Chesham: Herbert Revisited

Chesham: Herbert Revisited
18 July 2002

Location	Chesham, Buckinghamshire, OS Explorer 181. This is more or less the same walk I took earlier this year in January. But in another season things look very different. Herbert's Shed however is still there and still worth photographing.

Weather	Partly cloudy clearing up towards evening.

Click on the images to see larger versions.


	Elder flowers. White stars in the dark green of a hedgerow and with a very distinctive scent.

My new camera was in the shop at this time so I used the old one. When I came to the field at Rose Acre with all the poppies I was really sorry. I took loads of pictures and with the Sony they would have come out beautifully. But the old Fuji just can't deal with this intense a red. This is the only photo where there is any detail left in the red flowers. In the others the flowers just look like red holes.

	The camera could deal with this kind of photo. Even if it turns out darker than it would with the Sony. Still, I like the blue tractor on the other side of the valley.

Looking back to where I stood when I took the previous picture. The horse chestnut is bursting with leaves. It's such a nice contrast to the stark photos from January. The foliage shows some yellow, probably because of the prolonged drought we had at this time.

	This mallow has a pink that I find irresistible. It's the perfect baby pink. The species is Malva moschata. You can tell it apart from M. alcea by the hairy sepals. The sepals are the green leaves that support the petals, the pink leaves.

Here we're starting to climb the hill up towards Hundrige Manor but looking down on the bridleway along Herbert's Hole.

	Further along and this time we're looking back. You can just about make out the shed above the hedge in the right of the pictures.

A field scabious in delicate mauve is found by the bridleway along Herbert's Hole. The Latin name is Knautia arvensis. If you like the pin cushion flower, you'll be happy to know that you can buy seeds from Thompson & Morgan. Frankly though I find the native species more attractive than the supposedly improvements in the cultivated varieties. After all it's the airiness that makes the plant attractive in the wild.

	A hedge bindweed, Calystegia sepium, is trying to colonise the bridleway. I find the sheer variety of flowers in summer very exciting. There's always some new dots of colour around the next corner.

And here we have arrived at Herbert's Shed. Now that I'm familiar with it from my last visit, it's easier to go for the detail shots. This is a mellow brick wall.

	I believe this kind of door is called a Dutch door. The two half-doors are very useful when you want to keep animals such as horses or dogs on one side of the door but still be able to see out and get fresh air in.

The wooden door has aged to a graceful silver.

	A hook was used to hold the upper portion of the door open. This photo would be a lot less interesting if it weren't for the bit of blue nylon rope.

The zink trough is still there by the crumbling wall.

	The field behind the shed was full of wild flowers.

I'm tempted to just call this a Queen Anne's Lace and be done with it but that would be a bit sloppy. This is clearly an umbellifer - it has white flowers held in a flat-topped cluster. Each individual flower stalk comes out from the same point on the stem but they are of differing lengths, so that the end result is a cluster of flowers that looks a bit like a lacy parasol. The flowers are almost always white, some times pink. So it's easy to identify an umbellifer. What's harder is to keep the individual species apart. There's certainly no way of doing it going on just this photo so I'm not even going to try. Let's just call it a Queen Anne's Lace, OK?

	A Small Tortoiseshell butterfly is feeding on a blackberry flower.

The last photo of the day is of some white petunias in an urn in the churchyard of Chesham. They smelled heavenly.