Twelve years ago this weekend we dropped the keys through the letterbox of our house in Peckham and headed west to the prospect of Hillside. The first few days and the quality of this last weekend in October are imprinted very clearly for being so new and suddenly in such a different environment. Where the skies were huge and not narrowed by buildings and where the season was manifest in everything and all around us. In the dew-heavy grass, the hedges beginning to show their winter bones and the apples pecked into cups by the birds that flocked to gorge on the windfalls in the old orchard. 

The wind that moves with such ease down the valley and which we have grown to love on our faces had all but torn the last of the foliage from the poplars, their silhouettes clear against the flanks of the rise behind them. The newness allowed us to look deeply into every detail, more intently than you do when you come to know your environment. We combed the land, walking the line of the stream and noted where the farmer before us had pushed the fields as far as they could go to the very quick of the hedge-lines.