Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I am standing in a field above the beach at Mother Coombe which is in the South Hams and I'm overlooking the estuary of the River Urn towards Wannell and we've just ended today the fifth day of our walk around the South Hams way which is a trail that follows around the moorland,
The towns,
The coastline,
The rivers that wind their way through the South Hams.
It's an absolutely glorious walk and today I say we as my sister and my friend we've seen so much and I'm actually just pausing by a hedgerow which is covered in white stitch work.
There's a little dunnock which is a like a little brown sparrow which I've just seen flitting through the hedgerow and earlier on I spied a kestrel hovering overhead flipping seagulls.
We saw a little white egret which was paddling in the estuary waters and it's a golden beach a sandy beach below me and we've been partly today on the coastal footpath and the coastal footpath is such a well-known route here in Devon and Cornwall and it's challenging you know sometimes you're just going right straight down a hill and then straight back up the other side no gradients just steps and hard work quite frankly.
On one of these very steep downhill tracks I had two hiking sticks with me really going cautiously and carefully because it's sort of a bit slippy with it's dry but there's dry like shaley stones that make it a little bit slippy underfoot and then I realized that on this track there were almost looked like natural steps there were steps that had been made in the muddy pathway itself and so I shifted from the slippery path onto these mud steps and I started to follow those down and I found I was on a much surer path.
These steps were naturally worn out of the ground by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people stepping down the same route over the years and what had happened is they had worn in some natural steps into the steep slope itself and there I was again one of these people adding my steps to the steps of thousands of people who've gone before me and as I was reflecting because it's lovely when you walk and you're walking all day you have plenty of time for reflection and particularly today with the coastal views overlooking the steely grayness of the sea and the steep cliffs and the dark rocks that contrasted against the bluey gray of the ocean itself as I was reflecting I realized that you know there are so many people out there that we don't see that make our lives easier in the same way that those steps today helped me on my route and I was being helped and supported by thousands and thousands of people who had walked before me and actually inadvertently had created this path down the hill.
I realized that that is such a good reminder that in everyday life there are in very practical ways there are thousands of people who make my life easy who are behind the scenes and I never know about and I never thank so today is just a reminder for me that there are many people and you might be listening to this and you probably are one of those people you do things that probably nobody knows about but you are making a difference to the world whether you're caring or supporting whatever it might be and although you can't see your individual act making a difference you are making a difference and I personally just want to thank you so today is all about thanking those that make a difference and and who aren't seen and I hope you join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature reflection.
