The season's first dawn. View looking east from the Stiperstones, 6.15am, September 1st 2008
Up to the Stiperstones at 6am to go walking with painter Alistair Tucker. An astonishing morning, cold dawn light at 6.15am reddening quickly then warming into full sunlight. Fitful gusts of rain/sleet and mist - Alistair's comment that often the weather changes with changes in light such as sunrise or sunset - and then sheets of misty rain, cutting us off completely for a time from the valleys below. When the mists cleared we could see for 30 or 40 miles in all directions, out into Wales, eastwards towards the parallel ridges of the Long Mynd and Wenlock Edge.
The Stiperstones are a series of tors rising above the valleys of south Shropshire. A dragon's spine of raw sharp stones blasted by the last ice age. Devil-legends, associations with the Wild Hunt. A wild space surrounded by gentle (gentler) hill farms, and all morning we heard the bleating of sheep. A sense of distance and slow movement, rough walking and turf matted with heather roots and nibbled by sheep and rabbits. And an endless, sighing wind. I wrote about 20 pages of very rough notes which will be written up and then condensed into prose-poems. A fruitful morning, a magical way to spend the first day of autumn.
Another dawn shot, a low spine of stones looking east, 6.30am
View towards Shrewsbury, 11am
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