Outside the weather seemed reasonably calm for an end of winter sort of day, the sun lazy on the horizon, still not completely risen from the depths of a dark night, but enough to shed the day's dreams of pink warmth as it managed to stealthily reflect its unobscured glow from behind whispy clouds of cotton. The gentle winter breeze still sharp as it bit into the bones & came to an abrupt halt around a scarfless neck, then shivered its way elswhere. The sun again slipped ruthlessly behind another ominous looking darker cloud turning the air briskly cold, the edge of which seeped among the hollows of the nearby wood. The overnight rain had sheeted down & left its mark with scattered puddles reflecting the hedgerows in their usual places lining the side of the lane. The snow from a week ago had almost been washed away & still left traces of gritty chunks dolloped in various corners of the garden. Blackbirds fed on the faintest of apple windfall scraps in between clumps of rain sodden grass, where the plot sloped gently beside the small pathway which lead to an old cider barrel nestled close to a wall near the front door. In the summer, pansies of dark crimson & blue grew almost wild in between the old bricks of the pathway, that had fallen down from a cottage chimney down a long track on a farm.
In the lanes, a few early primroses peered out from beside tuffs of wet, rain glistening grass, a gentle yellow with their centres pale & delicate. Clumps of tall, green edged snowdrops grew in various corners of the garden & around the base of a large bay tree & scattered themselves here & there on the way to the village. The nearby lane turned a sweeping bend & dipped down past a farm with old crooked windows tucked under a sloping thatch. Overhanging oak trees opposite, stood ageless & bare in the winter light, their twisting knotty trunks solid in the high, wet, rain sodden banks. The lane narrowed as it passed the farm & continued on up to a crossroad with a turnpike cottage close to the road on one corner. Its small long garden winter bare but for a few new shoots appearing on the straggling woody bases of a few elder trees. Dead nettle stalks poked out from around an old water barrel propped under a rusting downpipe beside a small outbuilding.
Turning left, many fields adjoin a narrowing sweep of the lane toward the bottom of a hill in Horshoe Lane, wooded both sides in places where the hunt use to roam in between the thickly grown deciduous trees & banked beside the roadside. Further past a small intersection, a large estate stretches wide with its sprawling grounds & plant nursery close to a river with gardens visited by many in the summer. Centuries ago, once a priory in the days of King John, Forde Abbey stretches alongside the Axe river that sometimes overflows its banks nearby covering the lane that crosses a narrow humped bridge.
The lane straight ahead by turnpike cottage runs down a hill past an elegant two story Georgian house with its sweeping driveway edged with roses & cherry trees leading to a swimming pool at the back of the house. The gracious old gentleman who once lived there swam each day the lengths according to his age. A scattering of cottages near a farm almost opposite, lay beside the lane with different coloured wooden doors & neat summer flowered gardens & shrubs within stone walls leading down near the centre of a pretty Dorset village which nestled into a sloping hillside now dappled with a late winter sun throwing its gentle light cascading throughout the hills & valleys. At night an occasional barn owl haunts the night with its cries as it flies low over the hunting grounds of tree dotted fields & mist filled river valleys. The soft ochre coloured walls of the village church with golden leafed autumnal trees, lie close to the grassy churchyard opposite the village shop.
Various shaped & painted cottage doorways line the narrow main street that holds the village in a captivated time warp of family orientated life & a history listed in the Domesday book.
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