I mentioned the Kingcombe Meadows in Dorset in a recent entry. I don't think I'll have a chance to make a trip there this year so I'm revisiting these photos from past visits.
 These are ancient hay meadows and astonishingly flowery. Their survival is something of a fluke. Up until the late 1980s they had been farmed for generations by a family who raised and grazed cows and sheep never using fertilisers, pesticides or modern farming methods. I've heard it said that the matriarch of the family in particular refused to abandon the old ways or allow any money to be spent on "improving" the farm!
 When the last of the line died it was put up for sale and purchased by the Dorset Wildlife Trust as a working farm and nature reserve. I imagine this family of farmers had no thought of being ecologists or conservationists as such but throughout the twentieth century they preserved an environment which gives an insight into how the countryside must have looked going back hundreds of years.
 Thanks to them these fields contain remarkable displays of meadow plants such as Betony, Field Scabious and Greater Knapweed growing among many different grasses, not to mention an amazing array of orchids, Foxgloves in the hedgerows and so much more. The bio-diversity of this special place is endless.
  As I write this I recall the sight of a barn owl circling low at twilight, butterflies I've never seen before, bats at night, bees all day long. I'm going to stop writing now and wander through those meadows in my mind.