science and technology, we are still simple beings. That the world is still turning, the earth’s incomprehensible forces are still working.

When surfeited, by nature’s bounty and filled with cake and tea from the tea shop, continue on the road, largely downhill through Boxford and return along the snowdrop lined verges back into Newbury.