Bettiscombe and daffodils
INSPIRED by a recent mention on this site of the poet William Wordsworth, who lived at Racedown in the far west of Dorset in the mid-1790s, the Upper Marshwood Vale parish councillor and former Bridport News reporter Ali Cameron, got in touch.
“To the seriously important stuff – Bettiscombe and daffodils,” he wrote – and he sent photographs.
“This is my patch and from the Marshwood ridge we can see the lane from Horse Mill Cross past the Rowe’s fields and Waterhouse farm and on into Bettiscombe.
“Drifts of daffodils follow the field side of the hedges along the lane as well as down the small streams that trickle from under Pilsdon and eventually form the Char.
“These tinge the fields giving them yellow shadows.
“But the most spectacular occurrence of daffodils is to the south end of Bettiscombe… a small bank which annually turns to gold. Not the end of a rainbow but the smallest and most beautifully formed outcrop of daffodils, this is the Vale at its best…”
He hasn’t got any pictures of this bank, unfortunately. Nor have I.
It’s this bank of wild daffodils I remember once being shown by the poet James Crowden. It was a spectacular sight. Even if either of us did have pictures, they wouldn’t do it justice. (But next year perhaps, if I can find it again, I might try.)