June 8
Brilliantly fine and warm. Went by train to C⸺ Woods. Took first-class return on account of the heat. Crossed the meadow and up the hill to the mill leat, where we bathed our feet and read. Ate a powerful lunch and made several unsuccessful grabs at Caddie flies. I want one to examine the mouth parts. After lunch we sat on the footbridge over the stream, and I rested on it flat in the face of the sun. The sun seemed to burn into my very bones, purging away everything that may be dark or threatening there. The physical sensation of the blood flow beneath the skin was good to feel, and the heat made every tissue glow with a radiant well-being. When I got up and opened my eyes all the colours of the landscape vanished under the silvery whiteness of the intense sunlight.
We put on our boots and socks (our feet seemed to have swollen to a very large size) and wandered downstream to a little white house, a gamekeeper’s cottage, where the old woman gave us cream and milk and homemade bread in her beautiful old kitchen with open hearth. China dogs, of course, and on the wall an old painting representing the person of a page boy (so she said) who was once employed up at the squire’s. An unwholesome atmosphere of pigs pervaded the garden, but as this is not pretty I ought to leave it out. …