Actually, we haven't taken full advantage of the relaxation in the rules and gone to Berrow Beach, or my much-missed Dartmoor, or on an all-day road trip to the south coast. It just doesn't feel safe yet to me, and anyway, my car is overdue its MOT and service (though booked in). But Son the Younger, Ted the Dog, and I have been on a couple of walks along the Severn, and enjoyed the huge skies and the slightly misplaced sense of being (nearly) by the sea.
The first walk was one Ted and I had done before, only this time we were starting our walk from Whale Wharf and heading for Oldbury Pill and the nuclear power station half a mile or so beyond it, rather than the other way around.
It was so good to feel the breeze, and see and smell the river. And the cows! Lovely lovely cows.
Some of the local sailors had taken advantage of the relaxation of the lockdown and taken their boats out.
Spring came early this year, but conditions are harsher on the river and it was nice to see some whitethorn still in bloom on Oldbury Pill.
And by the sailing club swathes of umbellifers. Instead of continuing to call everything cow parsley, I've embarked on a scratch course - Know Your Umbellifers 101 - since our lockdown walks began,and can confidently identify this as hemlock ...
... and this is hemlock water dropwort, from our second walk, starting at Shepperdine and walking down to the power station.
Forget, for a moment, Covid-19. What with deadly plants and nuclear power stations, quicksand and this, everything was always out to get us anyway.
It was very very windy for our second walk so we cut it a lot shorter than planned.
But it was good to take a deep breath before diving back into lockdown.
We also made a trip to Badock's Wood, which is local but not within comfortable walking distance from our home. And ooh it was lovely down in the little gorge, among the dark summer trees ...
... and the still just blossoming ramsons ...
... though Ted was a bit put out at the River Trym's lack of water.
There was a sad thing, though, namely the deliberate damage done to the carvings, both in the wood and in the fields above it.
Especially this carving which I liked so much, I had it in my author's photo on the back of my poetry collection, Breadcrumbs, to mark how important the wood was to me at the time I lived the poems.
Otherwise, we've been mostly going up over the golf course, sticking to the public footpaths to access Charlton Common and the meadow.
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to block every single desire path on the edge of the course with brushwood, and sometimes barbed wire.
There's also a few new instructions to follow. Presumably this is so that walkers exercising their right to walk on ancient public rights of way can see golf balls heading towards them and catch them before they get hit.
We've also been walking up the Public Right of Way that hasn't been painted white. There's an arrow pointing to it in the little wood on the edge of the course, but no further indication of where it runs, unless you have a map. I have a map ...
... and I'm not afraid to use it. It's a useful thing to have in your pocket to wave around in case of challenges. (A friend was told she had no right to walk across the course while she was actually standing on a painted line.)
Though for now the most concerning thing has been the possibility of transfiguration and ascension to a higher astral plane.
With the whitethorn all but gone, we have instead elderflowers, cornflowers, hogweed and cow parsley, pot marigolds and viper's blugloss, vetch ...
... plus a field full of pignut.
The small dark wood of the mind is darker and more impenetrable than ever ...
... but there are sunsets too ...
... and plenty of ticks to pick up. Verily, some kind of heaven.
There was a bit of joining up to do on our winter walk along the estuarine section of the Severn Way, so we headed for Littleton-on-Severn and Whale Wharf, where a couple of months ago I saw a Beluga (A300-600 Super Transporter).
It was another brightish day, but this time much more spring-like.
This is the view down to the old Severn bridge ...
... and up to Cowhill Warth and Oldbury Nuclear Power Station.
We were headed for the old bridge - or at least as far as the tide would permit. Luckily, it was low.
It was an uneventful walk. It helped that the flood defences weren't slippery, so I didn't do any falling over.
We did come across this former railway wagon-come-salmon hut, now very decrepit.
I did a bit of research about how the fish were caught when I got home.
Here you might just be able to see wooden staves driven in to the river bed, to which were attached specially made baskets that trapped
the fish. And here are some others I saw earlier this month on the other side of the estuary at Goldcliff ...
... and some more on the farther side of the old bridge, at Aust.
This type of fishing is called Putcher fishing after the type of baskets used. (Other baskets, called kypes, were used to catch shrimp and eels.)
There's some interesting information about the practice and its history here and here.
We maundered on down towards the bridge ...
... and the start of the cliffs at Aust.
The dog and his boy clambered up to a viewing point, while I sat and watched.
A heron was doing its best impression of a 2D bit of plastic from the garden centre.
After our breather, we headed back.
Muddy dog
By late morning, the fog had burnt off and it was a beautiful day, so I wrangled the dog into the car and set off for Aust in the hopes of visiting the church there.
Many churches on the flood plain of the River Severn/Bristol channel are built on what were once islands of higher ground, jutting out of marshland. The Ancient Chapelry of St John is one.
When I saw the iron gates, my heart sank but they weren't locked, hooray!
The church door, however, wouldn't budge and there was no notice indicating where a key might be held.
So we haunted the churchyard for a bit.
There was a gravestone which appeared to have been inscribed in moss. Maybe not quite as precisely as the one I saw at Tetbury some years ago, but intriguing all the same.
Feeling disconsolate, we decided to have a bit of wander and headed for Oldbury-on-Severn.
Another commanding church - St Arilda's - on its man-made tump atop a hill. But we weren't visiting it today.
Instead we walked out to the mouth of Oldbury Pill ...
... and headed south-west along the top of the sheep-trodden flood defences ...
... towards the old Severn Bridge, all misty in the distance.
Pillhead Gout
Our destination was Whale Wharf, at the point where Littleton Pill flows into the Severn and Cowhill Warth - this beautiful stretch of saltmarsh that is twice daily covered by the tide - becomes Littleton Warth.
Whale Wharf is so called because, as Oldbury fisherman Hector Knapp wrote in January 1885, 'thear was a Whal cum ashore at Littleton Pill and bid thear a fortnight. He was sixty eaight feet long. His mouth was twelve feet.
The queen claim it at last, and sould it for forty pound. Thear supposed to be forty thousen pepeal to se it from all parts of the country and from far and near'.
I was going to have to make do with pretending that the substantial pieces of driftwood deposited along the high tideline were the skeletal remains of aquatic monsters. There'd be no whales today.
Or so I thought ...
Can't make it out? It's the Airbus Beluga (A300-600 Super Transporter) en route from Toulouse to Hawarden in Flintshire, and fresh from a fly-past at my hometown of Filton, where its wings are made.
Yeah, I know, crap photos. But if you look very closely, you can see some pissed off oystercatchers, flying about and meeping like mad.
Cowhill Rhine
Littleton Pill
Excitement over and time to turn back. Now, instead of the Severn Bridges, we had the decommissioned Oldbury Nuclear Power Station in our sights.
Proving a magnificent distraction all the way back were a pair of little egrets, who were acutely aware of Ted's and my presence, flying off whenever we got anywhere close enough to get a half decent photo.
I was reminded of this lovely poem and painting by Dru Marland.
No idea who owned these feathers. An owl, maybe? (There are short-eared owls below the old Severn bridge at Aust.) Anyhow, they have beautiful leaf shapes.
NOTE: They are curlew feathers
Back at Oldbury Pill ...
... and finally reaching the car, parked in the village.
The first walk was one Ted and I had done before, only this time we were starting our walk from Whale Wharf and heading for Oldbury Pill and the nuclear power station half a mile or so beyond it, rather than the other way around. 
