The Joys of January

At last there has been a break in the endless rain. Not quite sunshine; the clear skies overnight meant that the day began in a soup of perfectly immobile mist, but once the sun hauled itself properly over the horizon, I was pleased to see it, peering in its ghostly, white form, through the airborne murk.

I set off down the Whitestreet Green road towards Homey Bridge (now no longer bridgeless, since the county council recently invested a reputedly immense sum of money replacing the previous one, which had a couple of broken planks). Frozen drops of overnight dew hung like clear beads from the ends of the spindliest snow-berry twigs, now devoid of their previous burden of fat, white berry-beads. They could not fall, like normal dewdrops, as there was absolutely no breeze to give them any movement.

The sides of the road have collapsed in many places, following several weeks of very cold temperatures and heavy rain, so walking along the edge of it is now like negotiating a series of miniature fjords. Today, some were iced over, while other patches of invisible, black ice lay in wait for the unsuspecting boot. Three unidentifiable ducks (or were they geese?) flew circuits over my head, making a piercing sound I had never heard before from a duck (or goose). They added to the mystery of the morning.

The mist had wiped out every trace of colour from the landscape and the sky and repainted it all in shades of grey and white, so the green tunnel of Homey Bridge made a stark contrast. But not for long. About 30 metres down the lane, a large, ivy-laden branch had fallen right across the track and there was no way through. I retreated again to the roadside.

I followed the road past Polstead pond and went over the stile to the steep slope of Bell Hill. The view from the top was of more grey and white. A herd of sheep, also in various shades of grey and white, had gathered by the kissing-gate exit from the field. A single, dark brown individual, standing out from the crowd, eyed me intensely, one outsider contemplating another.

I followed the footpath to the top of Marten's Lane, then took the footpath on the right, along the top of the conifer woodland, before crossing the road to take the path through a large field towards Withermarsh Green. A fellow walker came towards me out of the mist and seemed surprised to see me. We were the only moving objects in the whole landscape. The total stillness also gave that rarest of things in our road-swamped countryside - total silence. It was broken only by a brief "Hello" to the other walker and then by distant sounds from many species of bird in the far-off hedgerows. It was not so much birdsong as the strange noise of the misty morning itself.

The sun was nearly breaking up the mist by now and the temperature was rising. However, there was still ice sealing the tops of some of the puddles as I turned to the right down the path towards the Withermarsh Green road. The ice crust was wafer thin, fine and daintily ridged as a Prue Leith pastry case.

I had expected a display of snowdrops along the lane, but they were disappointingly sparse. Most had not yet even reached the pearl-earring stage, let alone the full-on green and white galanthus showboating of late January. Perhaps last year's mast-year plenty has exhausted them and they are taking a gap year. A single branch in the hedgerow strung with bright holly berries came as a shock of scarlet in this colourless morning. Further along the road, a pair of buzzards heaved themselves off their lookout post and wheeled round trying a find a thermal, a hopeless task in the still air.

I followed the road past the Catholic church and turned left on to the road at the T-junction at the end. I soon came to a stop again, at an enormous puddle which filled the entire road, from hedge to hedge. To my right, in the valley beyond a five-bar gate, the flooded water-meadows were studded with moving black dots which must have been some kind of water bird, impossible to identify at this distance without binoculars, although I could hear their cacophony even from here. Swans provided contrasting, white highlights to the scene, which was not so much Suffolk as Lake District.

It was lucky that I stopped by that gate to look, as a huge truck came lumbering down the tiny lane at that moment, also filling the entire road, from hedge to hedge. I was safe by the gate, but the wake from the trundling giant as it ploughed through the puddle sent up a muddy wave which reached my boots three metres away. OK, problem solved, then: I might just as well jump through the puddle, from shallow point to shallow point. I got past it with surprisingly dry socks.

I turned right at the end of the lane, then right again down the "Quiet Lane" towards Shelley. Three vehicles immediately appeared, one after the other, necessitating more retreats from oncoming traffic, this time up the bank to the side of the road. I turned off the not-so-quiet road as soon as I could and took the footpath to the left, along the side of a field, which leads back to the road between Stoke and Layham. About 50 metres into the field, I stopped in surprise again: there was a strange scent in the air, almost impossible to detect when I sniffed for it, but clearly noticeable when I carried on walking. It was spicy, sweet, perfume-like and totally unlike any plant scent I had smelled before. It followed me some way down the footpath, as I searched for clues in the hedgerow and last year's dead grasses, but it remained untraceable and mysterious.

By now the mist had lifted mostly from the flatter ground, although banks of it still hung in the air. A woodland on the other side of the Stoke to Layham road emerged from it like a huge ship on the horizon. Shelley, in its dip in the landscape, had sunk to the bottom of a white lake.

I turned right at the road and then left to head back towards Polstead. Another dark brown sheep, lone among its grey-white herd mates, watched me pass the orchard where they were grazing. A delightful octet of ginger, black-spotted piglets greeted me next. They were having a mud party, enthusiastically snouting the deep, wet mud in the corner of their field and chomping on something unknowable that they were finding in it, while their trotters made squelchy, slurping noises as they moved around. I noticed that they had a mud-covered football to play with when the mudlarking stopped keeping them entertained.

I turned left on to Pope's Green Lane to return to Polstead Heath. I was expecting floods and was not disappointed. In two places the road was impassable. At the first, I was forced to scuttle through a hedge and along the edge of an adjoining field. At the second, I climbed cautiously through the budding hedgerow trees along the bank at the side, with deep, dark, muddy water threatening to engulf my feet if I lost concentration for a second. A solitary crow flew over, talking to itself in triplets of deep croaks. Perhaps it was commenting on my slow progress or wondering why I didn't just fly across the flood. Wish I could.

I turned right at the end of Pope's Green Lane and back through Polstead Heath. Turning left down the road towards Polstead Green, I found it had become a water-course. This was no puddle, but a proper river, flowing along merrily, conveniently just on one side of the road. The colour of the water was astonishing. I spent some time looking at it and trying to decide how it could be described. My best attempt was that it looked like a mixture of posh pistachio matcha latte and over-milky tea made from the cheapest, reused tea-bag. Why it was that colour is inexplicable: it has been a January walk of many mysteries.