Thanks to the recommendation of both Jon Illes and Bill Jackson, this was our destination today, via the Huntingfied Queen Oak. We both felt so good to be away from a computer screen and out into the land around us, particularly here where the land folds and ancient coppice edges the narrow lanes.
Surprisingly Ubbestone Church, where our footpath began, is in private hands. As Simon Knot succinctly says: ‘I am afraid that you are not going to be able to see the Norman doorway, or anything else for that matter, because this was one of the dozen or so churches sold off by the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich during its brief flirtation with lunacy in the 1970s.’ (He does come round and at the end is full of praise for what the owners have done)
Ubbeston wood lies on a hill, and I was delighted to find is fundamentally a Hornbeam wood.
The wood edge follows the now dried up Blythe river, and is lined with fabulous examples of both coppice and pollard hornbeam, maple and ash. One particular ash had roots like hair cascading down to the Blythe stream, except clear to see were two magnificent tangential roots parallel to it’s branches above ground.
The footpath took us along the Blythe and out to a private drive which we used to cut back down to the road, for the easier walk back and even this gave us surprises, with a fabulous pollarded maple and a ditch edged with old hazel coppice each one fanning out from a large base.
I recognised the private drive – it was where Turk used to work, and around the corner a stall of veg for sale, where I picked up a bag of delicious home grown tomatoes to slow cook in the bottom oven of the Aga. (It’s the first day of my regime – and food is close to the top of my consciousness all day!)
We returned to play a game of scrabble (very close at the end) watching Simon Rattle conduct in an empty Albert Hall, a prom including Elgar to Adès and Gabrieli to KurtĂ¡g and finally Vaughan Williams’s Fifth Symphony. Brilliant and strange. The social distancing of the musicians and empty space enabled the hearty trombones to be in boxes, trumpets in the choir. Good lighting.
Kaliwood 