Between two bridges

 It was a clear, sunny day towards the end of a particularly wet, dark winter, so I put on my melt-the-ice solidarity hat and headed to Aust on the banks of the River Severn, for a dose of light and wide blue skies. 

It was very bright on the river, which wasn't great for taking photos of either the old Severn bridge (my favourite) or the cliffs, which were deep in shadow, but no matter, it was just good to be out and about somewhere - well, not new, of course, but different, all non-essential road trips having been limited of late. 

We picked our way across the muddy warth up to what passes for a beach and on to the old bridge. 

In the foreground, the remains of a wooden frame to which putchers (withy baskets) were attached, for catching salmon.

Aust is famous for its fossils, but I didn't find anything pocketable this time. 

On the return leg, a view of the rather less beautiful, but still impressive new Severn bridge, which isn't all that new anymore, I suppose.

The path that led to the ferry buildings of the Old Passage is gated now, and the gate chained, all the buildings having been demolished in 2019, but there's still a route through the reeds to the shore.

It's poignant to see the rotting remains of the jetty, the start- and end-point of a crossing that served for thousands of years, with the bridge that replaced it in the 1960s in the background ... 

... itself now largely supplanted by its newer, more windproof counterpart, three miles downstream. It's a pity the ferry buildings couldn't have been rebuilt, rather than pulled down, and repurposed as a Museum of the Severn and its crossings. 

Ah, Cwtch, a stick that's too big even for you

Snowdropping at Painswick Rococo Garden

First jaunt of the year with my friend of longest standing, Liz, who kindly drove me and Cwtch to Painswick Rococo Garden in the Cotswolds, my impinged shoulder still being troublesome. 

It was in a Painswick tea shoppe, on a very rainy day in 2008, that we adopted the idea of 'The Jaunt' from our former French teacher, Janet Foster, who'd died eight years earlier at the age of 50. The inordinately enthusiastic Miss Foster had been an inveterate jaunter, and we decided that was what we'd do too - make time in our busy lives to go to new places. And we've both done that, although not often enough with each other. But now Liz has all but retired from teaching, there's a little more scope for getting out and about, and for novelty - something the dopamine-seeker in me craves. 

Rococo is my least liked of all the styles when it comes to interiors and architecture - in fact, I loathe it - but nature improves everything, and the garden is a pleasant place to be. Having been laid out in the 1730s, it was subsequently altered as fashions changed, and by the 1950s, it was covered in conifers. It was restored in the 1970s, using a 1748 painting by local artist, Thomas Robins, as a guide to what the original garden looked like.

First, we went for a wander through the maze, which was a lot less challenging than it would have been in full summer foliage ...

... though of course, the experience we were mostly there for was the snowdrops.

There are, apparently, fifteen different species in the garden, out of a total of twenty known species. 

'The Fairy Tale Castle' carved into an old beech stump

The Gothick alcove

Winter aconite

The Pigeon House

Painswick House, built in 1737

Cwtch and Liz

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.