Stig of the Recycling Centre and a slodge around Snuff Mills

The trouble with cold, wet days in February is that jobs still have to be done and dogs have to dog (and take their owners with them). Thursday started with a trip to the tip with Son the Elder, where we saw this fox, who clearly has their paws under the table as far as snacks are concerned ... 

 

... and has done for a while, if this picture, taken by my friend Colin two years ago, is anything to go by. 

 

It was even wetter in the afternoon, but dogs - especially collies - need walking regardless, so Son the Younger and I decided to take Cwtch to Snuff Mills, where there are lots of trees to shelter under.

The River Frome running high and fast after all the rain

As usual at this time of year, beauty was in the detail rather than the overall loveliness of the place.

As the river was so full and the path very wet, we diverted up to Vassalls Park, but the going was no easier up there, the grass being pretty waterlogged ...

 

 

... so we dropped back down to the river alongside Stead's Stream, the brook that feeds it.

The Frome has burst its banks at this point. Cwtch took the high road ...

... while Son the Younger and I, who'd been so busy remembering to pay for our no-longer-free-parking when we arrived that we'd omitted to put our wellies on, picked our way along the side of the flooded walkway.

The river was still running fiercely, and it was interesting - and somewhat nerve-racking - to see how Cwtch's dislike of water was in direct conflict with her need to herd ducks.

 

 

Meanwhile the hazels still had one muddy foot in winter, one in spring - a bit like us, really. 

 

Down Gypsy Patch Lane

For the last few weeks, even the seasons have been packed up into boxes – or have at least passed unnoticed in a frenzy of sorting and storing.  Except for when I’ve been to the local tip.

There are lots of things I love about our tip, viz:

·         It’s not really a tip, it’s a recycling centre which is a laudable and fine thing to be even if ‘M’off down the tip’ is a far more satisfying thing to yell to your co-habitees. (Sounds like hard work but really it's just an excuse for a break from lugging boxes about.)

·         You have to go down Gypsy Patch Lane to get there, which is probably one of the dullest thoroughfares I know but ye gods, it sounds romantic.

·         It also doubles as a Home of Rest for Garden Gnomes. There are loads of them crowding the verges and keeping each other company.

·         Each year it has a (literal) Christmas Grotto to rival anything the local mall can produce.   Which is as fine a marker of the changing season as my imagination can conjure.  One year someone will dump a real live Father Christmas and the dream will be complete.