Walking the September Woods

Being laid up with Covid - or rather, laid low by it, plus the sudden death of my lovely cousin, Heather - I've decided to cheer myself up by looking back over the September walks I went on with Cwtch before illness struck. 

We visited our usual haunts, including the various woods on Purdown:

Pale Plantation is looking very autumnal already due to the early leaf drop from the horse chestnuts, and the trees in the park are colouring up too, especially the hawthorns ...

water mint, blackberries and haws, cyclamen

... though the really big change from summer is the flood of light into the summer-dark woods, making deep-thicket skulkers like Cwtch and me feel quite exposed. 

Long Wood

The last hole in the ground Cwtch will stick her snoot into for some time

We did try a different route up onto the ridge one day, via the lower part of Sir John Lane, where there was another small, feral wood to explore and the open spaces of South Purdown. 

Below Purdown, the River Frome is flowing more volubly than it was a month or so ago, although it's still quite low.

Wickham Glen

Snuff Mills

A tributary of Stoke Brook, which is a tributary of Bradley Brook, which is a tributary of the River Frome, at Webbs Wood, Three Brooks Nature Reserve

Meanwhile, the grass that was so sere is now green again, having completely forgotten the hot, dry summer.

Kings Weston Down at Blaise

assorted fungi

It's a funny thing, but you can sit for hours a week in an office, say, and hear nothing of any interest at all - just what offers the local carvery had on last weekend and how a certain dress from ASOS is so cheap, you could wear it once and throw it away and it wouldn't matter (yes, really!) - and yet bump into a volunteer stacking cherry laurel logs by the side of a path, have a chat for five minutes, and learn that a) cherry laurel wood contains cyanide, which is why you shouldn't burn it; b) there are nightjars in the woods - here in North Bristol! - which he knows because he found a feather and would you like to see a photo of it?!; and c) there's another wood just a mile or so away, which is fabulous at bluebell time and which you didn't even know existed. 

So, even though it's another six months till the bluebells start coming out, we decided to take a look at the wood, which is called Thirty Acre Wood and part of the Kings Weston estate.

As you enter the open space above it, there's a view down to nearby Avonmouth and the River Severn, which includes the newer bridge.

I found the wood quite hard to get around - it's spread over a series of rises and dips - but despite the usual type of rubbish that blights feral urban woods, it had its moments and I'll definitely aim to get back there next spring to see the promised swathes of blue.

Why would you screw some really old screws into a fallen tree, at a level too high to be a boot scraper (even if it wasn't in the middle of a wood)?

Part of a very extensive badger sett

A piece of carpet, released back into the wild and living its best life

We also visited a couple of places we hadn't been to for a fair while, namely, Narroways, where there are ponies within a couple of miles of the city centre ... 

St Werburgh's

Horfield Brook

... and Splatts Abbey Wood, tucked behind the MOD complex.

light emerald moth

Trees are still dropping large parts for themselves following a second excessively hot and dry summer. I think the woods could be pretty dangerous to walk in this winter, especially if there's an increase in the frequency of storms, as feared.

One of the paths at Snuff Mills is still reminding me each time I go there of where I am.

As for the season of falling feathers, it's just about done, though there have been some great finds this September:

tawny owl, jay, magpie, ring-necked parakeet, thrush, green woodpecker, sparrowhawk, buzzard, wren

This includes my biggest find this year, a buzzard primary ...

... and, on the same day, the joint smallest, my second wren primary of the season ...

I think it's largely by chance that I spot wren feathers; they are so tiny and I struggle to make out the pattern on the anterior vane without reading glasses. (I still live in hope of finding a tail feather one day, though.) 

My September tally also includes these two green woodpecker tail feathers to add to the two I'd already found in August, and absolute beauties they are too.

Finally, two more jay covert feathers to make a (surely final) total of sixteen - if you don't count the thirty-four I found at a predation site on Purdown, which I don't because you can't really celebrate finding all those feathers at once, and I'd much rather the bird still had them, even if it's the circle of life and all that. 

A Poetry Catch-Up

It's been a while since I posted a poetry update here, and that's because it's been a really quiet year after the hurly burly of launching and giving readings from my 2024 collection, 'Love the Albatross'. The rest has been much needed; there's something uniquely exhausting about reading poems so painfully close to personal experience as estrangement is to mine. I'm pleased to have made something positive out of (what is for me) a graceless situation, and to have made connections with others struggling to carry the same burden from whichever side, but at the same time, I'm glad to have left those poems behind me now. (Apart from the copies of 'Love the Albatross' I have left; message me via social media or the comment function here if you'd like me to post one to you.)

The good news is that I'm continuing to write my way back; I might even start considering myself a poet again soon, which is a relief as that's basically my entire identity. And to help me on my way, a smattering of poems have continued to find their forever homes.  

