Winter walks in the dark days

Since I’m still largely confined to the settee with a painful shoulder, I might as well post some photos of local walks we took from late November to just before Christmas, when I suddenly stopped being able to drive to interesting places.

Here are some photos of Blaise Castle taken about six weeks ago, when there was still some colour clinging to the trees ...

... and here’s Badock’s Wood, a couple of miles upstream on the Trym, on a magical morning of mist and lingering leaves at the beginning of December.

Mill Tut

 Meanwhile, the wintry Frome has been running fast with flood water from copious amounts of rainfall. Luckily, Cwtch is deeply suspicious of water and very careful around it.

She doesn’t even like the section of path through Snuff Mills that always floods in winter.

the Frome from Halfpenny Bridge

I haven’t seen the heron that hangs out in Eastville Park lake for at least a couple of months, but there have been kingfishers and cormorants, so I can’t complain.

Purdown, above the Frome valley, is a good place to walk in winter when you haven't time to get muddy, and Cwtch and I have had several shiny-bright walks up there.

I haven't been able to find out what this stone on Sir John’s Lane signifies – a boundary marker, perhaps?

winter oak

Finally, a walk at Three Brooks nature reserve in Bradley Stoke on a day so bright the first wise man must have wrapped it up as a gift.  

Can spring be far behind? 

Finally, a reminder that even when you can't drive anywhere, the most familiar and mundane of places can still delight you: here, starlings gate-crashing a colony of sparrows. 

Gold I bring

Once again, I'm confined to the Settee of Suffering with another flare-up of shoulder impingement syndrome. I'm trying to get myself into a mindset where I can advocate, in the New Year, for finding a longer-term solution to this than missing work, not doing any long drives, and stuffing myself full of painkillers.  

In the meantime, since I'm not going anywhere, here are some photos from a recent walk on Lawrence Weston Moor, which I was visiting for the first time.

I tend to think of hills topped with granite outcrops when I hear the word moor, but here we're on the Severn floodplain, where moors are low-lying basins into which the river spills at times of flood - or did, every winter, before the rhines were dug in - probably - the 15th century. (And still do, on occasion, when they are overwhelmed.)

In any event, it's a welly walk in all but the driest months of the year.

Our route took us in a loop around the nature reserve. Although it's right by the M5, it wasn't too hard to blot out the sound of traffic. 

A short stretch of boardwalk takes you over the wettest section of the walk.

Haws

Old Man's Beard

Reedmace

A dewy leaf on dark winter water

Under the mistletoe

The road leading to the footbridge over the motorway

I was so glad to be there when it was bright and the sun was turning the reeds to gold. It made me want to pocket the whole day, to take out and remember on grimmer winter days. 

A Winter Solstice Advent Calendar ... and a road trip to Wiltshire and Wales

I suffer with the dark in winter, and December can be a real struggle for this and other reasons, so this year I decided to post a Winter Solstice advent calendar on my Facebook, to keep myself focused on the brighter days.

Here are the photos I chose, all taken in Bristol: at Blaise, Stapleton, Badock’s Wood, Horfield, the Floating Harbour, Filton, Purdown, Eastville Park, Lawrence Weston moor, and Three Brooks nature reserve in Bradley Stoke. 

The astute will notice there are only 20 photos and this year’s winter solstice falls on the 21st. This is because on Day 6, I couldn’t resist posting my little video of the Santas on a bike in the Floating Harbour.

One morning there was a stunning sunrise. I was headed due east and utterly mesmerised by it, but couldn’t take a photo because I was driving. Here’s what it looked like at daybreak, just before I left home.

I was on my annual Christmas trip to Wiltshire, to pick Jinny and her dog Millie up and take them to meet her parents at Pont Abraham Services in Carmarthenshire, who would drive the third leg of the journey to New Quay. 

By the time I arrived in Hilperton, the sun had risen into the thickening cloud and it looked a lot less stunning, but the canal, and Jinny and Millie's company, was anything but drab. 

It was great to be on a road trip and outside of Bristol for the first time since August, when my shoulder flared into huge pain that lasted for weeks. Sadly, there are no more photos, mainly because I was driving, but also because the weather took a drastic turn for the worse, and by the time we passed Cardiff, a very wet and sticky rain was falling - the sort that throws up a blinding spray and requires you to put the windscreen wipers on at full speed. At times standing water crashed across the carriageway like Hokusai's wave, but my charges were deposited safely and I made it home in one piece too. 

Millie, who is a very good dog indeed

Poetry byways and desire paths

I've taken some time to regroup lately, following a year of readings from Love the Albatross (IDP), my collection about estrangement. Engaging with such personal poems in front of an audience takes a big emotional toll, so a break has been due, and really welcome.

That said, I have been involved in a couple of group readings, both of which allowed me to read some of my (less exhausting) Bristol poems, from earlier collections. The first was a rerun of last year's 'Ten Bristol Poets' at the Bristol Literary Film Festival, in aid of St Peter's Hospice. This time we were promoted from the cafe to the main hall, where the lighting wasn't as conducive for taking photos; nevertheless, here's a few of the poets involved: clockwise from left, Tim Burroughs, Melanie Branton, Pete Weinstock, me, Charles Thompson. 

The other reading was with the IsamBards at Brunel's Underfall Yard in Bristol's Floating Harbour. 

The Matthew, seen through the round window

Fellow IsamBards, Pamli Benham and David Johnson

First set, with David, Dominic Fisher and Pameli

During the interval between sets, I took the opportunity to have a wander along Baltic Wharf, with its view over to the painted houses of Cliftonwood. My route took me past Albion Dockyard, with its familiar clock tower and the Banksy, Girl with pierced eardrum, which is now, sadly, beginning to fade. 

After our second set, it was home on the bus, via Hotwells Road and Jacob's Wells Road, where we had the delight of seeing a fleet of Santas on a bike, raising money for West Country children's hospices.

Elsewhere, I've had some of those aforementioned Bristol poems included in the Street! project run by Ralph Hoyte and Bristol Libraries, which has created soundpools containing site-specific poems outside various libraries in the city, which people can listen to through an app. Obviously I haven't, because even the thought of downloading an app brings me out in a rash, but I understand the soundpools are a joy and a delight, so that makes me happy.

Finally, after three long years of 'not writing any poems at all', I was shocked at the end of August to realise that I have actually produced some this year. Most of them appear to be on the theme of neurodivergence, and the first of these has now been published in Jawbone Journal, which I'm so pleased about, not least being amongst my friends-in-poetry, B Anne Adriaens, Melanie Branton, Rosie Jackson, Clare Morris, Alasdair Paterson, and Susan Taylor. Truly an honour.