Greenhills

Being a lowlander by birth this is one of my favourite parts of the parish with a view to the distant peak of Pen Hill (lost in the cloud here). It occasionally floods during winter to pull in wildfowl and in a wet spring a hollow here can hold water long enough to attract the odd wader (a pair of Little Ringed Plovers nested one year but the pool dried out and they abandoned).

 

The fence posts here are popular perches for Little Owls and after I had photographed this scene the other evening I spotted one (fourth post from the left), this is it zoomed in so sorry for the quality.

These fields are now grazed by this rather handsome sheep breed. I hadn’t seen them before but I believe they are Zvartbles, a Dutch breed used to the cold and wet!

 

The ruined Greenhills Farm here used to be run by a pair of sisters who would walk up to the village in their working boots to catch the bus to town (having first changed into their town shoes which they would leave at one of our neighbours).

 

A few years ago I put a photograph of this farm on the Geograph website and received an e-mail from a chap in France. During World War One a young woman growing up at Greenhills had rushed out to rescue an RFC pilot who had crash landed on the farm. Love blossomed and they were married. It was his mother and father....