On the journey

And the beauty in getting there

Early on Sunday morning, before a lot of the world had relinquished the luxury of alarm-less sleep, I drove to the yard where the horse that I ride is stabled. It’s always a lovely journey, but at that time of the morning on that day of the week, it’s glorious.

Now, in the crumbs of summer, the late sunrises are beautiful. Buttery sun filters through trees and branches, the rays visible in the early morning mist. The fruit on the hedgerows is still heavy, blackberries fat and rose hips plump from a wet summer that has left the boughs groaning along roads that are rural to the point of isolated.

The leverets of late spring have now been replaced by partridges ushering their unstreetwise young broods along the hedge line. Occasionally I’m lucky enough to pass by a kestrel on a telephone wire or an unfeasibly large herd of deer, a lone white doe glowing in the early light as if she has stepped out of a fantasy novel to deliver a message. Sadly neither of those this this time, although there was - as there always is - a kite in flight, wheeling over the fields like a fighter pilot spoiling for a scrap.

There were few other cars, as usual and for which I’m grateful as I navigate the roads that are generously described as “single track”, hoping I won’t be forced to reverse around the corners and down the hill. And I try to drive slowly enough through the ford both for the sake of the car’s engine and the ducks, this time still sleeping under the bridge, heads tucked under wings as they, like the rest of the world, slept off the excesses of Saturday night.

More often than not I’ll have my own winning combination of small pleasures for the road: a hot Earl Grey in the cup holder, and a playlist of particularly catchy 90s indie pop on Spotify. (I don’t believe in the concept of ‘guilty pleasures’, unless they’re illicit. But those who do might say this particular playlist could be filed as such.)

There’s barely a person to be seen. Maybe the occasional cyclist. Sometimes a twitcher, long lenses trained over the roof of a red Ford Focus. This week, eye-catchingingly, there was a dog walker who - along with the wellies and chocolate lab - had on a short dress, a lot of hot pink lipstick and absolutely enormous blow-dried blonde hair, the sort that takes the time and expertise and inclination that I will never have. (“Maybe she was going somewhere straight after her walk?” my riding companion had said, fairly, when I mentioned it. Rather more uncharitably, I had assumed she was off for an illicit sunrise rumble in the stubble with a fellow walker. That probably says much that I don’t wish to consider about our respective characters.)

By the time I got to the yard to take the horse out, I’d been well and truly reminded that the destination might be what you’re aiming for, but the way there can be just as beautiful.