Floods, Frost and the Ant Hill Mob

My partner travelling for work means I'm getting to walk the dog more frequently than in previous winters, which isn't my favourite thing on dull days. The lack of light always has a dispiriting effect on me, though this month has been a bit different, in part due to the changeable weather.

For instance, we had a very wet spell, when the farmland out beyond Charlton Road suddenly remembered its proximity to the Severn floodplain and filled with water.

Charlton Common

¡No pasarán!

The hedgerow where we pick damsons

The ghostly sorrels poking out of the water here reach my shoulder, so it's a fair guess the water in this hollow must be at least three and a half feet. Below is how it looks usually. 

The ditches at the edges of the fields are currently streams, with a current and appropriate sound effects. Cwtch, who hates getting her paws wet, has been balancing across dams and making prodigious leaps. 

Once again, the golf course was deemed too wet to play on, so we revisited some of the ancient trees from when the course was farmland, creeping around the edges and along the sides of copses to avoid the greens and fairways. 

Funnily enough, it was when we weren't trespassing that we fell foul of an officious golfer, seeking to put us in our places.

As the Northerner and I emerged from the field at the end of our walk, there was a group of four golfers playing a shot, so we waited until they'd finished before stepping onto the footpath that crosses the course.

When they were a few yards from us, one of them said ‘You’re playing a very dangerous game!’

I looked down for a moment, as if it might be us who were suddenly carrying golf clubs. The Northerner was quicker. ‘No, we’re not. You can see us; we can see you. You’re not going to hit golf balls at us from this distance’.

‘You should stick to the paths,’ the golfer persisted, and suddenly I was ten again, and he was towering over me and waving his club in the air. This time, though, I found my voice and snapped at my not-Elder, not-Better, ‘This is the path. Look it up on the Ordnance Survey Map!’

‘The path,’ he explained, ‘is marked with paint.’

‘Erm … actually, this is the path,’ one of his companions confirmed.

He threw up his hands. ‘All right, all right, you’ve made your point!’

So. A footpath is only a right of way if someone at the golf club has painted it with red arrows, not if we’ve walked it for centuries. I've decided to carry my OS 155 every time I walk the dog across the course, like when lockdown ended and all those deprived golfers came rushing back with their git-orf-my-landery. A map isn’t just a defence, it’s a weapon too. I like to think that’s why it’s called Ordnance.

Other days the weather has veered from grey grey grey ... 

... to cold and bright, with dazzlingly blue skies ... 

... and, on one memorably frosty, misty, sunny occasion, was filled with the most gorgeous soft light. 

And often there are interesting, shifting skies. 

We've been walking here long enough now for such observations to have a flavour of the same old, same old, but somehow it's all always a marvel and miracle to me. 

Rooks and magpies seeing off intruders from the rookery never get dull. This time, a buzzard, who was eventually chased over the golf course, where a gang of gulls took umbrage. 

There has been death in the form of a shrew I mistook at first glance for an owl pellet ... 

... and a frog who, in 24 hours, went from dead to zombie.

And decay in the form of a fallen waxcap, heart or canker rot in the hollowing oak, a beautiful piece of twisted wood that was far too rotten to take home  ...

 

... and spectacular displays of jelly ear fungus in the Small Dark Wood of the Mind ... 

... and Rooky Wood.

To counteract the end of things, catkins, which are always apparitions of considerable joy ... 

... and the new leaves of cuckoo-pint, although since it has those poisonous siren berries, it must be considered to have a foot in the other camp too. 

Other features are becoming more obvious as last summer's growth continues to recede. In particular, paths are reasserting themselves. I'm not sure if they're badger's pads or foxes' trods. I saw a fox today, streaking across the field as we entered it and far too swift to catch on video. Badgers are evident mainly by their snuffle holes and fecal marking, plus the occasional hollowed-out hedgehog. 

Also far more evident than in the summer are earthworks undertaken by the Ant Hill Mob, Yellow Meadow family.  

One thing I genuinely haven't seen before is this curious pattern of chain link fencing emanating through the bark of a tree that has turned itself into a living fence post. I can't help wincing at the thought of it. Surely it must be painful? And does the pattern go right through the trunk, in order to be visible from the outside?

Anyhow. I'm going to finish with Cwtch, who's still cocking her leg to scent-mark in areas where many dogs have been, which is a bit of a novelty and not a behaviour she seems to be looking to change any time soon, love her. (I do.) 

In which I get a cerstificut ...

 ... and an academic transcript, but still have to wait to flounce around in a cloak and hat.

It's five years today since my father died. I suspect he'd have shown off to other people about his daughter's achievement, though to me he'd have said 'Why don't you write something that will make you some money, like that Rowling woman?'

The reason I know this is because it's what he did say, on a different occasion. Of course, Rowling had yet to come out as a transphobe back then. As it is, I'll take poetry and solidarity with my trans friends, thanks. 

