Ducking under the wire, I went down the winding path
into the wood. It was plain that everyone going that way entered at the same spot. Some considerate person had tied a fragment of sacking round two strands of wire to make entry easy. The path was well worn, but flanked on both sides by high bracken, mounds of ling, bushes of rusty gorse and a mauve weed as prolific as dock. Tall trees overlooked the path, sycamores and spruce and one or two oaks, but the trees that took my eye were the rowans for they were laden With berries as bright as blood. The path rose and fell, and at one of the bends I was confronted by a rabbit that at petrified with fright, its back hunched and its eyes bright. 1 lifted my arm and broke the awful spell, and the rabbit bounded into the undergrowth. I could hear it crashing its way through until it either found a hole or felt safe once more. A little later a pigeon flapped innocently into a tree above my head, and I watched it for a while as it preened itself, but the flies began to concentrate on me and I picked some ivy and used it as a switch to protect myself until I made my way back to the wire and the roadside bank.
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