A Wander at Snuff Mills

The dog has form for hamming it up. He spent the entire period of my recuperation from breaking my leg last year limping for attention, though there was nothing wrong with him. Recently, however, he started hobbling for real and the vet, who has no truck with our tales of limpathy, diagnosed strained ligaments. The last few weeks have been dull for him and for us, with enforced rest and subsequently only very short walks around the block.

He's seemed a lot better these last few days so today we decided to go for a wander at Snuff Mills in the Frome valley, with Ted on two leads and his headcollar so that he wasn't tempted to go cantering off and cause any more damage to himself.  This did confer some advantages, principally the fact that he couldn't dive headlong into all the mud lining on the river bank.

The poor lad did, however, manage a quick paddle.

Meanwhile, I was getting a little over-excited.  There were buds and catkins, celandines and lungwort.  The great process of renewal under way.

I could even smell the water. 

Ted rather liked the dogwood. 

Bristol is of course famed for the Avon Gorge, but some of its other water courses - the Trym, the Hazel Brook and the Frome  -  have their own, smaller gorges, through Badock's Wood, Blaise Castle estate, and Oldbury Court estate/Snuff Mills respectively. I love the way the trees here grow out of the rock. 

The Yorkshire man got very sniffy when I said that this was a post industrial landscape, being the site, from the middle ages to the early 20th century, of many mills.  He thinks only Northerners have ever manufactured anything. 

On the drive home we saw a woman sweeping the pavement outside her house, and then the woman in the corner shop really muddied the waters by calling him 'sweetheart'. I expect they were both Northerners too.