East Anglia is famous for its big skies, but here in south-west Suffolk, the landscape is quite hilly, so we don't have the enormous, Norfolk-style skyscapes. The area around Lindsey, however, is on a raised plateau and walking over some of the arable farmland gives the impression of being surrounded by sky.
After nearly a week of rain, the sun returned today, along with droves of white and dove-grey clouds, sailing freely to leeward in the stiff breeze. Glad to shed my rainproofs at last, I set off from the centre of Boxford, up Butcher's Lane and past Gosling's Green and Groton Wood, towards the White Rose crossroads. There I headed straight across and down the road towards Lindsey, turning right past the church.
Lindsey church is not so grand as those of Boxford or Stoke-by-Nayland, but it sits in its elevated landscape with a quiet charm, showing off its squat little tower. From a distance, it could almost be a village hall. The day outside was too beautiful to venture into a dark church interior, so I admired its intricately carved porch, heavy with history, and the wide views from the churchyard, and walked on.
I took the side-road leading to a footpath which passes over a large meadow, through an ancient-feeling deciduous wood, still wet from the recent rain, and across the huge arable field towards Kersey. This is where the sky views are at their best. With the green waves of wind-driven wheat all around, it felt like being at sea, the path ahead like the wake of some invisible ship just over the horizon.
Kersey is a ridiculously photogenic village. It almost feels like a film set, which is exactly what it recently has been. Now returned to normal (the pub once again The Bell and not "The Queen's Arms" and the old River House once again a neglected semi-ruin), it still seems to be preening itself with a theatrical air. Well, who can blame it when it's that good-looking?
I slogged up the steep hill in the growing heat to the equally picturesque church. With its fancy flint-work and handsome blue clock face, it towers daintily over the village, smugly trumping modest little Lindsey.
I followed the road back towards Wickerstreet Green and down the footpath towards Bower House Tye. All through the tunnel of trees I walked on a shifting pattern of dappled sunlight, where until recently there were carpets of late primroses.
Beyond the tunnel, the path opens out into a grassy ride, then goes back down the hill towards Boxford, past fields where I often stop to admire a barn owl, methodically quartering the hay crop in search of small creatures whose luck has run out.
Here too the sky fills the world and dwarfs the distant views, which stretch all the way to Assington.
Today's route was so familiar, I had to remind myself to look closely down here on the ground and see what I had not seen before. But overhead the big skies changed every minute and created a thousand new landscapes to discover.
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