Harcourt Hill – Ewelme – Huntingland - Ewelme Park – Harcourthill Shaw

29 July 2007

• Total distance: 8 miles
• Steps : 17,555
• Start point: Lay-by on A4130 between Nettlebed and Wallingford, at the first signpost for Ewelme. SU 657888.
• Weather: Bright sun, few clouds, pleasant temperature
• Temperature at start: 21C.
• Muddiness rating: ** (*=dry, *****=awful) Just one or two big puddles. No worries.
• People passed: Just a lady with a huge dog at Ewelme.
• Camera: Sony Alpha 100. Images taken before deletions = 80.

Like most people who survived June and July I rolled out of bed and put on a sou’wester and wellies before heading downstairs for breakfast. A quick glance at the BBC website weather forecast was …… spooky. There was a big round yellow thing in the sky, right where the raincloud symbols were supposed to be. The Help page said this meant “sunshine”, but provided no further assistance, so I went for a walk to see what it was all about.

The downs around Ewelme and Swyncombe are one of my favourite areas for easy and accessible walking. It’s where the undulating Oxfordshire country ripples up into the more angular, more densely wooded Chiltern hills, offering long views across cropped fields to this abrupt but elegant boundary. It’s no surprise that generations of those in a position to choose elected to build their manors and farmhouses within a mile or so of the slope, and a testament to our planning laws that little development has occurred since. Well-managed fields suggest that agriculture is still profitable around here at least, whereas in other places a growing proportion of fields seem to be uncultivated, or “set aside”. This arrangement, by which farmers are paid not to grow stuff, was introduced after a review of the CAP in 1992. Outwardly it seems a waste of taxpayers' money, but it’s had the benefit of stopping the grubbing up of hedges and small packets of woodland which are vital, both to wildlife and to the look of the countryside. I’ve written off for the forms to apply for a set-aside grant covering the undeveloped scrubland laughingly known in our house as “the lawn”, so I’ll let you know how I get on.

Rather startlingly though, some of the fields around here which are in use are growing opium poppies, papaver somniferum. It’s the same variety we’re trying to stop the Afghans growing. The sticky white sap that oozes from their scored capsules can be turned into heroin – or morphine or codeine, which is what the UK ones are destined for. Hmm. Just go with me for a second here, but if the government fixed it so that the pharmaceutical companies paid the Afghan farmers a fraction of what they’re paying the Oxfordshire ones for each ton of poppies, wouldn’t those luckless folk stop flogging their produce to the local heroin warlords, thereby alleviating the drug problem and putting some much-needed investment into Afghanistan? No doubt I’m overlooking something obvious.

And while we're on Afghanistan, Ewelme’s a lovely village. Geoffrey Chaucer’s son Thomas lived there, but bizarrely the tiny place only once came to national prominence, in 1903 when two travelling Italian organ-grinders fell out there and embarked on a knife fight, which ended in one of them being killed. That’s the problem with knife fights. His grave was kept well tended for many years afterwards, and it may still be, as far as I know.

For a change I had a tripod with me. I begrudge its weight, but it slows me down and forces me to be more deliberate in composition and that’s no bad thing. One of the effects you can introduce only when using a tripod is to blur moving objects, like wind-blown grass. To show the movement convincingly you need the stationary objects in the image to be sharp: if everything’s got a degree of motion blur, it doesn’t work. It’s not easy to know how long an exposure time to set: basically it has to be long enough to make it clear the blur isn’t accidental, but short enough so that people looking at the print can tell what it is. With my digital SLR offering an ISO only as low as 100 I needed a neutral-density filter to do the job properly, and that’s another piece of equipment I don’t usually carry with me. Being able to inspect the image on the camera’s LCD is useful, even though it’s not bright enough to allow real assessment in full daylight. Another thing to think about is auto-focus. It’s best turned off, to prevent the camera attempting to focus on a moving subject, which at best would introduce a shutter delay.

I had a start when I was setting up though. I’d placed the tripod in some long grass, attached the camera, and was fishing in my bag for the release cable when a partridge exploded from directly below the tripod. It toppled over and fortunately landed softly.

The path up the hill to Ewelme Park took me through one of my all-time favourite little vales, and it’s especially lovely at this time of year, in evening light. The crops, soon to be harvested, nodded in the breeze, the tractor tracks were softened by the barley, and the low light picked out the slopes in hues of cream and brown.

The UK’s poppy harvest > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=468430&in_page_id=1770

History of Ewelme > http://www.fordsfarm.co.uk/History-of-Ewelme.html

Click here for map > EwelmeMap

Choose another walk > TheWalks

-- RodBird - 01 Aug 2007