Raw

A penetrating wind is not something to tempt people out of doors in the early hours when low cloud is swirling around. And it comes after weeks of similar challenges. Yet we do it and mostly are glad. Later on the spurtle stirs better for the stimulus. This raw quality that deters many can also bring rewards and deeper understandings of real life in the natural world.

Perhaps we should see it as educational. Shouldn't all young people get some experience of the rawness of nature by observing closely how other lives cope? A valuable education would be to empathise with wildlife that survives in conditions not imagined by centrally heated man. It's never a bad idea to get a different perspective. Watching carefully edited wildlife programmes in voyeur mode is not the same as being out among the wild animals themselves. Nor is it the same to ride briskly past on two wheels stopping only to chuck away an empty sports drink can. As for the local conservation industry's ideas on education they can be safely dismissed as propaganda.

Even the common birds at our Olde Wall Cafe were desperate for the scraps this morning.

And the deer herd looked wearied by it all; coats are now often fluffy and untidy having put on extra denseness to compensate.

Our young from last year were among the group moving through the woods away from the open areas. Doubtless they had been hoping for the sun to make an appearance which it did much later in the day.