Encounters, Old Marsh Road

With the end of lockdown traffic on our roads – even quiet country lanes – has picked up dramatically – not merely to pre-Covid levels, but to new heights of busy-ness as people avoid public transport like the…uh…well, plague, and carpooling has become not only unfashionable but downright illegal in some instances, given the ever-shifting social distancing and no-mingle regulations. And so there are lots of cars in the morning. When later sunrises are thrown into the mix, my once-quiet pre-dawn rides across the marsh have taken on an urban commuting feel, with car after car sweeping by, solitude out the window and the throb of engines replacing the soft splashes of waterfowl and the whirr of insects in tall grass.