Far From the Madding Crowd: January 2016

Saturday, 23 January 2016

Nature Never Did Betray

'Nature never did betray the heart that loved her'

This line was tweeted and I loved it. It is from William Wordsworth poem 'Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey' It is a lovely poem, what he says I am sure so many of us who love nature can identify with some of the lines in it. I have posted the link to this poem, if you want to read it you may have to copy and paste the link:

http://www.rc.umd.edu/sites/default/RCOldSite/www/rchs/reader/tabbey.html

River Tees, County Durham

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Those Rare Sunny Days

Hi everyone, have not been blogging for a while but hopefully that will change, I would like to change my blog a little to include other things, ie my garden. I am not quite sure whether to keep my title 'Far From the Madding Crowd' or change it, but I struggle to think of another.

We went for a walk at Arne on one of those rare sunny days last Friday and today we went to Durlston Country Park. I hope these dull, wet and windy days are now going to be fewer. These pictures on this post were taken at Arne.

My Blog

I have taken the title of my blog from Thomas Hardy's fourth novel 'Far From the Madding Crowd' which he wrote in 1874. He took his title from Thomas Gray's poem 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' completed in 1750. Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset where he lived for most of his life and where he based the stories in his novels. The word 'madding' means frenzied and there is a sense of freedom I get being out in the countryside and being close to nature away from the frenzied atmosphere of the towns and cities. I live in Dorset and like Thomas Hardy, it is where I have lived for most of my life, my blog is mostly about nature in Dorset. I am a member of the Dorset Wildlife Trust. I will include my garden and anything of interest about the natural world in Britain.