I walked down the track to the river, past the newly mown hayfield with the cut grass lying in dark ridges as the sun dipped toward the horizon. After crossing the swing bridge, I made my way along the bank of the river, crossed the water meadow and entered the bottom end of Quesse Wood, where the bluebell leaves lay flat on the ground with the green seed capsules swelling on the flower stalks. The valley bottom was filled with a green froth of vegetation, and when I climbed the valley side and entered the clearing where a few blue flowers still lingered, I found that I had to push through lanky stalks of bracken which would soon form an impenetrable jungle. High summer approaches.

I moved quietly along the badger path until I came opposite the sett and scanned it with my binoculars. Grass and brambles were sprouting higher and the trees were in full leaf, so it was more difficult to see the mounds of earth outside the holes. However, the trees in Quesse Wood are mature and widely spaced, letting in ample light, and I was confident that none of the clan were above ground.

Immersed in bird song and insect hum, my mind was elsewhere until I spotted a movement on the opposite bank. A badger was trundling along the path leading to the mouth of the valley, and I followed his progress through my binoculars until he disappeared among the trees towards some outlying holes. I turned my attention back to the main hole just in time to see another badger emerge and climb up to the slope above the hole, where, to my surprise, there were already three other badgers scratching their bellies and grooming each other.

I scrutinised them closely, but none of them were cubs, and I had been so sure that there was a family in the sett weeks ago when I had seen a female badger expose her well developed teats when she rolled on her back for a vigorous scratch. I pondered the problem of where the cubs could be while the group socialised companionably. Suddenly the badgers scattered, going to ground in several different holes, but I could see and hear no reason for their alarm. Had the wind blowing gently from the fields into the wood carried a whiff of scent from a farmer doing his rounds? If it had, it must have been very faint, because after a few minutes, the badgers reappeared looking rather shamefaced.

Quietly leaving the area of the sett, I crossed the valley and climbed up the other side and came out of the wood into a field full of potato plants. I walked in the shade of the overgrown hedge along the top of the bluff overlooking the river at ten o’clock in good light at the end of one of the longest days in the year. Two fields along I came to another wood, where I had watched badgers long ago, and remembered how sad I had been when the landowner destroyed the wood, felling all the mature trees. I walked along the edge of the wood until I came to the point where I had always entered the wood, and peered into the gloom for the first time for years. The saplings which had survived the massacre had grown into trees, massed closely together and blocking out the light.

I climbed over the barbed wire, and entered a strange dark world, littered with dead bramble strands which had probably lost the competition for light to the saplings years ago. I had to stoop and dodge to avoid them and the low branches on the trees as I made my way towards where the old badger sett had been. Had the mother badger brought her cubs here to avoid disturbance at the main sett?

Using the shape of the ground in the darkness to find my way, I came to where the earth appeared to have slipped forward and down, bulging out into the valley which dropped down to the stream. Generations of badgers had laboured here, moving tons of soil over the years as they dug their holes and enlarged their living quarters. Here I had sat on many long distant evenings in a majestic oak tree watching badgers emerge from a hole between the roots of another oak. As I approached the spot, I thought that there was still holes there, but then realised that they were the sockets of oak tree stumps which were slowly mouldering away. There were no badger holes there at all.

I fought my way out of the wood into the late daylight, and made my way down to the water meadow, where a herd of cattle stared at me curiously. When I came to the swing bridge, I saw a couple of horses in the field across the road and for some reason leant on the gate and scanned the field with my binoculars in the twilight. Immediately I spotted a badger on the far side going through the typical motions of worm hunting. I knew where he had come from – a sett above the stream behind the farmhouse where Old Man Guntripp had lived. Guntripp is long gone, like the oak trees whose mouldering remains had triggered memories from a time when he was alive.

The darkness deepened as I walked back up the track to the village, and as I reached the top and the sweet smell of mown hay filled my nostrils, a bat flickered around me, feasting on moths.