Hill fort fever: Barbury Castle

Over the last few years, I've developed new loves in the landscape. One is the Ridgeway, a 5000-year-old track that starts at Avebury and ends 87 miles away at Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire. I've only walked a couple of short sections of it, from Avebury to West Kennet long barrow, and from the Uffington White Horse to Wayland's Smithy, but it is a place of chalk and magic and I would love to walk its entire length (but know I probably never shall). 

The Ridgeway at Barbury Castle

The other love has come upon me incrementally, and those increments are called Blaise Castle, Brackenbury Ditches, Brent Knoll Camp, British Camp, Bury Hill Camp, Caerleon Hill Camp, Cam Long Down, Castle Ditches Camp, Coney's Castle, Hembury Hill Fort, King's Weston, Lambert's Castle, Leckhampton Camp, Lydford Fort, Maes Knoll, Old Sarum, Small Down Camp, Stokeleigh Camp, Twmbarlwm, Uffington Castle, Wain's Hill ... and others, I'm sure, that have slipped my mind. The hill forts I've encountered on my walks, once a source of interest, now a passion. 

Barbury Castle with the Ridgeway running through it

I don't know what it is about hill forts, but they seem to me to be the thinnest of places, as if the people who lived there and defended them thousands of years ago are still just a heartbeat away. 

So when my daughter needed driving from Bristol to Swindon for an event, I decided to take the dog on a walk somewhere up near there for a change, and as I'd long wished to visit Barbury Castle, which is a few miles south of Swindon and combines hill fort mystique with Ridgeway delight, that's where we went.

Barbury castle has two distinct rings - even three in places - and the size of it means that you can do a walk of a fairly decent length for an elderly woman and a little collie who's approaching middle age and has never really had a work ethic, just by roaming around them, with the added advantage of not getting lost (except in your imagination).

The photos make it look like Cwtch and I had the place to ourselves, but we didn't.  When we arrived the car park was full of teenagers with unfeasibly large rucksacks, but they headed off elsewhere and that was a relief. (For me to derive a degree of self-regulation from my walks, they need to be quiet.) 

But as soon as we got to the fort, it became apparent there were a lot of cyclists coming through ... streams of them, in fact, on a route along the Ridgeway marked by day-glo orange flags. Maybe next time we go there - I would love there to be a next time - we'll choose a week day!

My wildflower ID app - I'm not very good at orchids - identified variously, as broad-leaved marsh orchid, heath spotted orchid and common spotted orchid, what I think were probably all examples of the same species. I suspect we can discount the marsh variety. It's a spotted one, but I'm not sure which.

Top row: orchids of some description, yarrow, scabious, salsify

Middle row: meadow cranes bill, lady's bedstraw, bird's foot trefoil, yellow rattle, small burnet, yellow mignonette

Bottom row: wild carrot, thyme, thyme-leaf sandwort, rough hawkbit, nodding plumeless thistle, creeping cinquefoil

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Meadow brown on hawkbit, thick-legged flower beetle on hoary plantain, marmalade hoverflies on hogweed, a painted lady, six-spot burnets on bird's foot trefoil

The Ridgeway

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

Midsummer on the Frome, the Trym and the Avon

The woods are falling quiet; a sure sign midsummer is over and the birds are settling in for their moult, so I'd better remind myself of the walks we've done over midsummer before they fade from my memory altogether.

I think I'll start with the Avon, not that I've really been down on it - at least, not in Bristol. I caught up with it upstream, while visiting Jinny and Millie at Hilperton, back at the end of May when the hemlock water dropwort was still in flower. We had a really lovely walk from the canal where NB Netty is moored, down to the nearby Avon and around the edge of the solar panel farm, which is surprisingly diverse as far as wildlife is concerned. 

Millie's doing really well with her training, which is fantastic to see.

It's not really anything to do with the Avon, but I'll include Ashton Court in this section too, simply because it's just over the back of the Avon Gorge, so nearer to the Avon than it is the Frome or the Trym, which run through North Bristol. We've been there twice, once at the end of May and once in almost mid-July, when it was really easy to appreciate how hot and dry the weather's been, with the rather disrespectfully nicknamed Fattest Oak showing some distress. 

