February is almost amongst us, the month of Valentine’s Day. I thought, what could be more romantic than a Winter’s walk, collecting foliage and then returning home to make an arrangement in our new faceted flower frog?….

If you turn right out of our gate and walk down the lane, past two farmhouses, down through a field you’ll meet a pond. Grasses do well here and dazzle in the frost. It’s a sheltered spot. The water freezes over easily but not today, there’s only a think veil of ice. The sun isn’t exactly helping. It’s only 8am and it’s trying its best but failing to break through the frenetic cloud cover. The landscape is softer here than if you were to turn left out of the gate. I like think our house is positioned on an invisible line signifying the boundary between the sheltered, picturesque, undulating fields, woodlands and farmsteads to the east and the sparser, more extreme and wilder moors to the west. Up there trees are in the minority and any that do stand are twisted and gnarled from the relentless winds from over the Pennines. Wind turbines do well though.

Continuing along the path to my left is a steep banking of blazing bronze ferns and I picture to myself adders coiled up tightly, in their deep Winter hibernation. Under my feet the ground is spongy and light where the mushed up ferns have generously soaked up the mud. I make my way past two of the most magnificent holly trees I’ve ever seen and through a thicket of ancient beech trees.

Further up and onto Royd Lane. It strikes me that in this part of Yorkshire we have all the views but very few buses. Everything round this area is ‘royd’ something or other. It means, from Old English’, dweller next to a clearing. So perhaps the ancient beech thicket is a remnant of a much more populous woodland.

The long straight road I follow promises to be lonely but it is anything but. A highway for tractors pulling slurry trucks and hard working 4 x 4s zipping from a to b. We’re on the edge of the Peak District here, it has all the beauty but not so much the ramblers and tourists. The mood here is more purposeful and I feel somehow to be luxuriating in the mere leisure of walking my dog. As vehicles pass I hide my camera out of sight. I pass the wind farm; how strange to see a cow sharing its home with a herd of magnificent but monolithic turbines.

I go and see if my favourite pony is at its gate. It’s a foal with a beautiful downy coat in sygnet grey and when I put my hand to its muzzle it warms me up, but today it’s not there. Down the path towards the quarry. It’s an ancient sort of a path with crumbling dry stone walls flanking each side. The tussle between cloud and sun is over and the sun is gagged, I realise I am soaked but it isn’t raining as such. Am I walking through a cloud? We get all the weather and quickly up here. A sheep I hadn’t noticed jumps out of my way. I realise numerous sheep had been sheltering against the dry stone wall and I’ve disturbed them. I sometimes see hares up here but not today.

When I reach the bottom field (sans sheep) Nella realises we’re near home and she becomes ignited like a match, zooming in circles, the way sighthounds do. Along the top of the lane a puddle is struggling to thaw. I peer over the hedges towards the hills before Sheffield. It’s thorny and sparse now but in Autumn this hedgerow was laden with sloe berries.