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July
Friday 1st July 2005: Poppies are among the most resilient of our wild flowers, retreating stubbornly from the onslaught of agro-chemicals that annually try to keep them at bay. Even though crops of cereals are treated regularly they can still be seen blooming at the field's edge where they have escaped the sprays and if a field is left either fallow or unused through opt-out, they will thrive anew and provide a galaxy of colour such as here on the outskirts of Baston, four miles south of Bourne, where urban development begins to encroach upon the countryside. Poppy seeds will lie dormant for many years, waiting for a chance of renewal, which is why they have become a feature of disturbed land such as road works and new housing estates, or more familiarly, in the fields of Flanders during the Great War of 1914-18 where trenches were dug as fortifications and so the flowers that sprang up became an emblem for those who died in that terrible conflict.
Wednesday 28th July 2004: The weather was warm and sunny and so in the late afternoon we drove out to Irnham, six miles north west of Bourne, to see the village church that has recently been restored. This was our first visit since last year and there has been some house building since but all of the developments are sensitively designed to blend in with this beautiful village. We came in through Kirkby Underwood and Hawthorpe and entered Irnham from the west, a narrow country road I have used often, but today the sun broke through from behind the clouds just as we were passing the first cottages, providing an irresistible view that I had to stop and photograph. The village church also looked splendid. See Irnham.
Sunday 27th July 2003: Sunday evening is the perfect time to walk around this small market town because there are few people around and very little traffic and every time we discover something new. Today, at around 6.30 pm, we found this delightful vintage car in beautiful condition parked outside the Post Office in West Street. There was no one in it but, anticipating the questions that might be raised by the curious, the owner had left a notice in the back window which said: "My name is Herbie. I am a 1929 Austin Burnham 16.6 and have been in the same family since new. I am used every day and have covered over one million miles on the same engine and running gear and have raised thousands of pounds for children in need. I was used as a taxi during the war and have even stood in as an ambulance. I am 73 years old this year and no, I am not for sale!"
Sunday 20th July 2003: The passing of time is marked by the changing seasons, especially in rural areas where one look at the countryside enables you determine which you are in and a close inspection of plants and trees will also enable you identify the actual month. This is the view from my study window at the beginning of harvest time and the far field towards Dyke village has already been cut while the straw has been thrown out into neat rows to await the baler. This crop was sown last autumn and is therefore the first to be harvested but the wheat in the foreground is a spring sowing and will not be ready for the combine until much later, probably towards the end of August. Ripening corn has a deep rich colour all of its own and seeing it in the sunlight of a summer evening gives us the reason why this time of the year is known as the golden season.
Tuesday 8th July 2003: The town centre looked particularly attractive when we drove in late this afternoon with colourful hanging baskets outside the Town Hall and the Burghley Arms, one of our historic hostelries dating back to Elizabethan times. This facade, which includes the Town Hall on the right, built in 1821, and Lloyds Bank plc on the left, which dates from the late 19th century, is perhaps the best that Bourne has to offer and probably the most photographed and it is therefore a pity that weeds are allowed to grow along the pavement's edge when they could easily be removed with a moment's effort. I took this shot after waiting for some time to find a gap in the traffic and so keep the picture free of lorries and vans and even though it was almost 6pm, the volume of vehicles passing through on what is in effect one of Britain's trunk roads, the A15, was quite astounding and serves as a constant reminder of the urgent need Bourne has for a north-south bypass.
Wednesday 31st July 2002: Bourne has an abundant supply of water from underground sources and yet surface levels along the Bourne Eau always drop during the summer months, particularly when we have dry spells such as that we have experienced during June and July. The torrential rain during this week's thunderstorms has failed to remedy the situation and both the river and St Peter's Pool particularly, are between two and three feet below the normal level with the result that algae blooms in abundance and discarded rubbish looks all the more unsightly. The seven springs reputed to supply the pool produce around five million gallons of water a day but the bulk of this is pumped out by Anglian Water to supply homes and businesses in a larger catchment area as far away as Peterborough and so Bourne is denied its own water to ensure that the river levels are maintained. The result is that our very own beauty spot around the Wellhead Gardens is less attractive than it should be at this time of the year but then that is the price we pay for not running our own water undertaking as we did in years past.
Saturday 27th July 2002: A rare example of a weeping ash tree that has dominated the churchyard at Rippingale for more than a century has been cut down. Tree surgeons arrived last Saturday and within hours, this familiar landmark standing next to the war memorial had been reduced to a pile of logs. The weeping ash (Fraxinus excelsior'Pendula') is not a common sight in Britain but it can be found in some gardens, parks and churchyards and is identified by its long vigorous shoots that grow straight down to the ground from a head of twisting branches, once seen, never forgotten. This example in the shadow of St Andrew's Church graces many a family album because it has been a favourite spot for newly weds to be photographed after tying the knot. Fears for the future of the tree surfaced earlier this year when it failed to produce any leaves and as the weeks went by it became apparent that it was dying and an inspection showed that the trunk was partly hollow and might be toppled by strong winds and cause damage. When it was eventually cut down, a section of the trunk revealed that it had rotted inside, perhaps from a previous drought because the churchyard stands elevated from the main street and would become very dry in rainless periods. Nevertheless, the weeping ash has been a popular village feature that will be sadly missed although the parish council are hoping to replace it with a tree of the same species before the year is out.
