If you go down to Sheep Wood today ...

It was a mild day with sunny spells, and for once there was no named storm battering us, so Cwtch and I went a little farther afield, for a walk at Sheep Wood, which lies just to one side of a ridge of land between the suburbs of Westbury-on-Trym and Henbury. It's one of those not much frequented pockets of land where nature is in charge, something that's to be valued in a city. What makes this one really special, though, is that it contains - or is overlooked by - the original frontage of the Lord Mayor's Chapel, which dates from 1230 and was removed from its original site in the 1820s, when the level of Park Street was raised to improve its gradient. It was rebuilt four and a half miles to the north by (possibly) Henry Brooke of Henbury Hill House to act as a picturesque Victorian folly on the boundary of his garden abutting Sheep Wood.

I'd been itching to see it since I visited the Lord Mayor's Chapel just before Christmas. I thought I might have to hunt for it, but it was the first thing I saw as I entered the wood at its mid-point. 

Cwtch, on the other hand, was far more excited by the wood itself - all those new sniffs to sniff - and was motoring around, exploring every inch, so I decided to save closer inspection of the frontage for later. 

my first snowdrop of the year

two magnificent beeches

I felt I ought to have known of the wood's existence before my poet friend David Johnson told me about it a year or so ago, since it adjoins what used to be Wesley College (and before that, Didsbury College). Being Bristolian and raised Methodist, it was ... well, maybe calling it a familiar place in my childhood is a bit of a stretch, but I do remember going to see a production of 'The Crucible' there when I was about 12, and also having a picnic in the grounds when my own children were small. But walking Sheep Wood felt very much like a first footing. 

You can just glimpse the former college (now a nursing home) in the background of the photo above. 

If Cwtch was expecting sheep, she was disappointed, though we did pass a herd of yews at its south-west end. 

Being higher than its surroundings, on one side at least, there were some pale but interesting views of the suburbs to the west. Above, in wintry sun, the dreaming spires of Brookridge House, Henbury, which you can also see from the farmland where we more often walk, a mile and a half to the north-east.  

A huge burr at the foot of an oak. All the trees in the wood are under a preservation order.

'Aren't I more interesting than some old tree?'

CLOCKWISE from top left: stump puffball; velvet top(?) and black braacket fungus; oak bracket fungus (the oak is completely dead; the misleading leaves are from a nearby tree); King Alfred's Cakes; slime mould; hoof fungi

We then explored the north-eastern end of the wood. As we approached the Chapel facade on our return, the path ascended to its foot, so you could get a much closer look. 

There's also a sort-of viewing platform built lower down on the side of the hill, which is accessed by a dangerous-looking flight of steps. I've been nervous of any sort of step or stair since I broke my leg stepping off my doorstep back in 2015 - once your body has let you down so comprehensively, it's difficult ever to trust it again - but they still looked a better option than slithering down the slope, because obviously I couldn't pass up the chance of another, slightly different view of an eight-hundred-year-old wall. 

And there it was. A bit magical, really. Cwtch says we'll come back again to see how it looks in different seasons, and I think she's right. 

Poetry and the Stories of St Mary Tory

Covid put paid to a lot of things, one of them being the Words and Ears poetry evenings that used to take place in The Swan at Bradford-on-Avon. (It seems churlish to complain, given that the organiser, Dawn Gorman, now presents 'The Poetry Place' on West Wilts Radio - another boon for the poetry community in the West - but I do miss the rather more plentiful opportunities we used to have for in-person mingling with the poets of Wiltshire and Somerset. 

I was really pleased, then, to be able to join a few of them for a one-off Words and Ears Live at the 2024 Bradford Roots Music Festival. First though, since I'd arrived in very good time, a little visit to the lovely Chapel of St Mary, more commonly known as St Mary Tory,

In case you're wondering, 'Tory' has nothing to do with the political party; rather, it derives from the word 'tor' and refers to its location, perched high on the hill above the 17th century suburb of Newtown. 

Luckily, I was winding my way to Mary Tory from the top of the hill, rather than uphill from the centre of Bradford-on-Avon, which I've heard is a fair climb. 

Even so, my route was still steepish in places. 

Sadly, it was a dull, dark day, and the Westbury White Horse wasn't visible on thie horizon, but I did enjoy the rooftops with their graduated tiles, layered in the distinctive Cotswold manner ... 

... while below I picked out Holy Trinity Church, the roof of St Laurence, the atmospheric Saxon Church, and the mediaeval Town Bridge ...

... and to the west, I could see the Tithe Barn with the Kennet and Avon canal behind it. It would be good to go back again on a clearer day. 

