Country diary: I am deep in a wood that should be ours to roam

Yorkshire Wolds: I follow a stoat down to a gushing spring, and doze off watching a brimstone. This corner of our homeland should be enjoyed by allCrossing from road to wood is both easy and hard. Easy because the boundary is a single strand of barbed wire, hard because I'm stepping outside the law, again.The transgression pays off in minutes, though, as three wood-wraiths rise and drift ahead of me through the trees - brown hares, unhurried, seemingly unafraid. I pocket plastic as I go - cartridge cases, baler twine, a foil balloon - but can do nothing about feed sacks embedded in the soil or decades-old tree guards, brittle and disintegrating. Continue reading...