Halfway along the lane...

Halfway along the lane in Wales - down the hill and through the tunnel of trees - sits Poo Sticks Bridge. Well, that’s what we call it and always have ever since we first took Holly to race sticks from one side of the bridge to the other all those years ago. It isn’t a big bridge, just a stone arch with a stream running beneath it, just wide enough for a herd of sheep or a tractor.

After heavy rain the stream can become a torrent, whipping away our sticks and sending them tumbling down the bend to turn the corner and disappear. But usually it just ambles along and our sticks get stuck in the tangle of grass and dead wood that piles up by the place where the cows come to drink sometimes, loping down the muddy bank to stand in the water and stare nonchalantly, yet defiantly, up at you.

It’s a good place to come on a summer’s evening just to sit and watch the mountains in the distance or the shadows of clouds move across the fields. Of course if you sit on the wall you might find your pants full of ants or red spider mites when you get up. Generally though, we stand watching the swallows dart above the bridge catching invisible insects as they go. At dusk they are replaced by the odd bat or two and sometimes the owl I can hear from my bedroom window swoops to catch a mouse.

In the summer there are always dragon and damselflies at Poo Sticks Bridge; orange and blue and shimmering green. When I was a boy I used to think that they could sting, but of course they can’t. It’s funny the ideas you have when you are young, we used to call the flying red beetles that we sometimes saw ‘bloodsuckers’ and believed that if they landed on you they could drain your blood. Mind you, I believed a lot of things that turned out not to be true back then. I’m sure that there were more insects around though; moths and daddy longlegs, flying ants and ladydids. Apparently this year has been a good year all round for insects, a record year for cabbage whites and our huge buddleia,next to the cottage gates, has been covered with butterflies and massive bumblebees.

As we dropped our sticks into the water a damselfly landed on the bridge. For once I had my camera with me so I snapped it - such fine lacy wings, almost too delicate to see. I sat on the bridge watching it take in the warmth of the sun then it was off flittering away at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour. It was then that I noticed that my legs were covered in ants – ouch! Well, I did say that it was a good year for insects.