It's lovely and cool and green in the woods, though ... 

... and they do a nice line in ice cream, with Cwtch making sure we don't forget her doggy version.

I've lived all my life roughly equidistant from the Frome and the Trym, so it's difficult to decide which one is my 'home' river. The Frome, being longer and larger, probably has more of a presence, and I tend to gravitate towards it when out walking Cwtch. 

I've walked long stretches of it this midsummer, from Winterbourne down to Eastville Park. Twice I've set out from Huckford Viaduct to get to Bury Fort in Frenchay, and twice I've been thwarted. 

The first time I tried it was a really wet day, and the final ascent was slippery with mud and I bottled out. I think if I'd realised how close I was to it, I would have pressed on - I couldn't have got any wetter, after all - but I didn't and just missed it.

I did get to take a rubbish photo of a great white egret, though - the first I've seen, and a sure sign of a changing climate, as they start to settle and breed in the UK.

The second time I attempted to reach the fort, I was progressing well, stopping, as usual, to pick up feathers and bits of hoggin, when I heard much consternation in the trees on the opposite bank of the Frome. I hurried over to find out what was going on and encountered a poor jay who's been attacked by a predator - I subsequently discovered it was likely to have been a stoat or a weasel - and had the top its head removed and its brain eaten. (Apparently, the brain tissue is extremely nutritious.)  

Poor jay! I decided to take it home with me there and then, and it's now under a weighted pot in my back garden. Once all those earthly creatures have dismantled it, I'll try to salvage as many of the feathers as I can.) 

Strangely, I'd only just picked up a moulted jay covert, one of four I've found this year. One is a cause for celebration; thirty-four, not so much. And I will get to the fort before autumn; I'm determined!

A barely legible, metal advert nailed to a tree in the Frome valley advertising the Cross Hands pub, which is not only still there but also still has the same name

A few miles downstream is Snuff Mills, which we've visited a couple of times also, and caught a (too swift) glimpse of one of the resident kingfishers ... 

Halfpenny bridge

Wild flower meadow in Vassall's Park

an owl!

... and below that again, Wickham Glen and Eastville Park. I must admit, since the golf club rented and trashed the wild field we used to walk in, I've grown very partial to Wickham Glen as somewhere a bit special to walk.  

For a start, it's not as well-known as Snuff Mills, and so is quieter, and it has a network of really interesting old footpaths that lead down to it. On Friday morning I went down there at 5.30am to make sure Cwtch got a walk before it got too hot, and the St John's Wort flowering in the lane that's also called Wickham Glen was glorious.

The lanes must have been stabilised at times with hoggin - stones mixed with bits of old broken crockery - and I've recently had a couple of messages from one of the lanes high above the river. 

 
The first told me where I live, which wasn't strictly necessary as it's been home all my life, apart from a hiatus in the 1980s - maybe you have to leave your native city as a young adult, in order to really get to know it ... 

... and the second bit was telling me the name of my favourite blue and white crockery, although again, not really necessary as it's been part of my life since I was a very small grandchild. Or perhaps it was reminding me to chase Son the Younger about a date for our annual day-trip to Devon ... 

The lanes also boast several stone stiles, and architectural features from when the land belonged to Stapleton House, onetime residence of the Bishop of Bristol after his previous gaff was burnt down during the Bristol Riots.

There are also some Rackhamesque trees down there. This little willow is my favourite ... 

.... but there are others that give it a run for its money.

Brave Cwtch standing by the Megacrocodilodon 

beautiful demoiselles

We also popped up to Ridgeway Park cemetery, which is looking lushly overgrown right now ...

... and down to the lake in Eastville Park, with its resident heron.

I'm not sure what's going on with these mallards, by which I mean the three on the left-hand side. I read somewhere that the mixed male-female plumage was down to the loss of ovary function in older females; then, that these ducks are, in fact, male mallards who undergo a full head and body moult before they shed their flight feathers, so that they resemble the camouflaged females of the species and are thus less easy to spot while they can't fly, a phenomenon known as 'eclipse plumage'. Maybe they're even both. Whatever, they're setting transphobic humans an excellent example in acceptance.

