Venerable trees and old stone bridges

I was hoping to get out for a few modest jaunts around the West Country this summer, but no sooner did the holidays begin than life kicked off with an entirely different game plan, and it's looking like I'll be staying more local that I'd envisaged. 

I did get to do a walk I'd been planning for years, which is the Leigh Woods veteran tree walk - in fact, I actually set out to do it some years back with my son, Samuel, and my oldest friend, Liz, but we chatted so much, we missed every waymark and ended up meandering around the middle of the wood, noticing very little. This time around, I found most of them, I think, although the instructions appear to have been written before a separate cycling trail was established in 2011, which makes them a bit confusing in places. But here they are:

veteran oak pollard

veteran yew

veteran oak

wild service trees, an indicator of ancient woodland

monolith beech, the branches having been removed because of a fungus called Ustulina

layering yew

a possibly veteran oak in a line of four, apparently, though all looking a lot younger than lots of other oaks we passed

this might have been another one in days of yore, when the walk was devised

veteran lime coppard on the rampart of Stokeleigh camp

re-pollarded veteran oak

There were quite a few trees we passed that seemed to me rather more interesting, by which I mean gnarly than some of the trees on this list. 

birch, and below some oaks

Stokeleigh camp

remnant wood pasture

another recent tree victim, presumably of climate breakdown

Cwtch in the woods

The other ne-to-us walk Cwtch and I did was the stretch of the River Frome that runs from  where we walk in Winterbourne to Frenchay Bridge, just above Snuff Mills - a sort of filling-in-the-gap type walk. One day I'd like to walk the Frome from its source near Little Sodbury to where it joins in the River Avon in central Bristol, but right now a piecemeal approach will have to do.   

There were lots of stone stiles ...

and stone bridges, the first of which was Frenchay Bridge.

Almost immediately our route took us away from the river briefly, past a house once owned by Edward 'Squire' Higgins, a wealthy gentleman by day and a highwayman, horse thief, house-breaker and murderer by night. He was transported to America in 1754, where he promptly robbed a house and paid for his return passage within three months, settling in what was then called Great House in Frenchay in 1763. He was finally hanged for his crimes in Carmarthen in 1767.

Grove House, formerly Great House

We then cut back down to the Frome and walked in its company as far as Cleeve Bridge ... 

... before then detouring away briefly.

An electricity substation masquerading as the earliest known branch of McDonalds. (It was actually a 19th century dovecote.)

Back down on the Frome we passed under the A4174 ... 

... whereupon I encountered one of the Frome's tributaries, the Ham Brook, which gave its name to the nearby village of Hambrook ...

... and the 17th century packhorse bridge that crosses it (here partially obscured by a fallen tree). 

The bridge by the former Hambrook Mill beyond the M4

plums

The bridge on Moorend Road

The last half a mile or so to our finish point, at the unnamed bridge near Mill Steps, was along road; once there, the gap was filled and it was a question of retracing our steps back to Frenchay Bridge, a lovely deep dive through the summer woods.

Other flowers are available

At the end of April, I thought I'd had all the bluebells I was going to get, at least in Bristol, but there were a few late surprises in some more sheltered pockets, like this lane at Winterbourne in South Gloucestershire ...

... and also at nearby Monk's Pool Nature Reserve.

There were also cowslips still blooming in one of the meadows on Purdown beneath the BT tower.

Mostly, though, it's been a glorious month of cow parsley and wild garlic, both of which bloom in profusion at Badock's Wood, in the Trym gorge ...

... and in Hermitage Wood, high above the River Frome on Purdown.

Oh, and mustn't forget my favourite whitethorn, here also in Hermitage Wood ... 

... and further upstream on the Frome, at Winterbourne Down.

And, of course, lots of other flowers too ... 

row 1: cowslip; red campion; yellow mustard; ground ivy; whitethorn x 2; comfrey

row 2: greater stitchwort; wood avens; cuckoo flower (lady's smock); hedge mustard; dog rose; jack-by-the-hedge (garlic mustard); bluebells, yellow archangel, wild garlic; hemlock water dropwort

row 3: horse chestnut, whitethorn and cow parsley; green-winged orchid; rowan; forget-me-not; flag iris; lesser celandine; columbine; elder blossom

row 4: fringe cups; yellow archangel; buttercup and vetch; wood speedwell; wild strawberry; herb Robert; black mustard; alkanet

The squeeze-belly stile leading down to Wickham Glen was also beautifully dressed with cow parsley and alkanet ... 

... while downstream at Eastville Park lake, there were cygnets, ducklings, goslings, cootlings and, rather ominously, the local heron. 

Where there are lots of flowers, there are insects, but most of them far too flighty for me to take a photo of.

Fungi don't move around much, though there's not a lot about at present:

Good times for hoggin finding, though: last year's leaf litter is gone, mud is no longer an issue, other people are out walking and displacing soil, and spring showers make the ground soft enough to dig bits out:

On Halfpenny Bridge at Snuff Mills

Path at Vassalls Park

There was deep sadness one morning when I was walking at Blaise and found that a favourite tree - a sweet chestnut estimated to be between four and six hundred years old - had fallen in the four weeks since I'd last visited it. 

I'd got into the habit of photographing it every time I saw it: above, on the left hand side, is how it looked in November, March and early April. 

Nearby in the wood, there was another fallen tree - a beech - blocking the path ...

... and another in the woods at Winterbourne Down. It's been such a year for falling trees, with no signficant wind storms to cause it. I can only assume it's down to extremes of climate - a hot dry summer, followed by a very wet winter, followed by a dry spring.

Other sadnesses: a fallen bluetit and a fallen nest. 

More predated bluetit feathers here, along with an (early) moulted great spotted woodpecker tail feather, a goldfinch primary and a tawny owl secondary.

After the loss of one old friend, making the acquaintance of a new one - this magnificent, railing-eating oak in the woods at Bishop's Knoll - was a comfort. 

Old Sneed Park nature reserve

Old Sneed Park Lake

After the hurly-burly of spring, Cwtch and I are looking forward to summer, where you can wander along side paths and end up getting lost in woods you know perfectly well all the rest of the year. Bring on the peace of the deep, dark woods.