Sharpham House - retreats, reedbeds and rewilding

Even on a wet winter’s day, nature’s beauty can still astonish me. Here’s a pond I’ve walked past countless times, but it was only yesterday that I suddenly realised how picturesque it was and was inspired to take a photograph of it. Perhaps it was the season revealing the bones of  the corner.

 

Pond. (I wanted Ellie in the view but she raced off to bark at something at the critical time.)

I love tree skeletons, and here is a row of them that caught my eye as I sat in a soggy field a few days ago having my quiet moment.

 

Tree skeletons

I’ve now been on my retreat (mentioned in the previous post - I lied about the timing) and it was a wonderful experience. Beautiful warm house, fabulous setting, excellent teaching and lovely people. Here are some pictures.

 

The view from my room. That's the River Dart you can see below.

The house was built in the eighteenth century and here is its marble staircase - lethal if you're not wearing proper shoes

As a result of the retreat, I’m trying to meditate regularly - currently short sessions three times a day. The explanations make it sound so simple but the practice is anything but, and the more I try to meditate the more questions I have about it. Maybe I need to go on another retreat, such as Mindfulness for Beginners – another Sharpham event that’s caught my eye.

I do feel different though, so I perhaps I did have the ‘reset’ I wanted.

Here are some more of the pictures I took at Sharpham.

A sunrise from my room

A strange henge in some reedbeds down by the Dart

Pristine mudflats and reedbeds stretching back upriver towards Totnes. I spotted herons, geese, seagulls and a little egret, but I know such habitats are of international importance and I'm sure there was a lot more that I didn't spot. (It's drizzle, not my technique, that's misting the picture.)

Sharpham is rewilding a chunk of land leading down to the reedbeds, but I didn't have time to get much further than this information board

Meditation and Mindfulness

In a couple of months I’m going on retreat to Sharpham House in South Devon where I’m hoping to learn meditation and mindfulness, geared towards those who feel burnt out. Well, I’m certainly that. It’s now nearly four years since Frog died and discovering how to function without him has been non-stop on every level. As my sister said, I need a reset (not to mention a rest).

As you might have picked up if you’ve been reading this blog, it’s the ‘spiritual’ side of life that’s got me through so far. I don’t like the word spiritual as it sounds pretentious, but I don’t know how else to describe that part of me in a simple way. I also have trouble describing the quiet times I take while out walking the dog since I don’t actually meditate in an official way during them as I’ve never been taught how to do it properly. Hopefully the retreat will help with that.

The entire dog-walking period is a sort of meditation, I feel, as even if my brain is whirring throughout I always feel better afterwards, and often the whirring is interrupted and I’m stopped short by the beauty around me. Which is astonishing, given that I’ve lived in my current house for 45 years and been walking the surroundings for most of that time. Every day, it seems, there’s something new to see. 

And here are some recent photographs of some of those moments.

On a misty murky early morning at the beginning of the month, as I wondered what point there was in me still being alive, I almost missed these two jewels under my feet. I’m so grateful I didn’t step on them.

Feather

Toadstool

Here is a corner I found recently for one of my quiet times. I’d never sat here before and I couldn’t understand why not. I’m under an oak tree (as you can see from the fallen leaves), there are no houses staring at me, I'm hidden by trees and bushes, I can see to the horizon, and there’s some wildness around in overgrown hedges. All the criteria I unconsciously look for. 

The perfect spot for a quiet sit-down. Ellie obviously likes it too.

I encountered this lovely and perfectly framed view for the first time as I walked home along a lane I use almost every day. My house is the furthest white blob in the middle of the picture.

 

A new view of my house (the furthest white blob in the middle)

Here is another route I’ve walked countless times. On the day of the photograph, in spite of mud and puddles, the approach of winter, indifferent weather and stupid worries that were wearing me out, I looked ahead and my heart was lifted.

