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. 

Winter Solstice and Dressing Up as the Turbulence of Everywhere

I'm definitely not one for driving all the way across town in the rainy, rush-hour dark of December for a social gathering, but when the gathering in question is the warm and convivial Christmas edition of Under the Red Guitar at El Rincón in Bedminster, how can I resist?

Bob Walton and Dom Fisher giving great waistcoat

Guest poet Jonathan Edwards

Peter Gruffydd

The driver's single glass of Rioja

Attendees had been urged to wear something glitzy, an instruction all bar one of them ignored because you try instructing poets. Having resolved, a day or two earlier, not to air one of my poems from 'Love the Albatross' - estrangement isn't just for Christmas, after all - I dressed as the poem I'd decided to read instead, which was 'In the Meantime' by the late Yorkshire poet, John Foggin. It's an inversion of the tale told by the Venerable Bede about the sparrow flying through the mead hall, as a metaphor for the transience of life, and perfect for an hour or two in a room of light and warmth, with all the long dark just the other side of the window. 

Me, as the turbulence of everywhere, the thin smell of snow and the sparrow

But as mesmerising as this poem about the journey into darkness we're all making is, I still yearn for light this time of year, which is why, as I drove down into deepest Wiltshire at dawn the next morning, I was glad it was shaping up to be a fine day.

It was only the second time I'd driven my friend Jinny and her dog Millie from their narrowboat, which is currently moored near Trowbridge on the Kennet and Avon canal, to Pont Abraham services, west of Swansea, where her parents were due to pick them up and continue the onward journey to their home in West Wales, but already it's beginning to feel like a marker of the approaching solstice and the turning of the year. 

Disturbing a heron on the bank

sunrise

Jinny and I carried and wheelbarrowed all the things she and Millie would need during their stay in Wales along the grassy path from her boat to my car. Millie and I then waited in the car while Jinny shut up the boat and brought the last few things along. I loved watching Millie's delight as her beloved Jinny drew closer.

In the end our drive was patchy. From brilliant sun at Trowbridge, we hit rain around Bath, and it was a mixture of sun and stormy squalls with much spray all the along the M4 to Carmarthenshire and back. The stormlight and rainbows were lovely, but no photos, of course, on account of it being a road trip during which I was required to keep both hands on the steering wheel. 

Once back, I relieved Son the Elder of his dog-sitting duties and headed for Purdown with Cwtch, from where I could look back to Freezing Hill, about six miles north of Bath, past which I'd driven - twice - hours earlier. It still looked pretty stormy over there, but Cwtch and I were briefly bathed in midwinter light and We Saw that It was Good. 

Solstice tree

Barafundle Bay, Bosherston and St Govan's Chapel

We decided to start the day at Stackpole Quay as it came recommended by One Who Knows. And there were books in the car park (though the most modern poetry was Chaucer).




Then we walked along the coast path to Barafundle Bay, on account of it being dog-friendly and gorgeous.  

But I think it must have featured in one too many Sunday supplements because everyone else, their kids and their dog were headed there too, it being half term and all. 

We decided there were rather too many young children for a farm dog to resist herding, so we admired from a distance and then went to the local pub instead. This is their reading nook. (No poetry.)

Then we drove to Bosherston, which was also recommended by friends - I did a straw poll on Facebook - on account of its lilies. 

Which were flowering and very beautiful indeed. 

In fact, it would have been wildly romantic if what I'd momentarily taken for an extremely loud, extremely close woodpecker ... 

... hadn't turned out to be machine gun fire, accompanied by explosions, from the nearby firing range. 

There were even hand grenades!

After a while we reached a not too busy Broad Haven beach, where a happy Ted ran and played and splashed. 

I was expecting not to be able to walk around the coast to St Govan's Head, as our walking book warned that it wasn't always possible when there was live firing, but we did manage to get through the first check point. 

I was a bit surprised that they were firing during a school holiday. It doesn't happen on Dartmoor - or at least, it didn't used to - but maybe it's all this extra high alert palaver. 

The corvids, by the way - you can just see one in this photo - were definitely jackdaws. 

After a while we reached the ice cream van. We decided to let Ted have his own ice cream, which he refused to have anything to do with. Then he scoffed it and barked most peremptorily to be given the remainder of Northerner's as well. (I had a cider ice lolly. He didn't want that.) 

Then I went down to see St Govan's Chapel.

Govan, or rather Gofan, was a hermit who lived on the side of this cliff in the 6th century. 

According to legend, he was an Irish monk who travelled to Wales late in life to seek the friends and family of the abbot who trained him. 

Or he might have been the knight, Gawain, who entered into a state of retreat in later years.

Or a thief. 

In any event, he was set upon by pirates from either Ireland or Lundy (not Wales 😊) and a fissure in the cliffs opened up and hid him until they left. 

Gofan decided to live in a cave in the cliff. He died in 586. The current chapel was built over the cave in the 13th century. 

Oh and he had a holy well too, did Gofan. 

Careful up there ... it's a long way down.

If we'd wanted to walk further along the coast path to the natural stone arch of the Green Bridge of Wales, we'd have been disappointed. 

As it was, we'd already planned to walk to the pub in Bosherston ... 

... where we were serenaded by a spadger.