I watch the fox hunt head down

How can you get all that web in one spider? How can all those spiders live in one small area of cover? I step aside to avoid damaging a particularly ornate web, and a dog pushes past me to blunder straight through it. The spider’s living lies in tatters: the dog is devoid of concern and I suppose you have to be patient to survive as a spider.

Being taller, I can see over the hedge at this point, and I can see another creature out looking for rabbits. It must have been a bad night, for a fox should have fed by now.

The dogs must not hunt foxes these days: the still air does not carry scent deep in the hollow as we are, and they cannot see it, so we are not about to break the law even by accident. I watch as bold Reynard, coat slicked dark with the dew, hunts head down, probably seeking mice. The cry of a disturbed pheasant brings me back to the field I am in, as the young dog rocks back on her haunches and a bright cockbird rises cackling over the fence.

At my arresting voice (for the young dog is not yet entirely convinced that pheasants are off-limits) the fox looks up sharply and then skulks off to the trees, from where I, knowing the line he will run, am aware that he will cross the stream, a mere trickle at the moment, and head uphill through the copse to the shelter of gorse and brambles. We had intended going that way too, but I may have to reconsider.

Coming to the end of the rabbit-wire, there is the stile to negotiate and then the big double gates, from whence my path can take us up into the sunlight just starting, or across to more dew-soaked cover.

Have you seen how the ash trees are heavy with keys this autumn? A delightful tree is the ash, and its cousin the rowan, each rising out of snaggled hedges as I pass by.

Birds have feasted on blackberries, briony berries, elderberries, and there are still rose-hips of startling coral among the dusty purple sloes. My footsteps darken short sweet turf while the dogs cast amongst frayed patches of longer grass.

Birds must go into winter as fat as they can get, and are taking every chance to strip out the seed-heads. Now, which way shall I go?

Often mist thickens just before it disperses, and today is one of those occasions. It condenses, white and cold, around me, my trousers soaked from the knees downwards from the long grass, my vision obscured by ribbons of swirling white.

Mist holds scent close to the ground, letting it dissolve in beads of dew, which makes it stronger if you have a canine nose. In half an hour, the day will be bright across this land.

That makes my mind up, and I turn down the slope, not up, to make the most of the last silver minutes.

I do not need to call the dogs, for they watch me always, and with coats dripping wet and dewdrops on their eyebrows, the pair of them swings around to flank me either side, and find whatever scents there are to follow.

Foxglove