Our Rural Retreat Near Worcestershire
After weeks of cloudy skies and rain, it’s been fantastic to get out in some late winter sunshine at the end of February. We took the photo above from the locally called ‘Cardiac Hill’ (which leads to Birchwood) looking towards Halesend Wood, which, to the east (the left in this picture) extends towards the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire.
We were pleased to see that Woodlands (the furthermost away property in the middle of the picture), now approaching two years old, is beginning to weather-in and increasingly look part of the 150-year-old former farm buildings that make up the hamlet where we now live.
Viewed from Woodlands, the northernmost Malvern hills are easily seen on a clear day: End Hill, North Hill, Sugar Loaf and the Worcestershire Beacon, as seen in the next photo taken from a drone over Woodlands.
Linda was born in Malvern and spent her childhood in Worcestershire. I spent some 40 years living in Kent (a welcome difference to London where I’d otherwise lived and worked) and where, at the time, I thought the openness of the rural areas and the scenery was great.
I saw things differently when Linda and I moved to Worcestershire while we looked for a building plot for our ‘forever’ home, eventually finding one just over the border in Herefordshire. For me, on the border of Worcestershire and Herefordshire, I have found this an idyllic place to be. The countryside views almost everywhere in both Worcestershire and Herefordshire are extraordinarily beautiful, even in the bleaker months of January and February. And our neighbours, and the visitors on foot, bike and horseback to the area around Woodlands, are invariably friendly. This ‘rural retreat’ is both brilliant for its environment and for the people who we meet in it.
Living in an ‘upside-down house’ – we build Woodlands with our bedroom and living area upstairs to take advantage of the views – creates a sense of serenity and happiness. There is something different to see throughout the year and almost whatever the weather or time of day.
There is also a comforting feeling of sharing where we live with a variety of wildlife.
On the right is a photo we took of an owl that settled for a while in one of our hedges during the recent snow, taken from our dining room.
And at the bottom, is a juvenile buzzard we saw on our recent walk up Cardiac Hill’. We like to think it’s the same one that visited last August visible from upstairs at Woodlands and shown in the middle photo.
Too quick to photograph, we have also seen muntjac deer in the plum orchard – visitors from Halesend Woods – as well as young foxes playing in the snow in the pear orchard, and evidence of badgers and other visiting animals leaving trails in the field and orchards.
And in addition to rabbits and grass snakes in season, we are also visited daily by pheasants and a variety of small birds. One of the pheasants is brave (or is it cocky?) enough to be hand-fed by one of our neighbours.
Amongst other nocturnal visitors are bats, some of which roost in the bat boxes we’ve put on our house.
And as we enter March we see the beginnings of Spring. There are wild snowdrops growing in various places and in great abundance along many roadside wooded areas. Crocuses and early daffodils are bursting out of containers at Woodlands. And trees and native hedging is showing that they have survived another winter with new buds beginning to show.
We also hope that the some couple of hundreds of metres of new mixed hedging that we planted last year, and the existing hedging that we’re gradually restoring, will create homes and transport corridors for a wide variety of insects, mammals and birds over the coming years.
For us, Woodlands is a retreat – a fantastic place to be in – but also somewhere that’s easy to get to other incredible places in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and beyond.
We’ll talk more about things to do nearby in future blogs.
Linda and Andrew