Slow rhythms of the Hoo Peninsula

Several miles up the sun-baked track, along overgrown footpaths and through fields high with meadow grass, lie the watery ditches of the Higham Marshes nature reserve. Nestled within the wide expanse of partly farmed, partly inhabited, but mostly untended land that runs along the lower reaches of the Thames Estuary in Kent. On a barmy summer's day, blown about by a friendly wind, it's a place of retreat and of well tempered quiet.    Beside one of the wild ditches, from inside a hawthorn bush at the water's edge, we find a secret space to record. Well defended by thorns, it gently creaks in sympathy with the breeze, but has a birds-ear view of the nearby wildlife and the landscape beyond.    The air is cooler beside the water. It rings with the pewit calls of the lapwings. Croaks stretchily with the marsh frogs. Echoes with the gliding yelps of distant geese. At ground level this world is all green and overgrown, but from the air, it must be laced with glints and pools.   Bees buzz quickly by and a farmer traverses a field on a quadbike. It's alive with sheep and lambs. Above, skylarks wheel beneath high thrumming planes. From over the horizon, fleeting whines of overtaking motors along a distant country road. These are the slow rhythms of an early summer's day on the Hoo Peninsula.