Posts for Ghyll

• Friday, 5 Jun 2026 6:45 pm

  Walking Ghyll, 5 June

  Writing these is cathartic, and also is a reason to stop and look at the trees so I can do environmentalist virtue signalling on my blog that I suspect very few people read.

  In the field, Ghyll bounds amid big heaps of clover, thick and dense and cream and pink. The bees are out, and the little gnats and flies that feed on pollen, and at one point Ghyll even chases a little brown butterfly.

  

  

  

  On our walk yesterday Sam and I spent half an hour looking up trees on Google Lens, distinguishing alder from beech from elm from cherry. Now I notice that all of the cherry trees on Moor Lane look really raggedy, with holes chewed in their leaves and brown fringes and lichen caking their spindly branches. There are two tall sycamores overhanging the path, though, and the shade they cast in the lateday sun is delightful.

  

  Walking Ghyll

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  Wednesday, 3 Jun 2026 4:04 pm

  Walking Ghyll, 3 June

  As I’m putting on Ghyll’s lead by the door, I hear rolling thunder. I used to hear thunder a lot, but for whatever reason we don’t get much thunder or lightning in the UK. I put on my waterproof trousers: I got them for the Fellsman but then wound up not needing them.

  

  

  Ghyll balks in the rain at the end of the drive, but by the time we reach the field, a gap in the clouds blows over us and we’re granted a brief spell of sun. The grass is wet and the baked ground has developed a thin slick film of clay. Puddles gather here and there. Everything’s fragrant: I sneeze.

  Ghyll Walking

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  Sunday, 31 May 2026 9:08 pm

  Walking Ghyll, 31 May

  Cooler again. Wearing a sweater this time. It's past 9pm but the sun is still shining on the clouds way on up at twenty thousand feet. Higher still some wispy cirrus stuff is being blown from the northwest.

  

  

  Ghyll has a poo the consistency of wet gravel. Is this what I'm writing about on my blog nowadays?

  

  Speaking of gravel, someone has come by and filled in a bunch of potholes. That's nice of them.

  The hawthorn blossoms are giving way to the elder I mentioned a couple days ago. It's funny how quick it all comes and goes. The Japanese would have a field day with this sort of thing but here in Wingate you're riding by too fast on your electric motorbike to notice.

  

  Ghyll meets a smallish golden retriever called Mila and they run around while I chat with her owners. They tell me that the big field where Ghyll runs around has been protected as a biodiversity offset for the new estate. Apparently they're planning on planting 7,000 trees and putting in gravel walking paths. I think that's terrific.

  When I get home I look out the window at the fading light and notice that the foxgloves in the garden are blooming.

  Ghyll Walking

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  Thursday, 28 May 2026 7:41 pm

  Walking Ghyll, 28 May

  Cooler tonight, no wind.

  I notice a tree with a big goblet of flower buds and leaves that I don't recognise. Then I notice it again so I ask Claude what it is. Elder. It quips that I ought to come back out to collect the flowers for champagne, as if I know what to do with elderberry.

  

  

  

  Some kids out for a walk, and a guy in a big flat Audi edging gingerly over the potholes outside the fishing pond, but otherwise we see no one. The hawthorns are all dropping their petals and the ground is littered with white spots. Ghyll keeps close.

  Ghyll Walking

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  Sunday, 24 May 2026 7:00 pm

  Walking Ghyll, 24 May

  Quiet evening, breezy and warm. A couple of lone, highup clouds: one of the first proper days of summer. Out in sandals and bits of gravel keep getting stuck under my feet. When I let Ghyll off the lead, he browses lazily in the field. I climb up one of the mounds and notice some black sheep in the field across the way, which over the winter was enclosed with a new wire fence. That’s new.

  Down on the lines the ground is covered with wooly catkins. I point my phone at them and ask Claude what they are, and it gives me 4 different answers, none of which seems right. Then I ask the Woodland Trust’s tree ID app and it claims alternately oak and whitebeam (rare). Turns out that it’s goat willow.

  

  

  

  Lots of folks walking dogs this evening, enjoying the setting sun. It's still warm even as our shadows stretch dozens of feet out ahead of us. When they pass, Ghyll and I step off to the side and he sits calmly as they go by. But when we get near home he starts pulling because he knows that Sam will have left a morsel in his bowl.

  Ghyll

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