Night Walk

Night Walk.

The moon is three quarters full and large banks of cloud are moving quite rapidly across the sky, their moonlight shadows undulating across the moor. There is still enough illumination to see right to the horizon but the details of the trees and the stone walls cannot be made out.
There is a different scent in the air on a night. The damp heather and peat linger in the atmosphere with no daylight to dilute them.
We are walking, the dog and I, along an empty bridle path. I am carrying a torch but once it is lit all the feeling of the evening disappears at once.
On the left the strip of field is about three feet higher than the path and is fenced by higgledy piggledy pig netting and wooden stakes between old hawthorn stumps.

Badger, my border collie, runs on excited to investigate. There are two small black shapes on the grass in the field close to the fence. They are two hedgehogs, possibly getting ready to mate. They are totally engrossed with each other and take no notice of either me or the dog.
Part of me wants to stay and see if they are going to mate, prickles and all, then I feel the best thing is to leave them alone.

Around here there is no light pollution so the heavens are displayed in all their amazing clarity. You don’t have to look up there for long to be frightened by the infinite size of the vista. My brain starts to think what is at the end of it? The bits I, as a mere mortal cannot see?
Then when the clever space professors start to tell us that there is no reason why time cannot go backwards – well that is the time my brain cannot grasp anymore and I step back a notch and just look on in awe.

We are approaching farm buildings on the right and the flickering flight of a couple of bats catches the eye. They swoop very close to us soundlessly. The steady improvement in house rooves and insulation has slowed down available bat sleeping quarters.
They do manage to get into our small church. I do the flowers and vacuuming once a fortnight and bat poo graces the red carpets now and then.
On rare occasions a bat has made a mistake and flown in an open window. An owl sometimes again very rarely, flies through an open window or door.
I cannot see any owls tonight but I can hear one screeching about a mile away in ghostly well-spaced intervals.

Past the farm buildings the bridle path opens up and rabbits and the odd hare are I know moving about in front of us unseen.
There has been a temperature drop since the sun went down and if I look high up to my right I can see a local patch of fog about twenty yards long. A stranger would have difficulty fathoming out why it is there. On closer inspection it is a remote bomb crater made by a damaged Second World War Lancaster Bomber that had dropped its remaining bomb load to make a safe landing home. This it later did.
The actual crater cannot be seen until you are right on top of it and there is no natural access. The mossy water pool at the bottom is now the happy undisturbed home of many frogs.

We frighten two sheep (and ourselves) in the pitch dark shadows of a large ash tree. They bound off bouncing on all four feet together before breaking into a trot.

There is a distant hum of a milking machine and the rattle as gates are opened to release the cows back into pasture.
A couple of kennelled for the night border collies bark as we pass the farm nearest the village. They actually know us quite well but it is their job to bark if people pass on a night.

The road into the village is bordered by bushes of elderflower and a few sloes. Just the job for home brew!
At the end of the tunnel of bushes are the village lights and the as yet uncurtained windows of the pub.
I’ve still not lit my torch!