For although there is a hint of rain as we set off early one morning last week, the sky is as blue as the flowers we have ventured out south of Oxford to see. For this is bluebell time. Britain’s favourite flower. And according to Bea, the best place to experience its full beauty is at Bagley Wood. The time of year that the 568 acres of ancient woodland rolls out the blue carpet as if in readiness for a royal arrival.
For Julian is an antiquary, that is a person who studies the past through looking at historical artefacts. And it is his lifetime’s collection of the stuff (and still counting), that I am delighted to have been invited to see today.
At exactly this time last year I wrote on these pages about my outing to Iffley Meadows in search of Oxfordshire’s county flower, the snake’s head fritillary. I’d been informed that this was one of the few places close to the city where one could see in any numbers these delicate plum-coloured bells with their distinctive reptilian markings. And although I had been rewarded by the sight of a smattering of what have affectionately been called by descriptive names like ‘chequered lily’, ‘frog cup’, or ‘chess flower’ it was not the carpet, the swathes, the spectacle I had been expecting. For that, I was told later with a nod and a wink by those in the know, I must go to Addison’s Walk, a one mile raised pathway that circles an ancient island water meadow between tributaries of the River Cherwell in the grounds of Magdalen College.