Winter walks in the dark days

Since I’m still largely confined to the settee with a painful shoulder, I might as well post some photos of local walks we took from late November to just before Christmas, when I suddenly stopped being able to drive to interesting places.

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. 

Midsummer meanders on the Avon and the Trym

I decided I wanted to see some bee orchids, so one sunny morning last week we set off for Lamplighter's Marsh near Shirehampton, where they're reputed to grow, in Daisy Field. 

It's an interesting place to walk, lying between the Portway, one of the main arterial routes into and out of Bristol, and its predecessor in that role, the River Avon. 

In the past, this area was used as a grazing marsh, and when WWI broke out, the Army established a remount depot there. The depot requisitioned horses and retrained them before sending them to their deaths at the front. 

This sculpture was installed in Daisy Field only last year. The War Horse is made entirely of horseshoes, and is a memorial to the many horses that passed through the depot. 

Images of horses are also engraved on this rather rustic bench. 

During our wander in Daisy Field we saw our first Meadow Brown of the summer ...

... plus, crow garlic ... 

... common knapweed ... 

... this umbellifer which was new to me, and is the strangely-named corky-fruited water dropwort ...

... and comfrey, but sad to say, no bee orchids that I spotted. 

We then headed down Station Road to the Lamplighters pub and the river, with its muddy view across to Pill, which is one of my favourite places in Bristol. 

Pill

Looking up to the M5 bridge over the Avon

The tide was pretty low, exposing the salt marsh that gives the area its name and the rather more famous mud that characterises the tidal stretches of the Avon and Severn. 

viper's bugloss

wild carrot

hemlock

It was even warmer a couple of afternoons later, so we headed for the relative cool of Badock's Wood. 

by the round barrow

The lower part of the badger sett in the mini gorge hollowed by the River Trym

This upper part of the Trym runs pretty dry in the summer, but it was still nice to see Cwtch approach it on her own and with confidence after all the hard work water-walking we put in over the winter.

lovely magpie feather

A little sit-down on the bench that always reminds me of my late parents and my late collie, Ted

Walking back to the car through the upper part of the wood

some hoggin

Out on Lyde Green Common, deep in Badock's Wood

Son the Younger lives in Lyde Green, in the north-east of Bristol. The houses, shops, Science Park, etc were all built in the 2010s, so everything's very new, but just opposite his home is a country lane leadng to Lyde Green Common that still manages to look quite rural, so recently we went for a wander to see what we could see. 

Marsh Marigolds

Speckled wood

Greater Stitchwort

Bush vetch

There are some quite impressive trees in the woods around the edge of the common ... 

... and some out in the open. 

Thrush (top) and blackbird eggshells

Lyde Green Farm, now divided into housing units

It was a surprisingly peaceful walk, given we were right next to the M4, but then it was the Thursday before the Easter holiday and the motorway was more of a car park. This is where the path called The Dramway - a 19th century tramway that carried coal from Coalpit Heath and the other mines locally down to the River Avon - runs underneath it. 

Talking of which, here's Parkfield Colliery North Chimney. Because they closed a lot earlier than those that survived into the 1980s - in this instance, in 1936 - it's easy to forget just how many collieries there were in the Bristol coalfield.

Buff-tailed bumble bee

Despite the leafing trees and occasional butterfly, it was still very muddy, with a hint of lingering winter, at Lyde Green. Yesterday's walk, eight days later, at Badock's Wood was much more springlike.

on the round barrow

The first whitethorn blossom of the year is always a bit of a thrill. If there was a toy called 'My First Whitethorn' I'd play with it every day, and buy it for all the children I know. 

Very yellow cowslips (and celandines)

Building Cwtch's confidence in the water is fast turning into a magical experience. What's more, she's getting very brave.

River Trym

Grey wagtail

Wood anemones 

Horse Chestnuts lighting their candles

Badock's is a garlic wood rather than a bluebell wood, and I reckon it'll be another week to ten days before the garlic flowers reach constellation-status. Meanwhile, most of the bluebells here seem to be of the Spanish variety or hybrids. Leaving worries about the dilution of the bluebell gene pool to one side, there are still lots of woods around locally to get a fix of Hyacinthoides non-scripta, which we'll be doing very soon.

There were ravens up in the tree-tops in the middle of the wood, so I sat on the bench for a bit to listen to them. This spot always makes me feel melancholy, and it was my late mother's birthday to boot, but how can you feel sad for long with Her Cwtchness around, and spring well and truly doing its thing?