Mud, puddles and Ellie

Book restoration

In my post 'Along the Grand Western Canal', I mentioned the wildflower book my parents gave me for my eleventh birthday in 1964 and which I’ve loved and used ever since, to the extent that it was falling apart. I couldn’t replace it, not only because it’s out of print but also because it contains six decades’ worth of my plant-spotting notes.

I am pleased to report, therefore, that it has now been meticulously restored by Celandine Books of Wiveliscombe and I’m thrilled with the result. The book has kept all its character and turned into something beautiful and usable again.

 

Before

After

I'm not sure the same can be said of me, but I'm working on it.

A Devon beach (Budleigh Salterton) a few weeks ago

Kinder Rising

In April this year, the Right to Roam campaign organised a mass trespass and trespass-swim at Kinder Reservoir in the Peak District, Derbyshire, in memory of a 1932 trespass on Kinder Scout, the Peak District’s highest point.

The 1932 trespass was in protest at losing access to the wild hills and moorland of the area. These were a lifeline for inhabitants of nearby cities like Sheffield and Manchester, pretty grim places at the time, but landowners had begun to fence them and keep people out. 

The trespass led eventually – a long time later - to the establishing of National Parks (1949) and long-distance footpaths (1965). However, as the Right to Roam says, the business is unfinished. See my earlier post for the shocking facts about how little of our countryside (about 8 per cent in England, for example) is, even now, open to us.

The Right to Roam made a moving film of the day. Do watch it.

In the film two people, Alex and Jo, talk about what nature means to them and Alex in particular expresses what I feel, but he says it so much better.

Like Alex, I love to sit quietly in nature – to think and dream and breathe and connect, to just be - and I try to do it every day. I like to find new places, and I like to find somewhere I can’t be seen. Here are some recent hideaways. (I've lived here long enough (45 years) for the farmers to tolerate me, so I'm not trespassing, but they do all think I'm a bit of a loony.)

 

An early morning, inside an oak hedge

On top of a hill camouflaged by long grass. (Spot the dog.)

 

Underneath a giant oak tree, with its canopy reaching to the ground all around me like a tent.

Dog Dementia

Ellie arrived to live with us a few months before I started this blog, which makes her 15, a good age for a dog.

Ellie at one year old

Physically - apart from deafness, cloudy eyes and wonky back legs - she’s doing pretty well. We still walk a couple of hours a day. She still chases rabbits. She still beats the bounds every evening, marching round the garden barking. She still enjoys her food.

Ellie and me contemplating the bluebells, spring 2024

Mentally, however, it’s a different story.

About a month ago she started barking through the night. I tried everything I could think of that might help – ignoring her/going down to see her, letting her out for a run round the garden, putting an unwashed t-shirt in her bed so that the scent comforted her (something we did when she was a puppy), light on/lights off, in her crate/out of her crate, crate covered/crate uncovered.

Then one morning before breakfast, she vomited her supper undigested and later on in the car had a funny turn, retching, howling and shaking. I took her straight to the vet and they tested her blood, x-rayed her and scanned her. They couldn’t find anything wrong. 'Has anything traumatic happened to her recently? they asked, but I couldn't think of anything. 'Probably a touch of dementia then,' they said, prescribing both painkillers and a sedative to be on the safe side. Nothing changed. Then they prescribed sleeping pills. Still no change. 

And now, weeks later, we’re both exhausted and still she barks. I wish I could talk to her. I wish I could find out what’s wrong. But sometimes I think there is no rhyme or reason to it all. It’s just her brain breaking down. It’s heart-rending.

She follows me around during the day and barks when I go upstairs and leave her behind. (She’s too weak to climb the stairs now and too heavy for me to carry.)  I could sleep downstairs so that she can be near me during the night but it would be a huge disruption for me and, selfishly, I’m resisting. I'm experimenting with the ramp she uses to climb into the car.

I wish Frog was here to help.

Frog, with Ellie as a puppy

It's not time for Ellie to go yet, but when she does go, it’ll be another huge chunk out of my life. Who knows where I’ll go or what I’ll do then.

A quiet moment in March last year