Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes

You can forget Damascus to Ma'an, Kalgoorlie to Woomera, Mercedes to Mendoza, Shanghai to Changye or Lisbon to Faro.

Track out from Pulborough to Arundel and you will see sky mirrors for miles. The blue of the dome meets the gold of the sun. Sorry, but your mind does react in sensory acclaim of what this poor blitzed old planet can still achieve.

The waters meet from meadow to meadow, shining with cloud-white or spring-blue or the hurrying 'greyhounds' of storm clouds chasing.

Most passengers, I have noticed, don't look at the unwinding majesty. More fool their tucked-up minds. This sliding of the silvery ribbon of Arun flood, visible from space, is also yours from the comfort of your seat in Southern.

It is a mind freshener, and for me a great relief from the grind and grunt of the big red bus, the job-hungry office worker glaring at the pavement, and the wild hum of the Underground with its strap-hangers swaying as in some mental dance of decline.

You pull out of Pulborough and see that dear old friendly line of the dark grey Downs lying like a waiting giant ready to guard you and welcome you home to sleepy Sussex.

My blood pressure drops, I feel sure, as these familiar old hills gradually gain their detail of wood and field, rue, green slope and the little crowns of hill-top clumps. And they all appear on the silver plate of the floods.

The RSPB and the Sussex Wildlife Trust reserves, as well as the meadows owned by shooting syndicates, all of which protect waterfowl in their various ways, show off their wares. Flocks of peewits tumbling with springtime thoughts as they stage on to the Baltic. Russet-headed wigeon climbing off the waters and on into the clouds.

Sometimes you will see swans like mythical galleons, or see the dropping snipe as he seeks one of those clumps of rough- grown rush and sedge. Of course, like all good things, it passes much too quickly. But it both excites and settles the mind, gives equilibrium and thanks for such things.

When Amberley Castle rises out of the water you think of those lines from Keat's Ode To A Nightingale: "Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam, of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn".

This feature was first published in the West Sussex Gazette on Wednesday February 27 2008. To see it first, buy the West Sussex Gazette every Wednesday.