It’s the last day of August, and with it the close of meteorological summer. The temperature sits at fifteen degrees, and the sky is a clear, open blue. Not a bad way to start the morning. Albie and I are setting out on our walk through Hoo Wood, and already the first signs of autumn are showing themselves. The light has that softer, autumnal feel, and there’s a sense that the season is about to turn.

Hoo Wood runs along the eastern side of the Lower Stour Valley, parallel to Wilden Marsh. Albie and I take this path twice a day, and it always provides us with a fine view of the marsh below. In winter, that view is transformed—at night the marsh lies in a deep, heavy darkness, the water invisible, but the sounds carry upwards: calls, cries, and rustles that make the place seem otherworldly. It’s hard not to stop and listen.

The ridge path leads past Dark Wood and on to Fox Hollow, a small dip that widens as it runs down towards Withy Wood and the marsh edge. Fox Hollow is well-named: at night, it’s a regular route for foxes. I sometimes set up my thermal camera here, and it’s rarely long before something shows itself. Deer pass through often—both roe and muntjac—as well as ferrets, including polecats, creeping through the undergrowth.

The slopes of the valley provide for the marsh in another way. Insects are lifted on the breeze and drift downwards, feeding into the wider food chain. The oak trees here are busy places too, with owls, buzzards, and woodpeckers active throughout the year, while bees, wasps, and hornets work the air between. Badgers sometimes move up into Hoo Wood during summer, when the marsh vegetation becomes too thick, though the cattle grazing helps keep many of them down on the reserve.

It’s a good walk, this one. A place where wood and marsh meet, where the seasons are constantly shifting, and where there’s always something worth pausing to notice. And on mornings like this—bright, clear, and touched with the promise of change—it feels as though the whole valley is quietly turning a page.