St Mary Tory

The chapel is thought to date from the second half of the 15th century, and was originally a pilgrim chapel on the route between Glastonbury and Malmesbury. The antiquary, John Leland, came across it in his 'Itinerary' of 1533, and John Aubrey, chronicler of the 17th century, considered it 'the finest hermitage I have seen in England'. By the 19th century it was a ruin, and was rebuilt, in its original, late Perpendicular style, by T B Saunders QC. 

The lovely East Window, was designed and made by Mark Angus of Bath in 1999. 

It felt like a very peaceful, special place, but I couldn't linger too long as I had poems to read. I duly arrived back at the festival slightly pink and breathless, but my poems - featuring Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Joe Strummer and Ian Dury - were well received, and I was also interviewed by Dawn for West Wilts radio about my forthcoming collection, 'Love the Albatross'. 

On the Golden Gudgeon stage - clockwise - Linda Saunders with Dawn Gorman during the sound check, Jeff Phelps, Dawn and Frances-Anne King, Eileen Cameron, Chris Macfarlane, Linda Saunders, Dee Way and Ruth Sharman

A funny thing happened when I was talking to a member of the audience, who was wearing a bird headband, about wassailing, specifically the time we wassailed my grandmother's apple tree which my friend had driven over from my old garden on top of her Morris Traveller and replanted, and she said 'Dru Marland'! Which is exactly what I love about our community and our corner of the world. 

Elsewhere at the end of the year

An attack of bronchitis is hardly an ideal way to start the New Year, but since I'm holed up at home, I might as well post some photos of where I'm not currently walking a somewhat disconsolate dog.

Autumn was just starting to peter out the last time I posted about the edgelands, so here's a few of its dissolution into winter. 

the hollowing oak at its height

bramble leaves the colour of harlequin playing cards

spindle

field maple

through the Small Dark Wood of the Mind

glorious oaklings

the hollowing oak clinging to its colour

the Goat Willow, as yellow with autumn leaves now as it was with catkins in spring

Badger's Bottom

the oak out on the fields

my favourite field maple

dogwood

Charlton Common

next spring's catkins

And then winter. I've already posted about the beautiful frost in mist we had in the first week of December, which had been preceded by a lighter display about ten days earlier. 

Floods too. Winter's the time for floods, here in the skylarks' field.

The ditch at the foot of the Field of the Hollowing Oak has had a flow - even a current - for much of December, plus a dam. The poet in me would love to declare Beaver! but there are no nibbled tree stumps and anyhow, they wouldn't live in what is usually just mud. It's just something it built for itself.

Mostly, though, winter's distinguished by its light: soft on cloudy days with barely perceptible shifts of light, or brilliantly delineated in full sun ... 

... and its beautiful skies. (Stormy, mostly, as it turns out.)

There have been fungi, and a few fading - or headlong - flowers:

Clockwise from top left: meadow waxcaps; fungus on bramble; candlesnuff; fungi on the hollowing oak, including witches butter; turkeytails; oak bracket fungus

Clockwise from top left: bramble blossom and spindle; buttercups; frosted red dead nettle; white dead nettle; ivies; yarrow and hogweed; ragwort; next spring's periwinkle

As for fauna, the roe deer are much in evidence, if only by their hoofprints. One set is conspicuously smaller than the others - hard to know if that's their fawn, which won't be fully grown yet, or muntjac straying into the field, maybe, especially there's all that construction going on near their rumoured stronghold of Charlton Common. All just conjecture on my part, though.

In addition to the nocturnal wanderings of deer, there's been the usual:

a dead shrew

a dead pigeon

a kestrel on the hunt

dive-bombing goldfinches that, if they hadn't been too fast to photograph, would have looked something like this

As for the developement of Brabazon, the hi-vizzers are increasingly visible this side of Fishpool Hill.

A long trench has been dug in the skylarks field, alongside the cutting, stopping just short of the badgers sett. Let's hope it stays that way.

Meanwhile, the footpath has been lost beneath the tracks of heavy plant ... 

... that continue on down the far field. 

For weeks there's been chain-sawing going on down in the cutting ...

... with a section of hedgerow removed, maybe to make a walkway to the station once it's reopened.

As a result, the trains are suddenly a lot more visible than they were. I'm reminded - as so often! - of 'Black Beauty', when the colts are sent to a neighbouring farm and a steam train that skirts the meadow they're kept in terrifies them. 

Even the footpath was briefly cut off by a black plastic fence, but it soon got trodden down. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that our days of walking here are effectively over.

Thank goodness for the field and the hollowing oak.