Sunday Morning in the Bluebell Wood

In the 1992 film, "Howards End" there is a scene of enchantment (glimpsed briefly at the end of this trailer) when the doomed young hero goes walking at night in a bluebell wood. Merchant-Ivory knew how to make the blue of the wild flowers look luminous in the middle of the night. Most of us will visit the woods by day - even then, on  a grey, gently drizzling London spring day  a bluebell wood  can pulsate with colour.

"And azuring-over greybell makes

Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes" Poet Gerald Manley Hopkins said of a bluebell wood in his "May Magnificat".

Bluebell woods can surprise, coming at you from the corner of your eye as you drive down a major highway. That happened to me once in Hampshire. Suddenly a forest floor seemed to be carpeted with blue and I had to stop the car to see what had happened. Bluebells had happened. They happen a lot this time of year. I've stumbled on a bluebell wood  behind the "Sun" pub in Dunsfold and a couple of miles from there, I found a quiet country road with tender green leaves shading blue carpets on both sides. My mother was unsteady on her feet at the time so we declared this our 'drive-through' wood, rolled down the windows to catch their fragrance and drove slowly through. Sometimes they share the wood with wild garlic which can confuse the nose but makes for a beautiful combination of blue, speckled with white.


Last Sunday, The Selborne Society opened the private Perivale Wood so that locals could enjoy the bluebells. People flocked to this woodland not far from the A40 in such numbers that you could be forgiven for thinking a free concert or even free beer was on offer.










Once inside the wood, the crowds were somehow drawn into its peace and serenity. Birdsong prevailed, people faded into the sea of flowers, the A40 roared on its way but we no longer knew it, lost as we all were in a moment of English springtime perfection.