Thursday 18th July 2002: Many people who walk in Bourne Wood do not realise that there are two small lakes deep within the forest. It is a long walk to reach them from the main entrance in Beech Avenue but the effort is well worthwhile. These 400 acres of woodland were once part of the primaeval Brunswald Forest covering this part of England and this far point is the most beautiful, quiet and secluded spot, rather like the fairy glades from the stories of childhood. It is a magical place, full of fallow and muntjac deer that can often be seen coming down to the water to drink at dusk. You may also catch sight of foxes and badgers, rabbits and voles, as well as a wide variety of flowers and other plants, butterflies and birds, and on one of our excursions this week, we even spotted an early purple orchid (Orchis mascula), a rare sight, especially at this time of the year. As an added attraction, one of the lakes is also teeming with goldfish and on a warm summer's day, it is possible to see hundreds of them basking near the surface. On this wonderful morning, while the rest of Bourne was going about its business, to school, to work, shopping and whatever, we had the woods to ourselves and never saw a soul during our outing. Go there and see for yourselves and despite the distance, you will return refreshed and your spirits uplifted by the experience.
Wednesday 10th July 2002: The spell of sunshine and showers continues over Bourne although the weather remains balmy with a warm wind known in other countries as the mistral or the Föhn. Today, there was actually a sprinkling of rain while the sun was still shining and then the storm clouds gathered again and created this angry and dramatic skyscape over the ancient Town Hall, its mellow stone lit by the late afternoon sun to remind us that this building has withstood changing weather patterns since it was erected in 1821. It cost under £2,500 to build, which is £130,000 by today's values, and has been in continual use ever since, mainly as a magistrates court and council offices but also for many of the town's major social occasions in past times, particularly an annual ball that was held during the 19th century to raise money for the erection and maintenance of the National School in North Street. The building also once looked a little grander because it was originally surmounted by a clock tower that was destroyed by fire in 1933.
Wednesday 3rd July 2002: Summer is upon us but the weather continues with its unseasonable round of rain and cold although interspersed with welcome bursts of sunshine to remind us that we really are into July. The farmers have benefited greatly from these changeable weather patterns and frequent rainy periods have given a healthy ripening glow to the crops growing in the fields of the South Lincolnshire corn belt. I took this photograph of a storm blowing up over the fens from my study window this week and the wheat growing across this hundred or more acres between the northern edge of Bourne and Dyke village is already turning yellow. The deep furrows that can be seen down the fields are known as tramlines and act as markers for the farm tractor that give the crops a regular dousing of chemicals to keep the pests at bay and on those days, I must keep my windows closed or suffer the consequences. Farming is now an industry and every weapon is used to achieve a bumper crop, as it will be this year, and it will not be long before we hear the sound of the combines bringing in the harvest and another growing season will be over.
Tuesday 17th July 2001: These massive machines are bringing in the harvest at Dyke, near Bourne, although it is not wheat they are cutting but peas. The 300 h p viners have been specially made to cut and collect pea crops and to separate the pods which are then transported to the food processing plant while the vines are jettisoned behind as haulm, to be either ploughed back into the soil as fertiliser or collected for animal feed. Peas are big business in this part of South Lincolnshire and the Christian Salvesen factory in Bourne will be working round the clock for more than four weeks to process this year's yield which will be frozen for onward transmission to the packing plants and then on to the shelves of the big supermarkets, as fresh as the day they were picked. See also The Pea Harvest
28th July 2001: The countryside around Bourne is slowly turning a golden yellow as harvest time approaches because the county of Lincolnshire is the biggest producer of cereals in Britain with almost 500,000 acres devoted to wheat and producing 11.5 per cent of the national total. Soon the fields will hum to the sound of the combines as they bring in the harvest and farmers pray for fine weather until all is safely gathered in. At Rippingale, five miles north of Bourne, the corn crops cover the land up to the very edge of the village and here to the south is a ripening field of wheat with the pinnacled and embattled 15th century tower of the parish church of St Andrew's on the skyline, surrounded by the red-tiled roofs of the homes, both old and new, of those who live here.
7th July 2000: Acres of corn can be found in the countryside around Bourne at this time of the year in various shades from green to yellow as the wheat and barley crops begin to ripen in readiness for the harvest. But there are some fields that were not sown this year as part of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy of reducing corn yields, a system known as set aside in which a proportion of farmland is left idle, although farmers are fully compensated. This means that the land escapes the usual applications of herbicides and wildlife is therefore given a chance to assert itself. Seeds that have been lying dormant in the soil burst into life unhampered, as has happened here on land alongside the country road between Manthorpe and Wilsthorpe, where poppies and oilseed provide an unusually colourful landscape and a reminder of what our countryside might look like if agro-chemicals were never used again.
15th July 2000: Another path, another wood, this time at Callans Lane Wood to the west of Kirkby Underwood, a mainly deciduous forest with many oak trees and masses of bluebells in spring. There are a number of forest walks here and the route of an old Roman road runs through it. The woodland also contains the remains of a military camp from the Second World War and although the huts have gone, the brick and concrete bases remain although now overgrown with mosses and other plants. We were walking in this wood one evening when we looked back down the track and saw a large black, loping animal crossing from one section of the woods to the other. It was too big to be a cat and the wrong colour or gait for a muntjac and so we were unable to identify it and although we do not subscribe to the theories of black panthers loose in our countryside, the sight of this creature did start us thinking and its appearance is as yet unexplained.
20th July 1999: Electricity pylons have become a familiar sight in the fields of South
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