I do sometimes feel as though I’m living in a series of Country Life magazine covers – and there’s nothing wrong with that! Increasingly the dry grasses in the farmlands are being cut and baled, and the resultant stubble burned – a precaution necessary in the heavily forested hills. The memories of some horrific blazes a short four years ago remain in the minds of many locals – and the words ‘never again’ are uttered each time two or more woodsmen meet. I still find the expanses of green rye-grass fields amazingly at odds with the otherwise decidedly wintry landscapes, and the winter this year – so many tell me – is the coldest in recent memory. There is snow on the Drakensberg mountains just beyond Nottingham Road – I must try and get myself there while it lasts.
Although not totally obvious here, the air is frequently thick with a haze of smoke, that rather like the mists that will soon return, create a soft grey light filter which fades the mountain skylines into the sky, creating an almost water colour painting like effect in landscape images.
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