A spring in my step

The bluebells are beginning to flower, which means my spring delirium will soon be in full flood and it's time to catch up on how early spring played out in my Bristol haunts.

Actually, Cwtch the Collie was unimpressed with our first bluebell. The initial signs are pleasing, though. This was Badock's Wood this morning.

And not just bluebells, obviously. 

Mill Tut round barrow

The River Trym

And here it is a couple of weeks ago, when the blackthorns were out in force.

Of course, not all our walks have been sunny. There was an atmospheric walk around the floating harbour early one grey morning ... 

... and another down Boiling Wells Lane and up onto Narroways, while I was waiting for new tyres to be fitted on my car ...

... but on the whole, March was definitely more a lamb than a lion. Here are some more of the flowers that are popping out all over.

white violets; alexanders; alkanet and larch buds; dog's mercury; scilla; blackthorn; celandines; comfrey; speedwell; wild strawberry; fumitory; lady's smock (cuckoo flower); pussy willow; wood anemone; honesty; yellow archangel; wild garlic; greater stitchwort; violets; herb Robert; dead nettles; lungwort  

Cwtch in the primroses

The Trym meets its main tributary, the Hazel Brook, downstream on the Blaise estate. I don't go down there that much, on account of all the well-heeled locals clattering past with their walking poles, pretending to be in the Alps, but I did nip down to the Henbury village end and wandered along the banks of the brook to Bradford Mill.

I also hobnobbed with two of my favourite trees in the open space above the valley:

oak

veteran sweet chestnut

On the other side of the Hazel Brook, blackthorn on Castle Hill. I love this spot in the early spring ...

... and also the area between the two hill forts on Castle Hill and Kings Weston Down, that always feels to me like a place where time is wonky and ghosts are on the move.

 

There was plenty of blackthorn out at Winterbourne too, when Cwtch and I went for one of our favourite walks out by St Michael's Church and Monks Pool and Bradley Brook nature reserves ...

Monks Pool nature reserve

Bradley Brook Nature Reserve

... though just the general viridification of everything is exciting enough.

The River Frome at Snuff Mills ... 

... Wickham Glen ...

... and Purdown

With the earth becoming less slippery, it's easier to scramble about on the look-out for bits of pottery. 

In one of the lanes leading down to Wickham Glen, some of the above sherds had been dug up by a fox ... 

 and at Purdown I came across lots of bottles outside a den on an old dump.

With the demise of all the scarlet elf cups, there isn't much fungi in evidence:

On the other hand, the local birds are now at their busiest and much in evidence, particularly the wrens. I managed only a few poor photos of a crow, ring-necked parakeet, and the kingfisher we often see down on the stretch of the River Frome between Eastville Park Lake and Wickham Glen.

There was also a magical afternoon when the wood was filled with jays, their wings catching the spring sunlight.

I found a rather tatty, bedraggled tawny owl feather, which is a very early outlier of the moulting season.

We even saw a rabbit up on Purdown, which ran into a thicket of brambles when it noticed Cwtch. 

Each morning in spring

I conduct with a baton

my dog's Ode to Joy

Narroways, Boiling Wells and Cut Throat Lane

Apart from a doomed attempt to escape in the 1980s, I've lived in Bristol all my life, but there are many parts I don't know that well. A native's complacency, perhaps. 






One of the areas I should know a lot better is the borderland of St Werburghs, St Andrews and Montpelier, not least because I was born there, in a Salvation Army Hospital for Unmarried Mothers on Ashley Hill - though my mother (she would hasten to add) was, in fact, with husband. 

So with an afternoon to spare last Sunday, nearby Narroways Hill, a pocket of wild in this sizeable city, felt like a good place to start exploring. 

This is one of the footbridges at Narroways Hill junction. It was here that 21-year-old Ada James was fatally attacked by her fiancé, Ted Palmer, on 27th January 1913.

Ada managed to stagger all the way back to Mina Road in St Werburghs, despite the throat wound she'd sustained.  She later died in the Infirmary. 

The route she took that night is known locally as Cut Throat Lane. 

Even off the hill, down in St Werbs, it's bosky. 

A continuation of the footpath took us up to Ashley Hill, and another view of St Werburghs Church tower, now a climbing centre. (The church, that is - not the tower.)

More footpath took us along to this much-loved footbridge, again over the railway, on the edge of Montpelier and St Andrews.

Back on Ashley Hill, we took in the views over the allotments to Purdown and the secondary school where I work. 

Immediately before us, Boiling Wells Valley. (Not because they did anything interesting with vats down there, which is what I always thought - no, it's on account of the effervescent natural springs, apparently.)

In the middle distance, behind the trees, the Vale of IKEA. (No industrial or retail associations here either. It's probably to do with dog poo before it became the norm to clear it up.)

Yet another footpath (there are loads of them around here) took us through some of the allotments, about which I have mixed feelings. 

I mean clearly they are A Good Thing. Patches of green in the city, part of its pleuritic lung. And, rather sweetly, they remind me of strip lynchets ... 

... you know, when the soon-to- be-landed gentry pushed to the front of the queue, stole the ground beneath our feet, and let us have tiny parcels of it back. 

Since we're on a political note, down in Boiling Wells Valley there were reminders of the General Election just passed ...

... and its really quite hopeful outcome. 

I didn't have a magic marker on me so had to content myself with adulterating the photo of this board later, rather than the board itself. 

I was beginning to feel a bit disgruntled about the lack of fauna to photograph when I caught sight of one of our rarer species, a feral velociraptor in its natural habitat. 

That was enough to send us scurrying up the lane ... 

... past the geese ...

... and back to our starting point.