I keep watching and waiting - everything is so late this year. Last year the bluebells were up in January and in full bloom by mid-April: now, there are just one or two flowers out, so that when I drive past the long strip under the pines up on Bowden Hill, you catch just an echo of that glorious blue here and there, so faint that it's hard to see in the dim light, but a promise of the wonders to come.
Bluebells en masse are my favourite sight in spring. When I was growing up, there was only one place locally which could present any kind of display: a small patch on the clifftop beside the path that led from Nacton Shore to Levington Creek. I took a photograph of it once, with my Instamatic, and was most disappointed to find that the blue on the paper was a pale and pathetic shadow of the reality. Something to do with ultraviolet, apparently: I don't understand the details, but at least digital technology seems to have sorted it!
But that hardly counted as a bluebell wood. Many years later, when I lived in Watford, I used to take my terrier cross Sox for regular walks in Whippendell Woods, and the ground was flooded with bluebells there, a wonderful sight. That wood was a magical place: there could be a couple of dozen cars in the car park, but you could walk round it for an hour and see one or two people at most. I didn't see such bluebells again until we moved to Wiltshire, and my friend Barbara took me one May to see West Woods.
Barbara was my 'best' friend, in every sense of the word. Not 'best' in the sense that she was exclusively mine, or vice versa, but I felt closer to her than to any of my other female friends. You could tell things to her that you couldn't confess to anyone else, expose more of your inner self, in the sure and certain knowledge that she would neither snitch nor judge, but listen, and offer the benefit of her wise advice only if asked. She was Scottish, down-to-earth, practical, thoroughly rooted in the real world, but she also had a very deep spiritual side, evidenced by her Quaker faith. She loved nature, and particularly bluebells. I had never even heard of West Woods, which lie between Kennet and Marlborough, before, but for Barbara I was willing to take the narrow lane up from Lockeridge, bump over the potholes, and dodge the occasional vast 4x4 coming back down. We parked under slim young beech trees, and I was entranced.
West Woods cover a large area, hill and valley, so that if you stand in the lowest part the slopes of breathtaking sapphire rise above you, like being under water. Every step along the paths reveals new glimpses in the distance. In places the intensity seems greater than the sky above, and the blue contrasts gloriously with the fresh young green of the beeches, and the ancient mossy sarsen stones which litter the ground. If you look at a bluebell close up, of course, it's not pure blue but a captivating mix of shades, from turquoise and royal to indigo and violet, but in the mass - and there must be millions of flowers in West Woods when they're at their height - they are a deep, pure azure in the shade, varying to lilac and amethyst as the sunlight strikes them through the trees. The woods are quiet, just a hint of birdsong high in the branches, as if everything is hushed out of reverence for the marvel below: and like Whippendell, the place seems to absorb people.
The year after Barbara took me there, I went back. It was a pilgrimage, for she had died just before the previous Christmas, of breast cancer. In her last illness, knowing of her passion, her friends had given her appropriate things: a fragrant candle: a hyacinth, which is a bluebell intensified in both colour and scent. I even researched the possibility of digging up some bulbs and trying to force them to flower early, for it was obvious that she would not live to see the spring, but she died before I could put my plan into action. The last thing I ever did for her was to hold the hyacinth up to her face, so that she could see and smell it. Bluebells will always remind me of her, and the fun and laughter we all shared, back in the carefree days when our children were small and life seemed as if it would go on for ever. 'Heaven is a bluebell wood,' she said once to another friend, Claire: and if it is, I know she is there.
'Heaven is a bluebell wood,
I'd bring one to you if I could:
A place where lakes of sapphire lie
Reflected by the April sky.'
Bluebells en masse are my favourite sight in spring. When I was growing up, there was only one place locally which could present any kind of display: a small patch on the clifftop beside the path that led from Nacton Shore to Levington Creek. I took a photograph of it once, with my Instamatic, and was most disappointed to find that the blue on the paper was a pale and pathetic shadow of the reality. Something to do with ultraviolet, apparently: I don't understand the details, but at least digital technology seems to have sorted it!
But that hardly counted as a bluebell wood. Many years later, when I lived in Watford, I used to take my terrier cross Sox for regular walks in Whippendell Woods, and the ground was flooded with bluebells there, a wonderful sight. That wood was a magical place: there could be a couple of dozen cars in the car park, but you could walk round it for an hour and see one or two people at most. I didn't see such bluebells again until we moved to Wiltshire, and my friend Barbara took me one May to see West Woods.
Barbara was my 'best' friend, in every sense of the word. Not 'best' in the sense that she was exclusively mine, or vice versa, but I felt closer to her than to any of my other female friends. You could tell things to her that you couldn't confess to anyone else, expose more of your inner self, in the sure and certain knowledge that she would neither snitch nor judge, but listen, and offer the benefit of her wise advice only if asked. She was Scottish, down-to-earth, practical, thoroughly rooted in the real world, but she also had a very deep spiritual side, evidenced by her Quaker faith. She loved nature, and particularly bluebells. I had never even heard of West Woods, which lie between Kennet and Marlborough, before, but for Barbara I was willing to take the narrow lane up from Lockeridge, bump over the potholes, and dodge the occasional vast 4x4 coming back down. We parked under slim young beech trees, and I was entranced.
West Woods cover a large area, hill and valley, so that if you stand in the lowest part the slopes of breathtaking sapphire rise above you, like being under water. Every step along the paths reveals new glimpses in the distance. In places the intensity seems greater than the sky above, and the blue contrasts gloriously with the fresh young green of the beeches, and the ancient mossy sarsen stones which litter the ground. If you look at a bluebell close up, of course, it's not pure blue but a captivating mix of shades, from turquoise and royal to indigo and violet, but in the mass - and there must be millions of flowers in West Woods when they're at their height - they are a deep, pure azure in the shade, varying to lilac and amethyst as the sunlight strikes them through the trees. The woods are quiet, just a hint of birdsong high in the branches, as if everything is hushed out of reverence for the marvel below: and like Whippendell, the place seems to absorb people.
The year after Barbara took me there, I went back. It was a pilgrimage, for she had died just before the previous Christmas, of breast cancer. In her last illness, knowing of her passion, her friends had given her appropriate things: a fragrant candle: a hyacinth, which is a bluebell intensified in both colour and scent. I even researched the possibility of digging up some bulbs and trying to force them to flower early, for it was obvious that she would not live to see the spring, but she died before I could put my plan into action. The last thing I ever did for her was to hold the hyacinth up to her face, so that she could see and smell it. Bluebells will always remind me of her, and the fun and laughter we all shared, back in the carefree days when our children were small and life seemed as if it would go on for ever. 'Heaven is a bluebell wood,' she said once to another friend, Claire: and if it is, I know she is there.
'Heaven is a bluebell wood,
I'd bring one to you if I could:
A place where lakes of sapphire lie
Reflected by the April sky.'
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