A small portrait of Monty:
Monty was a Welsh hound according to his owner Alison, and we would occasionally meet up on our daily walks round Bath racecourse. I loved Monty for his clownish face and bumbling manner, Alison said of him that he had two brain cells, occasionally they collided and a thought occurred! Moss took little notice of him another dog to walk round with, but Monty had one failing, he chased deer so that a careful eye had to be kept on him. Walking in snow, his large paws would get clogged with the stuff and he would get more and more miserable till in the end he would sit down and refuse to budge till every bit was scraped from his paws.
Deer there was aplenty round the fields, and one day spying some he chased after them, disappearing for a long time, so that Alison had to phone husband and son to start a search party. I joined in and we hunted high and low, in the woods, three hours later I was in one of the lower fields and Monty wearily appeared through a gate, exhausted but still happy, and as I wrapped a lead round him and phoned his frantic owner I wondered where his adventure had taken him.
The Wood
The Wood
So what sparked that story? well it was an email from our friend in Cornwall this morning, who sent a link about a dog find of about six million pounds worth of gold coins on the owner's Californian property, and then said that he was keeping a pup back for me from Jan a border collie when she is eventually bred from, to wander with around the Cornish moors.
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| The above photo showing the two dogs and the grandstand in the background, also shows though long since vanished the small runway of a temporary airfield run in the second World War. |
The wood in the above photos are a magical place but were neglected, very boggy, in years gone by they had been coppiced, and great hazel stools were everywhere. At the edge of the trees in spring violets and primroses carpeted the grass, and I can see them even now.
Violets are appearing in the garden, they are wild, and must herald a time when once this small piece of land was woodland.
