Prendwick, Northumberland: On a crisp, cold walk, I’m reminded that winter still clings on, and that familiar constellations are far from alone
T
he red sun rising over the radar station on Alnwick Moor picks out the tall shape of a hare at our end of the meadow. It lopes forward a little way – forever appearing, as hares always do, to be on the brink of a forward roll – and then pauses, sits up and shakes the dew from its front paws.
A nearby pheasant lets rip a choked cock-crow. Both of these animals are game, here in England (as is the red-legged partridge, toiling tortoise-like through the weeds at the meadow bottom).
The pheasant and partridge were almost certainly released by gamekeepers, possibly last summer, and ended up in this farmland; hares, though, have been wild in Britain since the Romans were last here. As it happens we’re a little way north of Roman country. Hadrian’s Wall is 40-odd miles south. The roads up here are good and straight, but that has more to do with the British army than the Roman legions.
