Along the cliff edge

Kilve is a favourite place, and since we were newly allowed, we decided to visit to mark Son the Younger's birthday. Of course, the pub was shut, so we sat on the very edge of the cliff, swinging our legs, and had a picnic instead. 

I should add that the bit of the cliff we were sitting on was about three foot above the level of the beach. It soon gets higher, and becomes unsafe anywhere near the edge, of course. 

It hard to see here, but those are not all pebbles; some of them are people - in fact, Kilve beach was more crowded than I'd ever seen it, probably because of a combination of it being the Easter holidays/a beautiful sunny day/just after the lifting of the lockdown. I'm certainly feeling the urge to visit a few of my favourite places, to keep the days in my pocket and look at them during any future lockdown. I'm not sure the vaccination is going to be magic wand we wish it to be.

In view of the busyness, we decided to take a walk along the top of the cliffs, and since most people head south-west towards East Quantoxhead with its church and picturesque duck pond, rather than north-east towards Hinkley Point nuclear power station, we decided a change of route was in order. 

It was too hazy to see more than an intimation of the coast of Wales, but we could just make out Steep Holm to the north-north-east, and every now and then there was a flash of the area's fascinating littoral rock formations. 

There were also several reminders of the locality's history and geography, in the form of old pillboxes.  

We also spotted what we thought from a distance might be a lighthouse or a WWII lookout, but which turned out to be an observation tower, part of the Royal Navy Aircraft Range - apparently, this part of the coast is still used as an air gunnery practice range for helicoptors. 

It wasn't all military stuff, though ... I saw several pairs of stonechats ... 

... my first swallow of 2021, quite a sizeable patch of cowslips, of which this is just a small corner ... 

... and some far more ubiquitous, far more pungent alexanders. 

Eventually we got to within a couple of miles of Hinkley Point C. When it filled the lens of my camera, I decided that was close enough. I still find it hard to believe we didn't switch to renewable energy sources after Chernobyl. (No, wait, I don't.)

I felt happier heading in the opposite direction, even though Bristol is well within the 80km evacuation zone in the event of a Fukushima-style event in the Bristol Channel. 

All along the cliff there are what look like enticing little paths but which actually lead abruptly to the shore, some eighty-odd feet below, so Cwtch was kept on the lead so she could learn about the edges of things in safety.   

Back at Kilve, we resumed our spot on the cliff edge for a bit, and then made our way to the Chantry Tea Rooms, where we queued for takeaway ice cream, eaten in the car park, and very lovely it was too. 

A moment to admire my first flowering garlic of the season, and take a few photos of a tired but really quite photogenic little collie, and it was time to go home. A lovely day to bank against the less good ones.

The IsamBards at the Bath and Bristol Festivals of Nature

There was a time, presumably, when reading nature poems in public would have involved invocations of beauty, mellow fruitfulness and golden daffodils (hosts of). These days poets are rightly more exercised by climate catastrophe, pollution and the alarming decline worldwide in pollinators, all of which featured in poems read by me and my fellow IsamBards at the Festivals of Nature in Bath and Bristol over the last two weekends.  (As did radioactive dogs, a rotting corpse, and a father-in-law falling through a greenhouse roof. For the purposes of light relief.) 

Here are a few photos, starting with Bath.

Viper's bugloss on the banks of the River Avon in Bath 

Pameli Benham reading in Green Park

Dominic Fisher's fans rushing the stage

I brought an interpretive dancer with me.

Bristol's festival was rather more urban in its setting, down by the floating harbour. 

We had the good fortune to be on stage next to Severn Cider's stand, so there was something of a captive audience. 

I couldn't resist a pint either.  

The Satchel of Poetry, at home with the nature of the festival

Of course, if you are waiting to read yourself, any photos you take show your fellow-readers side-on ... 

... so it was lovely that my friend Merowe was in the audience and shared her photos.

It always feels good to read at home.

Whale Watching on the River Severn

By late morning, the fog had burnt off and it was a beautiful day, so I wrangled the dog into the car and set off for Aust in the hopes of visiting the church there. 

Many churches on the flood plain of the River Severn/Bristol channel are built on what were once islands of higher ground, jutting out of marshland. The Ancient Chapelry of St John is one.  

When I saw the iron gates, my heart sank but they weren't locked, hooray! 

The church door, however, wouldn't budge and there was no notice indicating where a key might be held.

So we haunted the churchyard for a bit.

There was a gravestone which appeared to have been inscribed in moss. Maybe not quite as precisely as the one I saw at Tetbury some years ago, but intriguing all the same.

Feeling disconsolate, we decided to have a bit of wander and headed for Oldbury-on-Severn.

Another commanding church - St Arilda's - on its man-made tump atop a hill. But we weren't visiting it today.

Instead we walked out to the mouth of Oldbury Pill ... 

... and headed south-west along the top of the sheep-trodden flood defences ...

... towards the old Severn Bridge, all misty in the distance. 

Pillhead Gout

Our destination was Whale Wharf, at the point where Littleton Pill flows into the Severn and Cowhill Warth - this beautiful stretch of saltmarsh that is twice daily covered by the tide - becomes Littleton Warth. 

Whale Wharf is so called because, as Oldbury fisherman Hector Knapp wrote in January 1885, 'thear was a Whal cum ashore at Littleton Pill and bid thear a fortnight. He was sixty eaight feet long. His mouth was twelve feet.  

The queen claim it at last, and sould it for forty pound. Thear supposed to be forty thousen pepeal to se it from all parts of the country and from far and near'.   

I was going to have to make do with pretending that the substantial pieces of driftwood deposited along the high tideline were the skeletal remains of aquatic monsters. There'd be no whales today.

Or so I thought ... 

Can't make it out? It's the Airbus Beluga (A300-600 Super Transporter) en route from Toulouse to Hawarden in Flintshire, and fresh from a fly-past at my hometown of Filton, where its wings are made. 









  
Yeah, I know, crap photos. But if you look very closely, you can see some pissed off oystercatchers, flying about and meeping like mad.


  

Cowhill Rhine

Littleton Pill 

Excitement over and time to turn back. Now, instead of the Severn Bridges, we had the decommissioned Oldbury Nuclear Power Station in our sights. 

Proving a magnificent distraction all the way back were a pair of little egrets, who were acutely aware of Ted's and my presence, flying off whenever we got anywhere close enough to get a half decent photo. 

I was reminded of this lovely poem and painting by Dru Marland. 

No idea who owned these feathers. An owl, maybe? (There are short-eared owls below the old Severn bridge at Aust.) Anyhow, they have beautiful leaf shapes.

NOTE: They are curlew feathers

Back at Oldbury Pill ...

... and finally reaching the car, parked in the village.