Skylarks, George Orwell and me

Just logged on to the 5-day forecast and wished I hadn't, since it reads: Cloudy, Light Rain, Heavy Rain, Heavy Rain, Heavy Rain. After some good jaunts out since the start of the year, I am getting cabin fever. Apparently science has proved that Spring advances from the south-west at approximately two miles per hour, walking speed, oh wouldn't it be lovely to take boots and staff to Padstow May Day and keep pace with it all the way back home.

The brisk breezy days in February did yield some very satisfying walks on the coast. I even managed to get myself off the default setting, which is: train to Cromer, follow the water's edge to Overstrand and back along the clifftop path, or vice versa, depending on the state of the tides. Either way, there's always time for a nice pot of tea and a scone in the Rocket House at the end. Just for a change I stayed on the train till Sheringham - what a nice bustling friendly little town it is, no wonder they don't want Tesco squatting at the top like a giant cane toad - and headed off along the cliff path to Weybourne Hope, into a stiff north-westerly which made me glad I had nipped into the Sally Army shop and invested 50p. in an emergency woolly hat, albeit one that made me look like Care in the Community (as my best friend said darkly, "There is a reason why hats end up in charity shops"). I had forgotten how attractive this area was, with ragged clay pinnacles at the edge of the cliff and quite a respectable line of surf beating the pebbles below, the dark smudge of the wooded ridge inland and the lovely long curve of the bay at Weybourne stretching into the distance. Memory had also erased the rather steep hump with the Coast Watch lookout on top, but I thought I coped very well considering I was carrying the extra weight of a Denby coffee pot! (that's charity shops for you). A very popular route, this; I briefly enjoyed the company of a dear little bright-eyed dog whose owner said, "He's a real Norfolk terrier". "Does that mean you can't tell him anything?" "M'mmmm......"

Anyway, the really magical thing about this walk was that once clear of the golf course there were suddenly skylarks soaring and singing and diving into the rough grass at the field edges. I know they are merely braggart males in search of a mate but to stand and follow that little twittering speck as it flutters higher and higher against the sun and then tumbles into the graceful swoop back to earth, well, it just gladdens your heart, to be free and out in the open and not chained to a photocopier and worrying about the Board agenda!

So let us give a cheer for George Orwell, writing in April 1946 after a run of almost unendurably long and harsh winters:-

'At any rate, Spring is here, even in London N.1., and they can't stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can't. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, Spring is still Spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.'

I'll drink to that.