He Knows It's All Worthwhile


Dog rose petal - Credit Jo Sinclair

Zooming in on my phone camera, the man orchid looks like a lounging spaceman. One of the residents of a South Cambridgeshire village is proudly showing us these very rare wildflowers at an old chalk quarry. The site hosts four different orchid species. Most obvious is the multitude of common spotted, in variations of pink, lilac and white. And once you get your eye in you notice many green twayblades among June's rampant chlorophyll overgrowth. We find a few bee orchids too. These ones are velvety pollinator mimics with smiley faces.

This abundance of wildflowers is like stepping back in time. I wonder if they bloomed when our Bronze Age ancestors camped up here and decided the view was worthy of a burial barrow. I wonder if they, or any of the villagers here in 2021 sat and watched the sunrise on the longest day of the year, the summer solstice. Some people, myself included, claim to feel a tinge of unease as the sun tips towards winter. An atavistic fear of cold and dark and starvation perhaps.

On Sunday twenty people gathered to consider the potential embankment for a new diesel freight line that could pass right by this site. Enjoying one of the county's rarer features, a hill, we looked towards the city of Cambridge. Some of it was built from the chalk gouged out of this landscape, including Cambridge University, where a worldwide reputation for science and innovation was founded and continues today in 'Silicon Fen', the ever-growing world-famous software and bioscience hub.

We pictured a 'great wall', thirty feet high carrying the potential new East West rail line between Cambridge and Oxford. We pictured the sprawling engineering works. We pictured the potential greenbelt infill. But what I took home with me was the magic of joining up all the dots of  footpaths old and new that had got us there. Our group had travelled from the edge of Cambridge. Starting at Nine Wells nature reserve (another spot that appealed to Bronze Age folk) we cycled across country visiting wildlife sites that could be affected by new works.  

In her passionate new memoir On Gallows Down (to be published in October 2021), Nicola Chester describes the sense of self and place, belonging and sorrow acquired from knowledge of her local landscape and natural history. Three words that describe this writer's emotional heft are topophilia, solastalgia, and hiraeth, words that attempt to name the knowledge, intimacy, love and longing for places known or violently lost.

To know somewhere, first find your way. Continue walking the ancient ways, the pilgrimage routes, the footpaths and desire lines that connect to a place in our hearts.


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