One morning in early March I hiked with my son and daughter-in-law up to The Devil's Pulpit on the Gloucestershire side of the Wye, from where you can look down on Tintern Abbey across the river in Wales. Their tiny, premature 4 month old daughter was undergoing a terrifying 13 hour long operation in Bristol that day to ameliorate a rare congenital condition, and they were desperate for fresh air and distraction. The climb through the woods was very steep, and running with muddy water from rainfall the night before. I took these snaps with my phone whilst pausing to pant for breath. The woods and the stones of the Abbey below were a matching shade of deep grey that somehow echoed some of the intense emotions that we were all feeling. Sadly the abbey is currently covered in scaffolding, so is unphotogenic; more happily the complex operation was a success, though it was to be another two or three weeks before she was out of the woods, to coin an appropriate phrase, and for mum and dad to be able to take her home and finally start a new life together.
