I had a headache, probably due to worries about family and work, so I took Ben’s lead down, causing the usual yelping excitement, put on a warm jacket and set off down the track to the river.

As I crossed the swing bridge, gulls were swooping for titbits from the fishermen huddled on the bank at the regular intervals laid down by the angling association. I walked along the western river bank until we came to the stile, then cut across the big water-meadow and climbed the bluff overlooking the river.

Typically of the landscape in Cheshire, the farm fields bordered with hawthorn hedges now spread before me, all much at the same level. I climbed over the barbed wire fence and crossed the field towards the wood as the sun lingered just above the horizon. Ben caught me up, having found his own way through the fence, and we stopped at the edge of the wood, looking at the badger sett.

As I expected, there were no badgers in sight – they would not be about their nocturnal business for another two or three hours – but it was worth standing quietly for a few minutes because of the possibility of seeing an early-rising fox which had taken lodgings in the sett. However, all was quiet, apart from a raucous call from a moorhen down in the valley and the lowing of cattle a few fields away.

I entered the wood and looked carefully at the holes along the top edge of the incline. They were full of newly fallen leaves, and there was little sign of activity, so I moved down the bank to the other string of holes. There were recent scratches on the sloping path, and the mounds outside the lower holes were topped with newly disturbed earth containing badgers’ footprints. The hole at the extreme end of the sett, from which I had seen a sow badger emerge with her family of three cubs last spring, seemed particularly well used, and the earth around the adjacent tree trunk where the family had sat and scratched and groomed each other was well packed down and clear of leaves.

Ben and I made our way down to the mouth of the valley, crossed the water meadow and walked back along the river bank. The fishermen had gone, one of their stations on the opposite bank being now occupied by a heron, who was quite happy to stand there hunched up until I stopped to look at him. He nervously fidgeted for a bit and then flew off upstream.

Walking up the track in the dim light, I worked up a sweat inside the lined oilskin jacket as usual, but when I got home and put the key in the door, my headache had gone. Wonderful how a simple contact with Life beyond our own immediate concerns can restore body and mind.