One of those destinations is The Hen, a new poetry magazine based in Bristol, and it was a delight to read at the launch of the first issue, held at the jewel that is Heron Books in Clifton, a few nights ago. Thanks for Nicola Heaney and Marie-Louise Eyres for publishing my poem and inviting me along to read it.) 

You can read the first issue of The Hen here. 

Though my favourite gig by far this year was at the school for deaf children where I work, when I was invited to talk to our Year 2 children about being a poet. I also got to hear - and see in sign language - the inventive kennings they'd come up with. 

And I was able to tell the children about meeting two of my very favourite poets, Ilya Kaminsky and Raymond Antrobus, who are both Deaf. 

In April I read at Lyra Bristol Poetry Festival, as part of the Street! project which featured poems by poets tasked with responding creatively to the city's neighbourhoods and geo-located across thirteen Bristol libraries ... 

... and in July as a guest of the organisers of the annual Resonate barbecue in the shady garden of St Stephen's Church, just off the city centre, which, coming at the end of a very hot day, was blessedly cool and a welcome pleasure.

I also finally got to read at the Berkeley Square Poetry Revue, after having to duck out back in March, when I completely lost my voice for several days. This subsequent reading, alongside poets Daniel Richardson and Rebecca Shamash, and accompanied by music from the hugely talented Teri Bramah, made for a bubble of creative wonder and was a welcome distraction from what was, for me, a difficult summer. 

Last of the summer walks

 

Leaves have been falling since late June, and it's now much more autumnal than summery. This summer has been very difficult for a number of reasons, and although I dislike the winter dark intensely, I can't say I'm sorry to see the back of the last couple of months. 

I'm writing this listening to incessant rain, which doesn't bode well for Cwtch's long walk later but which is very much needed. 

Purdown

Blaise Castle

Collapsed ferns at Snuff Mills

Fishponds Brook

Patchway Brook

The River Trym at Badock's Wood

On the first day of the hosepipe ban here in Bristol, it rained so much the previous night that at Snuff Mills, the River Frome was bursting its banks in one or two places and the weirs were running through their winter repertoire ...

... but - we are told - it would have to rain for 90 days to replenish depleted water stocks.

As I've had to stay close to home, it's been pretty much the usual haunts, although, I did explore the Leap valley in Downend, which is hollowed by the tiny stream that gives it its name and which was new to me ... 

... and the Three Brooks nature reserve in Bradley Stoke, but both lack winding paths alongside the streams that are their arteries, and that are such a feature of walks along the River Frome (which they'll presently flow into).

Dockham ditch flowing under the M4 and about to join Patchway brook

And yes, the needs of nature have to be prioritised in these places, but if you're telling me here be kingfishers, I'd like to have a fighting chance of seeing one.

Talking of which ...

a kingfisher and its fish at Frenchay bridge ... 

Meanwhile, Cwtch and a friendly magpie had fun playing up on Purdown ... 

... and we also had a close encounter with a wren.

Other than that, the fauna we saw up close and personal was dead. 

Death also crossed over into my feather hunting activities. The season is tailing off now, and to date I've ferreted out 14 jay coverts, which matches the number I found last year. Except that last year I also came across a whole dead jay, which made a total of 48 blue coverts, only I don't really count the job lot as there's no joy in finding so many all at once. 

There were a couple of minor synchronicities - a covert found under the same tree as last year, another in the same lane as last year - but I wasn't expecting to find another jay predation (minus the bird this time).

Not all of the feathers were there, but the 34 blue coverts were. Which brings the season's total up to ... 48.
 

But as I said, only the ones found individually are to be celebrated. I'll post a collage of them in my next local walk blog, by which time I'll know if this is the final total.

Meanwhile, I was particularly interested in this covert, from a juvenile jay. Apparently it takes some practice to achieve neat, regular barring.

I also found a green woodpecker tail feather, which I'd wanted for a long time - two, in fact, the first being dark and very tatty, the second practically perfect. 

tawny owl, buzzard, jay, goldfinch, sparrowhawk, magpie, great spotted woodpecker, great tit, ring-necked parakeet, thrush, greenfinch

CLOCKWISE from top left: carder bee, wasp nest, light emerald moth, clouded yellow butterfly

Cwtch and I also went for a walk up to Ridgeway Cemetery, which was more overgrown than ever with summer greenery. Even though I know they're there, it's always a small shock to see the headstones poking up out of bramble thickets. 

There have also been favourite trees to visit ...

cherry resin

... and lots of 'tumnal fungi. 

And finally some hoggin, though I must admit, my focus is always on feathers during the fleeting moulting season ...

... though I always feel touched that one particular path at Snuff Mills likes to remind me where I'm from every time I walk it.