Traveller's joy

Passengers on the Northern Line may often have noticed the flowering shrubs that glow from the banks of the cutting between Hendon and Brent. There are many such pleasant stretches of track. Their flowers range from the rather formal blossoming of outer London to the wilder flowering of the country, where willow-herb and broom, traveller's joy and campion, go rioting over the chalky banks of the Metropolitan Line.

The winds howled from the other side of the Morava River, which was stilled by ice, while along the banks the ice lay unmowed, full of icicled reeds, traveler's joy, and sedge, as though the ice were growing a silver beard.