All Change in the Edgelands

 

I don't much care for change. Part of the stress is waiting for it all start - or, if it has, to reach you. 

Back in the cold snap before Christmas, we wandered over the fields on the far side of Fishpool Hill, where the development of Brabazon is already under way, and became quite disorientated, thanks to the removal of a short stretch of hedge that made two large fields into one huge one, and seemed to alter completely the lie of the land.

We've also heard - and seen - more goods trains running on the Henbury loop, which only used to happen at night, and which signals its reincorporation into the infrastructure of the area, as it becomes more densely populated.

There have even been changes in the Small Dark Wood of the Mind. I walked through with Cwtch, my dog, the other day, after an absence of three weeks, and was surprised to find the path that leads to the Grove of the Silver Chair (and Ruby Crown) had rebranded itself as Golden Gate Way ... so I had to go down it and find out what was happening. 

When we got to the clearing where we first saw a roe deer a couple of years ago, I was shocked to find that all the trees on that edge of the wood had been felled, and then I remembered hearing a chainsaw a few weeks ago and being relieved to find 'they' weren't cutting down the magnificent ash at the entrance to the wood. Now, sadly, I know what 'they' were up to. Here's how it is now, and how it was in April 2021. 

The Grove itself - and the discarded patio chair and builder's helmet that inspired its nickname - remain unchanged, but are themselves now right on the edge of an even smaller Small Dark Wood of the Mind. There might well be an excellent reason for this work being done, but it does seem a shame to reduce cover, in a wooded corridor where tawny owls (amongst other creatures) live, at a time when so much of the surrounding area is going under concrete.

Here's some more folklore in one of the gardens in the trailer park, namely, Blodeuwedd. ('She wants to be flowers but you make her owls. You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.')

There have been a few more treasures to spot at this most apparently barren of times:

oak leaf with rivets, blackberries, a waxcap dancing the dying swan, badger poo studded with damsons, more waxcaps, a sea green snail shell, a little daisy showing its head, a bramble leaf, and sycamore leaves

As for fauna, apart from sparring magpies, jays, crows and rooks, which we hear and see most days, and grey squirrels, which are ubiquitous in the extreme, there's been little to note, though the gulls, which are always present but which fly so high they're seldom on my radar unless they're mobbing predators, have been a lot noisier than usual these last couple of weeks. 

And of course there's the aforementioned Cwtch, who might count as fauna, I suppose. She's certainly attempting to interact with some down that hole.

The hollowing oak has changed too, losing the last of its leaves. I realised a few weeks back that it features on the 1844 - 1888 OS map on the Know Your Place website, so it must have been a noteworthy tree even then.

And of all changeable things, the weather is most, from frost and ice and residual snow ... 

 ... to wind ... 

... and some welcome sun.

Strangely, there was no one standing to my left when this photo was taken ... 

... though here you can jut see Cwtch at my right.

And more than any other sort of weather, there has been rain, characterised first by stormy skies ...

... which then turn dreary and grey as soon as the precipitation starts. 

It's rained so much that the ditch is a winterbourne with a current ... 

... and even the badger path is flowing.

As for the formerly helpful step in the kissing gate out on the farmland, it's now a lot more precarious in its broken state. (More change.)

In fact, it's been so wet, the golf course was closed for a couple of days over New Year, which was doubtless a disappointment for the golfers, but lovely for us, as it meant we could have a wander without the risk of being brained by a golf ball. (Most golfers we've encountered are pretty friendly, but we've had balls hit at us even when crossing the course on the footpath.)

Here, in addition to the landfill at the northern end of the course, and the new pitch and putt, work on which seems to have stalled, there is yet more change around the two largest ponds. The Northerner had warned me, when I was laid up with a sprained ankle back in October, that both ponds at the top of the course had been fenced off, but this was the first opportunity I'd had of seeing the work for myself.

Of course it's impossible to guess what the plan is, without being in the know, but lots of the vegetation has been cut back around this, the smaller pond, and some youngish trees felled, which is a shame, given the ponds form one of the more biodiverse areas of the course. Here's how it is now vs how it looked in July of last year. 

Meanwhile, it looks like the larger, very shallow pond is being made deeper, with an island, which is funny because a golf club member, who's also a dog walker, told me a while back that the management had originally intended to drain it and establish a green there, and capped the spring feeding it in readiness, only for the level of Henleaze Lake, a couple of miles away, to drop dramatically, much to the consternation of the swimmers, therefore requiring a change of plan. Here's how it looks now and back in September 2021, when it was a large muddy hollow, and I walked right through it among the reedmace and loosestrife, fleabane and Michaelmas daisies. 

Right at the bottom of the course, where she first learnt that ice melts and water doesn't support even the weight of a small pup, Cwtch eyes the potential for a wetting with suspicion. She might take a sip but nothing will induce her to dampen even a paw. The change from warm fur to sodden is not one she'll entertain.