A last flare of summer among the rocks

Today the sky is washed-out blue silk with pearl-grey ribbons trailing. The scent of dying leaves mingles with honeysuckle as the sun rises; buttery light spreads over patchwork fields, illuminating snapshot moments: a circle of cows, a squabble of hens, donkeys and even alpacas the colour of mushroom caps and conkers.

I am walking the lower slopes of Bosley Cloud – the name is derived from the Old English clud, meaning a rock; it lies on the Cheshire-Staffordshire border near Congleton, a few miles from the Peak District national park. Notices nailed to trees tell of sheepdog trials. At the farm there are logs, small hay bales and free-range eggs for sale. The plaintive song of a robin comes from the allotment, I hear it among the neat rows of beans, peas and shaggy-headed dahlias, but can’t see it. Above, there is the twittering babble of swallows gathering on telegraph wires. Hedgerows glisten with silvery spiders’ webs, scarlet rosehips and clots of blackberries. Somewhere in the distance a gun goes off and a flock of wood pigeons take flight.

Black sheep stare vacuously over a dry stone wall. There are sprawls of purple heather and outcrops of rock, as I scramble along the narrow track. At the top, I spot a cherry-red helmet and lime-green shoes. “Climb when ready!” the woman calls to her partner below, a wiry man clipped into an orange and black striped rope. Tinny jingling like cowbells and glimmers of silver: nuts, cams and hexes. I admire their daring but am content to simply enjoy the stunning view over the Cheshire plain. Until I glimpse tiny twists of lilac-blue tissue catching on grasses; when I pay close attention I see they are harebells.

As folklore has it, witches used juices squeezed from the flowers to turn themselves into hares; the Victorians believed fairies slept in the bells. Small clumps of frail flowers flickering on wire-thin stems, a last flare of life: bittersweet, signalling the departure of summer and the arrival of autumn.

Forty Years on the Welsh Bird Islands, the 2015 memorial lecture in honour of the late Country diarist William Condry, will be given in Machynlleth on 3 October by Professor Tim Birkhead. More details at thecondrylecture.co.uk