The Wild Side of the Long Mynd | Wild Ponies
During last month’s heatwave, wildfire tore through woodland on Rednal Hill in the Lickey Hills, just south of Birmingham. Temperatures exceeded 40C for the first time ever in parts of the UK, and in Birmingham we had two days of 38C. I’ve never experienced heat like it, it was so incredibly uncomfortable.
Thankfully the fire was quickly brought under control, and the families who live nearby who had been evacuated were able to return to their homes. This evening Ed and I went for a walk on Rednal Hill. To my amazement, ferns and bilberry are already beginning to rise from the ashes. There’s something poetic about witnessing sap green growth emerge from scorched earth in late August, when everything else is beginning to die back as summer fades to autumn.
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On Thursday, Ed and I made a daytrip to Wales to hike up Sugarloaf. We walked the same route in the summer of 2018, so it was lovely to go back do it again after a few years. The highlight for me was seeing the wild ponies from the summit, and then walking through the ancient sessile oak wood ‘St Mary’s Vale’ which hugs the hillside in the valley in which Abergavenny sits.
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