Dymock Poets & Daffodils

Today we set out in search of the Dymock daffodils. Three neighbouring villages host daffodil weekends in this slice of countryside between Gloucester and Herefordshire, and I’d heard tell of the walks that pass through myriads of wild daffodils. It was our first visit to Dymock and we were drawn there in particular because of the connection with the Dymock Poets – a loose-knit group that included Robert Frost, John Drinkwater, Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas, poets who lived in and around Dymock just before the First World War. Robert and I are especially fond of the poem by John Drinkwater called ‘Cotswold Love’ as it was read out at our wedding three years ago this April.

In Dymock village the pub was doing a roaring trade, and the brilliant, hot sunshine had brought out the straw hats and the daffodil hunters in their droves. Watching a purposeful young couple stride out along the Poets’ Path, I felt as though we were launching into some kind of medieval pilgrimage, heading towards a golden goal.

Actually, the daffodils weren’t much in evidence for the first mile. Then we found a vast field studded with clump after clump of the delicate yellow and white wild daffodils, where we sprawled blissfully in the sun among them. A celestial carpet.

The idyll lost its lustre just a little as we headed back through a field of rusting caravans, towards the sturdy, pyramid-style steeple of Dymock church – a Herefordshire style, I think, in contrast with the slender spire of Gloucester Cathedral, a few miles off. But our enthusiasm revived as we spotted other fields, orchards and banks with liberal scatterings of these delicate, ethereal flowers.

They’re in full bloom now, with the hot weather, so it’s an urgent mission if you want to catch them before they go over. Dymock hosts its own official daffodil weekend on Mar 31st, so if you’d like to join a merry crowd and have tea in the church, go visit. http://www.dymock.org.uk/

A field full of daffodils at Dymock

Cotswold Love
John Drinkwater
Blue skies are over Cotswold
And April snows go by.
The lasses turn their ribbons
For April’s in the sky.
And April is the season
When Sabbath girls are dressed
From Rodoboro’ to Capden
In all their silken best.

An ankle is a marvel
When first the buds are brown,
And not a lass but knows it,
From Stow to Gloucester Town.
And not a girl goes walking
Along the Cotswold Lanes
But knows men’s eyes in April
Are quicker than their brains.

It’s little that it matters,
So long as you’re alive,
If you’re eighteen in April,
                                                                                                   Or rising sixty-five.
                                                                                                   When April comes to Amberley                                                                                                                    With skies of April blue,
                                                                                                    And Cotswold girls are briding
                                                                                                     With slyly tilted shoe

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