THREE WEEKS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 26 November 1936, Page 9

THREE WEEKS

WINTER WHISTLES IN THE COPSES

(By Air Mail—From Our Own Correspondent)

LONDON, 29th October. Winter is coming at a hand-gallop. Three consecutive week-ends I have strolled . the Pilgrims’ , Way •; , from Guildford to Dorking. The first time we found hardly a tint of autumn in the woods. Only a week later all the beeches were ablaze with golden glory, and the Surrey landscape was mellowing to . autumn hues. Last week-end the transformation -\yqs sudden. Grass arid’, footpaths were obscured with fallen foliage—the “leaves dead, yellow and black arid pale and hectic red” of which sings—and the beech woods' were nearly bare, like old wind-jammers reefed down for the Horn. The. ash alone still retained its summer green untarnished’. From the lonely summit where St. Martha’s Chapel keeps sentinel over the Weald, the gathering dusk was lit with innumerable points of fire. It might have been the campfires of some mighty host’s invading bivouacs. In fact it was the funeral pyres of autumn. Summer’s splendour once more went up in smoke. Winter whistled in the copses, and squirrels were almost as scarce as hikers.