A Walk To Kedleston

Take watercolour peach, lavender blue a canvas morning sky, the clouds a frame, gilt treetops harvest fire, leaves brightly hued awakened now the arbor tips became. Lone footprints in the dew on virgin track save leaping of a brook or crossing stile, the journey was for now, no looking back just savouring a moment for a while. Beyond the Churchyard, entering the glade across the tired bridge with rusty nails, stream cuts its way through earth, a gentle blade, carved notches from my youth upon the rails. From here onward the footpath comes and goes it hides and peeks just like a timid child, in stretches bare, the place each walker knows and where a hedge gives choice it blossoms, wild. Now finally the sunrise takes a hold and burns away the morning's misty glaze the speckled droplets revel in their gold on bark and branches clothed in mossy baize. Adam's masterpiece comes into view Palladian and clad in smooth dressed stone beyond, the bridge where Cutler Brook runs through where ends this walk since childhood I have known. Switch on the phone and head for home again thus ends these precious hours of feeling sane.