Country diary: Fog muffles and confuses the senses | Nicola Chester

Inkpen, North Wessex Downs: The downs have vanished, but I am more aware of the small, close details that are revealed almost as I am upon themI am held in the hug of a cold, white fog. A muffling, wraparound duvet of listening quiet. The weather dampens sound and vision (with a profound noise-cancelling effect), anaesthetises the landscape and heightens the senses to the small close details that are revealed almost as I am upon them.The downs have vanished, so I keep within the park pale of the Big House. Trees loom as if their ghosts have walked up to meet me: elegant chandeliers of horse chestnuts, broken, brittle ash and the wiggly limbs of oaks, squiggled by a fading marker pen on a blank white page. Continue reading...