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. 

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.