Wood Near Steppingley

It is more than a year since I visited the woods close to Steppingley, and the last time it had been so wet that I had been unable to reach the top of the hill where I had earlier taken a landscape photo from the edge of the woods. This time it was the polar opposite it was so dry that you found yourself walking through sand, the approach starts wide and potholed, but once you enter the woods the track narrows to become a heavily rutted path, and so you just have to park the car as there is insufficient room to turn around.

The path twists and turns as it winds upwards and although there were avenues off to the right I knew I had to keep to the edge of the wood to reach my destination beyond a long dead fallen tree. The path tends to be concave with gently sloping sides occasionally crossed by roots, or carved into twin tracks from the passage of tractors and Land Rovers. I met a few people as I climbed, but as the day progressed I met more, some with dogs, some couples, and some cyclists, but no horses. I enjoyed the various views the paths offered, the backlit leaves that glowed in the spring sunlight, and the small young leaf clusters that sprung from the trunks of some of the trees.

The only sadness was that where there had been two wooden post structures making a gateway the posts that had been to the right now were placed with the other on the left, so the view of the fields beyond was no longer framed as before. The view has lost its symmetry.