Pilgrims, Doppelgängers and the Battle of Royate Hill

It being half term, I decided to visit a couple of places in Bristol I'd never been to before. It's not hard to find such places in South Bristol,where I only really venture for poetry events or to walk the dog at Ashton Court or Arnos Vale cemetery, and Brislington Brook as it meanders through Nightingale Valley and St Anne's Woods on its way to the River Avon had been on my list of local places to visit for years. 

It was a lovely sunny morning and Cwtch was basking in the delight of being somewhere new. 

harlequin ladybird

Brislington brook rises on the northern slope of Maes Knoll, a few miles to the south. It never gets as big as its north Bristol cousins, the Rivers Frome and Trym, all of which eventually decant their waters into the River Avon, but its valley is a lovely spot.

A communication line of tree roots

Where Nightingale Valley assumes the name of St Anne's Woods, I paused on the railway bridge to look at the goods train beneath it. The railway was built in 1840 by Brunel and splits the valley in two. The line ends at Paddington. 

After negotiating Newbridge Road, we entered the woods again. There was earlier traffic here, of a different variety: namely, that of pilgrims, coming to visit the chapel and sacred well dedicated to Anne, the patron saint of sailors. 

Of the chapel, with its thirty-two model ships left as offerings, there's no sign, though it was once important enough to be the subject of a visit by King Henry VII. Ironically, its demise was instigated by his son during the Reformation. 

The well's still there, though, surrounded by railings, though there was only a drop of water in there when we visited, and signs that someone tried to use it as a barbecue pit during the long hot summer. A nearby tree had some faded clouties tied to it. 

On our way back towards the upper stretch of Nightingale Valley, I saw my father on the bridge over the railway. At first, he was looking down at the train beneath it; then he started pacing up and down as if he was waiting for someone - neither activity particularly odd, except that he died nearly eight years ago.

The thought occurred to me that maybe the person he was waiting for was me, so I held back until he disappeared down a side street. Getting close enough to see it wasn’t my father would have been weird; getting close enough to see it was, something else altogether.

a one-legged apple tree

the packhorse bridge

There are several impressive trees in these woods, but none so strange as this London plane, the hollow trunk of which has been bricked up, apparently to stop people lighting fires inside it. 

My second new place to visit was Royate Hill nature reserve in Eastville, which lies north of the River Avon. Our walk, though, started somewhere familiar, namely, Greenbank cemetery in Easton, which was brilliant with foliage despite the overcast weather.

Three headstones, close each other and with angels as security, commemorating children who died between the ages of 12 and 18 in the 1930s and 40s

Just alongside an entrance at the northern edge of the cemetery, there's a flight of steps that leads up to the disused viaduct that's now part of the reserve.

I remember the painful birth of this place thirty-plus years ago. It was saved from redevelopment in 1991 and listed as a Site of Nature Conservation Importance, only for the owner, who wanted to build houses there, to send in the bulldozers at 6am on a Bank Holiday Saturday the following spring. Local protestors arrived within minutes, but it took took hours for the council to get an injunction, by which time a third of the five-acre site had been destroyed.

Ultimately, the developer didn't get his way, and it's now a lovely and very unusual place to wander. 

view of Clifton in the distance

Once down from the viaduct, we wandered up through Clay Bottom, joining Coombe Brook, a tributary of the River Frome, for part of the way.

jelly ear fungi

Much of this section of the walk took us through allotments, bright with foliage, late-blooming flowers and plastic. 

a piece of hoggin in situ

Our return route took us under the viaduct and back into Greenbank cemetery.

I was quite intrigued by this modest stone dating from 1982, propped up against - and partially obscuring - the older, grander one, especially since the surnames are all different. 

It was exhilarating to visit a couple of new places, and I'd like to say I'll try to keep it up once a month through the winter, but the season of mud will be setting in presently, so maybe I'll end up sticking (ha!) to ground I can be sure of. We'll see. 

Walls, Windows and Doors to the Life to Come, &c

Last night's inaugural outing for a new venture in poetry improvisation called Strange Cargo was the first time I'd managed to get out of Bristol in weeks. Or even get out at all. 

In any event, it went well. The gig, part of the Lyrical series run by Diana Durham in Trowbridge Town Hall, was a little daunting but an excellent opportunity to try out our plan of spontaneous poetry reading on the loose theme of walls and windows. 

We found ourselves in the perfect room for our subject-matter, and my fellow poets, Dawn Gorman, Chaucer Cameron, Anna-May Laugher, Shauna Darling Robertson and Helen Dewbery (Pey Oh being away) and I grew in confidence.  

By the end of the evening we were brimming with ideas for framing the poems, regulating their flow, and also the possibility of audience participation instead of a more formal open mic. It feels good to have a new venture underway.

Today I'd hoped to take our dog, Ted, who's been confined to base during the last month of hospital vigilance and funding applicationing, for a lovely long walk, somewhere with open skies, but he's picked up a bit of a limp so I had to downsize my plans.

Instead we headed for Greenbank Cemetery, which I've driven around all my life but never actually visited.

There was a burial going on when we got there so we decided to walk the bounds of the plot for our first visit. 

Sultry summer days aren't my first choice when it somes to visiting cemeteries, mainly because they tend to burn off all the atmosphere. 

The grass had been newly mown too. It was all looking very well-kempt.  

War graves, both military and civilian 

The long alleys of trees provided some welcome shade.

It intrigues me how people still visit old tumbledown graves to pay their respects, even if the tributes are chosen to last as long as possible, thus reducing the frequency of remembrancing required.

I watched two large, bright jays fly into a lime tree and then turn into lumpy jumping shadows that were completely invisible. 

A pair of moulting crows weren't as self-effacing. 

Poor Kate Perezic got a beautiful headstone but it doesn't look as if her loving husband chose to lie with her in the end. 

Commonwealth war graves

I'd intended to pop over the road to Rosemary Green where the dead from the Eastville Workhouse, which used to stand there, were buried, including my great-great-great grandfather, Mark 

Drewett, who died there in the 1880s. (No headstones for them, of course.) But Ted was still limping so I decided to save that journey for another day.