Peace and quiet

It was just over six months ago that I posted about a moment when, for me, time stood still and there was nothing but peace and calm in my world. I had taken a walk over the South Downs on a glorious spring afternoon - you can read about it here. I have done the same walk several times since without experiencing quite the same degree of solitude and quiet but I had high hopes yesterday. The weather was unseasonably warm, albeit not yet reaching the temperatures we are promised for the end of the week, and being a mid-week afternoon I figured most people would be at work.

Things started off reasonably well, even though there was a muted roar from the traffic on the main road half a mile or more away. The wind just happened to be in the wrong quarter. Then the engine of the police helicopter broke the almost silence. But that soon vanished, only to be replaced by the chug-chug of a tractor's engine as it refilled the fertilizer hopper on the back of another tractor.


Before we reached that, however, there was the distraction (for Fern, my springer spaniel) of three students sitting beside the path with a picnic lunch. I had no sooner managed to get Fern past them than she was nearly run over by a cyclist storming down the narrow path. Then she saw the farm hands beside the tractor a little way across the field and just had to go and say hello. When two of them came back across the field, over the footpath and into the next field where their Range Rover was parked, Fern followed, yelping sharply as she touched the electric fence. The farmer and his man climbed into the Range Rover and roared away across the field to check on the sheep. Meanwhile, the tractor engine was chugging more loudly as it made its way across the furrows.

I could still hear the tractor when we met a group - about 20 or so - of youngsters making their noisy way down the path. Why were they not in school or college, I wondered, instead of adding to the disturbance of my afternoon. By the time the noise of their chatter had died away the peace was being shattered by an overhead jet - Easyjet, I think, since I could see the bright orange tail livery.

Then Fern saw something in the stunted hawthorns growing in the field we were passing. Taking shelter from the heat of the sun was a herd of cattle. Now Fern doesn't "do" cattle and I had quite a job persuading her not to run back to the car but to come on a little further. And it was only a little further before I gave in and turned for home, only to be met by that group of 20 or so youngsters who had also turned round.

I have once before seen a helicopter on the lawn beside St Mary's Farm cottage and there was one there yesterday. As I glanced across the valley I saw the rotor blades start to turn. Sure enough, the sound of the engine soon filled the air. Eventually the pilot took off and chased his shadow along the valley in an easterly direction. It was a few minutes before the noise of that engine died almost to nothing, but by then a biplane had appeared just to the south and the pilot of that machine started practising aerobatics, looping the loop in particular. By the time he had looped half a dozen loops, the St Mary's farm helicopter had completed a wide sweep to the east and was heading back towards me in a westerly direction. The biplane moved north out of the way and then flew off altogether.

Chasing his shadow.

As the helicopter disappeared over Stanmer woods, we approached the lunching students. They had actually finished their lunch by then - but that didn't stop Fern going to see if there was anything left for her. Then the traffic noise impinged on the peace of the afternoon once more, complete with the two-tone horns of a police car or ambulance.


Not the most peaceful walk I have ever had across the loveliness of the South Downs.