A Winter Solstice Advent Calendar ... and a road trip to Wiltshire and Wales

I suffer with the dark in winter, and December can be a real struggle for this and other reasons, so this year I decided to post a Winter Solstice advent calendar on my Facebook, to keep myself focused on the brighter days.

Here are the photos I chose, all taken in Bristol: at Blaise, Stapleton, Badock’s Wood, Horfield, the Floating Harbour, Filton, Purdown, Eastville Park, Lawrence Weston moor, and Three Brooks nature reserve in Bradley Stoke. 

The astute will notice there are only 20 photos and this year’s winter solstice falls on the 21st. This is because on Day 6, I couldn’t resist posting my little video of the Santas on a bike in the Floating Harbour.

One morning there was a stunning sunrise. I was headed due east and utterly mesmerised by it, but couldn’t take a photo because I was driving. Here’s what it looked like at daybreak, just before I left home.

I was on my annual Christmas trip to Wiltshire, to pick Jinny and her dog Millie up and take them to meet her parents at Pont Abraham Services in Carmarthenshire, who would drive the third leg of the journey to New Quay. 

By the time I arrived in Hilperton, the sun had risen into the thickening cloud and it looked a lot less stunning, but the canal, and Jinny and Millie's company, was anything but drab. 

It was great to be on a road trip and outside of Bristol for the first time since August, when my shoulder flared into huge pain that lasted for weeks. Sadly, there are no more photos, mainly because I was driving, but also because the weather took a drastic turn for the worse, and by the time we passed Cardiff, a very wet and sticky rain was falling - the sort that throws up a blinding spray and requires you to put the windscreen wipers on at full speed. At times standing water crashed across the carriageway like Hokusai's wave, but my charges were deposited safely and I made it home in one piece too. 

Millie, who is a very good dog indeed

TED Walks in the time of Coronavirus Pt 2

There's not much else to write about right now, thank goodness.

Finding a new place to for our evening walks, with a hint of being in the country about it - though it's really just edgelands - has made a huge difference to our experience of lockdown. (We were already lucky enough to have a home from which we can do most of our work, and a garden.) And now we've abandoned the featureless playing fields and manicured park, and see fewer people as a result. We also cover more ground - around four miles for our daily exercise, which is considerably more on average than we used to do. Still haven't spotted the extremely noisy green woodpeckers up there yet, though.

Here's some photos. 

Gibbous moon above the conifers on the golf course

Wind turbines at Avonmouth

Lady's smock

A fox trotting past and pausing

The moon in the woods ...

... and tangled in a tree, like Absalom.

Trees with barbed wire growing through them on the lane. I remember mentioning this to my father when we walked up there fifty years ago, and I feel as upset about it now as I did then. 

The wishing tree

Sundown over the airfield, for the extension of which most of the village of Charlton was razed in the late 1940s, bar a few houses ...

... including this one, Pentre (now Cedar House). Now the airfield is in the process of being built on. What goes round. 

Old Filton House and the side elevation of Pegasus House through the railings

The rookery-cum-jackdawry

A nearly dry winterbourne at the foot of the field

Ted getting tangled around a tree

Mare's tail shoots, looking deceptively fungal

A golden sundown over Charlton Common

Sunset alongside the railway cutting beyond Charlton Common

The last of the sun over Fishpool Hill

The fire brigade and five police cars arriving to deal with a fire on the golf course. Sightings of lads, lager and two BBQs were mentioned the next day.

The oak tree appears to have lost a large limb at some point, as well as a lot of its bark ... 

... and some inner wood. It's also been attacked by borers. 

Apple blossom

The cycle of the seasons

The tree by the old factory building has stood there so long I hardly ever notice it

The sun going down in the oak tree. How the leaves have burgeoned this week. 

A second oak

Cribbs Causeway from the opposite side of the airfield

Alkanet and yellow archangel

A closer look at Cedar House

Sunset over Charlton Common ...

... and the field beyond

Mist over the River Avon; the new Severn bridge just visible

'After argosies on the sea, argosies in the sky'

There were perils attached to growing up in a town, the local name of which in British Sign Language translates as 'aeroplane'. The worst was being dragged, by a son-less father, to the annual air show that was held on the airfield. (So loud, those Harrier Jump Jets!) By the time the Aerospace Museum opened in Autumn 2017, I'd recovered enough to try to persuade my by then very frail father to let me push him around it in a wheelchair. He flatly refused. And then, four months later, he died. So that was that. 

Except I've been more blessed than my father in the son department, and the younger one wanted to go regardless. And eventually, on a day too rainy for our planned walk, we went. 

I'm not going to give a potted history of flying machines in Filton, though it was fascinating to see the effect on the development of the then village the factory had. 

To the rest of it, I paid attention as diligently as I could. And when I couldn't, I took photos of Son the Younger paying diligent attention. 

Of course, what we'd really gone there for was Concorde, which was so much a part of both our childhoods. I'd watched the maiden flight on 9th April 1969 from my primary school playground in Filton. Son the Younger had watched the final flight home, on 26th November 2003, from his.  

Here's the hangar. 

And here's the first glimpse. 

Even the technical stuff was interesting. 

It's snug on board.

Apparently John Wayne was too big to fit right inside the toilet cubicle and the stewards had to hold up a curtain when he wanted to use it. 

I confess I let sentimentality overtake any modern-day notions of carbon footprints and sustainability and had a small teary feeling at the end of our visit ... 

... while Son the Younger took a moment to explore the likely future of Filton's aircraft industry post Brexit.