A brisk north-westerly scoured rags of cloud across the heather-and-bilberry summit of Corndon. This dolerite hill – in geological terms a phacolith – might only be 513m-high but it has immense, elegant presence. Just north is an ancient landscape – in Shropshire, thanks to the writhings of the Welsh border hereabouts – to which I was bound.
After a ritual circuit of Corndon’s five bronze-age cairns, I picked my way down through block-fields – a great place for vascular plants, with parsley, oak and scaly male ferns all having established a foothold. Seeing them in crevices or at the scree-edge reminded me of benign tutorials in their identification from the nature writer Bill Condry. Memories of his encyclopedic knowledge and cultured ironies kept me company as I followed paths leading north to Mitchell’s Fold on Stapeley Common.
This stone circle, which dates back four millennia, once had perhaps 30 uprights. Fifteen megaliths remain, most of them prone, the largest the height of a tall man.
A folktale roosts here, a perfect eco-legend that runs thus: “A bad time long ago, people were clemmed (starving), all they had to depend on was a beautiful white fairy cow who came here night and morning to be milked, gave enough for all, so long as everyone only took one pail. But a witch came and milked the cow into a sieve until she ran dry, went away, and was never seen again ...”
As I rested with my back against a tall upright, a 4WD with personalised number plate – OAF 666 is what my memory suggests – drove into the circle. “Where’s this track go?” demanded the driver. “Nowhere, and you shouldn’t be on it,” I answered tersely. “Oh, I see. Know of anywhere round here for lunch?” he persisted. “Try Ludlow.”
The engine’s 4.6 litres roared, ripping turf. The behemoth jounced away, driver’s and passenger’s jowls quivering in Fibonacci sequence as they lurched over the ruts. A stonechat tutted disapproval from a lonely hawthorn. I laughed, shadows of the old gods clustering close.
• The Guardian’s former northern editor Martin Wainwright will chair a discussion on Country Diary, with diarists Mark Cocker and Derek Niemann and former editor Celia Locks, at 11.30am on Saturday 15 November, as part of the sixth annual gathering of New Networks for Nature at Stamford Arts Centre, Lincolnshire
