Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Escaping the rush hour traffic after watching the sunrise, I drove the car through narrow lanes, realising that I was following the map of memory. We passed through places to which we had walked as a family long ago, when the boys were just boys…. places where my son had walked long after he could no longer do so.

There were places where we had shared laughter with friends and  people we have loved, some of them now living only in our hearts. Places where we had made memories, some seeming almost as ancient as autumn, others as fresh as spring. And as we drove, we found ourselves on higher ground where the sprinkling of snow had settled and turned the world to white.

We were lucky that the roads were reasonably clear as we climbed the hill that winds around Ivinghoe Beacon, to the modern remnant of the…