Like the relationship of Ashton Court to the Reiver Avon, Stoke Park is somewhat above the River Frome but near enough to it to be part of the Frome valley. It's looking lush right now ... 

... though we have been mostly walking in the woods during the recent heat-waves. 

I came across some more damage from Storm Darragh in the bottom part of Barn Wood, which I'd missed till now.

It's been a lovely shady place to walk, especially early in the mornings. 

Robin, back when the birds were still singing

fledgling wren

And finally a few walks on or above the Trym, a couple at Badock's Wood ...

... but mainly at Blaise, which, after years of not visiting, has suddenly become a desirable place to visit again. I'd say I don't know why, but it's more a case of why on earth did we go so long without stopping by?

Over the last few months, I've walked from the Henbury Road entrance ... 

the woodman's cottage

the Giant's soap dish

... and from Coombe Dingle, where the little bridge with white balustrades you drive over to get from Westbury-on-Trym to Sea Mills (or vice versa) turns out to be far bigger than you ever imagined.

a little egret this time

Penny Well

... as well as the main entrance on Kings Weston Road. 

Cwtch ... and remembering Ted in the same spot

the dairy

Goram's Chair

the iron bridge over Kings Weston Road, now rebuilt after being involved in a road traffic accident with a lorry nine years ago

a grave for Spam and Penny

The parts of the estate that interest me most are the hill forts on Castle Hill ... 

... and Kings Weston Down, both of which are largely obscured by woodland but atmospheric all the same.

So atmospheric, in fact, that early one hot morning about a week ago, I had an odd experience between the two hills, at place where several tracks converge. I was stooping to pick up a small shard of blue and white pottery I'd spotted when I heard a runner pounding along the hard earth path and the sound of his jagged breathing, so I looked up to make sure Cwtch was out of his way, though god knows he sounded like he was almost on top of us. Except there was no one to be seen on any of the paths. 

Meanwhile, there have been some incredible insects:

CLOCKWISE from TOP LEFT:  wave moth; green drake mayfly (I rescued it from a cobweb - poor spider); two speckled woods; two red admirals; scarlet tiger moth; comma butterful; beautiful demoiselle; common blue

There have been fountains of flowers:

FROM TOP LEFT: gelder rose; spindle; comfrey; dogwood; common spotted orchid; yellowcress; bramble; flag iris; foxgloves; hemlock water dropwort; field thistle; cranesbill; creeping cinquefoil; hedge woundwort; hairy hawkbit

FROM TOP LEFT: field rose; scabious; shrubby St John's Wort; hairy St John's Wort; bird's-foot-trefoil; lady's bedstraw; buddleia; burnet-saxifrage; ragwort; cornflower; poppy; self-heal; chicory; wild carrot; tufted vetch; melilot

moon daisies and red campion

meadowsweet - it's been a good year for meadowsweet; Himalayan balsam and loosestrife

There have been fantastic fungi:

There's been a heap of hoggin:

Best of all, the season of falling feathers is getting underway in earnest, and I'm having a happy time scavenging whenever I walk Cwtch, not least because being on a seek and rescue mission helps keep me in the moment and immersed in nature. Here's some of the more interesting feathers I've found locally so far: 

TOP ROW: half a jay tail (poor jay); two jay coverts; two jay primaries; another jay tail feather with a magpie secondary; a jay covert and a green woodpecker covert; a jay scondary, a tawny owl primary and a buzzard feather 

MIDDLE ROW: first five photos all tawnies; two more tawny primaries plus three magpie feathers and a thrush feather; a jay secondary and tail feather, plus a green woodpecker feather; two magpie tail feathers and another green woodpecker feather 

BOTTOM ROW: various (jay, great spotted woodpecker, green woodpecker, blue tit, predated gold crest; tawny owl, mallard); two great spotted woodpeckers; two buzzards; goldfinch tail feather; mallard