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.
