Everything became so incredibly dry this Summer. Our grass had gone way beyond crispy. And then one day I noticed this out of the window.
I believe the farmer was harvesting the straw from this field and presumably something caused a spark that started the unbaled straw on the ground burning, at which point it spread frighteningly fast. Quite possibly the entire field was gone in about thirty minutes and the hedges had started to burn as well.
A friend’s house is less than one hundred metres from the rightmost plume of smoke. Fortunately the fire was brought under control before it could get any closer.