New Year on Purdown

The weather on New Year's Day was utterly bleak, but dogs must be walked, so out Cwtch and I went for a quick - ie non-tussocky - walk along the paths of Purdown. A rousing rendition of 'Good Night, Irene' could be heard drifting over the mean streets of Horfield from the Memorial Ground, where Rovers would later lose 3 - 2 to Leyton Orient, but otherwise any residual festive feeling seemed to have been washed away by the rain. 

Love, though - there's always at least some love ...

... as well as some fungi putting up a decent challenge in the colour stakes.

But the next morning was forecast to be clear, so, having dropped a convalescent Northerner at the station to catch his early train, Cwtch and I returned to Purdown to watch the first sunrise in what felt like ages.

Cossham Hospital - the highest point in Bristol - on the skyline

We walked swiftly along to the battery, and the sun, when it appeared, rose over Solsbury Hill. (Yes, that one. And no, it was probably a wood pigeon.) 

I worked out it has another eight miles to travel up to Tormarton interchange before its rising becomes visible from our bedroom window, and about seven weeks to do it in. (Highly unscientific, and probably geographically suspect too, but I'm so looking forward to the return of the light.)

Then back through Hermitage and Long Wood.

And then ... oh great good fortune ... a repeat performance the following morning. 

A view of Freezing Hill from a freezing hill

Even Cwtch stopped snuffling and running about to watch the sun ...

... and Bristol was beautiful, drowsing in frost and mist.

And then the grazing goats came out of their pen to enjoy the spectacle, a judicious slipping of Cwtch back onto her lead being deemed necessary at this point. (She is a collie, after all.)

The morning sun when it's in your face really ... is a wonderful feeling 

small teasels

Holy Trinity, Stapleton

Looking along the ridge to the replacement Duchess Ponds and the Dower House

Cwtch in frost

a wintry buzzard

Gorgeous Goats

Off out with Dru today, across the Downs to Sea Walls. There are new arrivals in the gorge - six Kashmir goats from Great Orme in North Wales, brought in to manage scrub in Walcombe Slade and help restore wildflower grassland.  But first we scouted around the Downs in search of bee orchids. Apparently it's not a good year for them. We saw some bladder campion, though, and some magnificent seed heads.  


At Sea Walls we scrambled down the very steep sides of the gorge to a rocky outcrop high above the muddy River Avon. Luckily, a fence has been installed to pen the goats in the gully, presumably until they become hefted, and this eased our precipitous slither.

It was low tide, and we could see the sun glancing off the mud banks that lurked a couple of hundred feet below us.










Dru had already visited the goats every day since their arrival earlier in the week, but this was my first glimpse. We saw two, then three, and finally all six sunbathing, eating and generally lazing about in the sun.  

I was moderately pleased with my photos until I saw Dru's. I'm going to claim she achieves this because her camera is the dog's bollocks, but actually it's because she is knowledgeable, has a good, quick eye and doesn't walk around with her mind in China.

Eventually we scrabbled all the way down to the Portway, and without falling to our deaths.  


And there were still more glories to behold, like a pair of buzzards and a peregrine (so Dru tells me).  And these fugitive red hot pokers, looking better au naturel than ever they do in suburban gardens.

I also loved the scribble made by insects mining tracks under the bark of a dead tree.  Nature's fine art!  They could almost be the fossilised remains of prehistoric insects.  Or an Art Nouveau illustration by Aubrey Beetlesbee.  So very beguiling. 


And back up top, another dead tree, this one with a chiff-chaff at the top, chiff-chaffing the remains of the afternoon away.  Lovely.