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.

When we went to Gwent (and Cardiff)

Once again, it was the time of year when the Severn tunnel is closed for maintenance - very important - and whoever it is who runs the railways these days fails to put on an even half-decent replacement coach service between Cardiff and Bristol. Not wanting the Northerner to have to return home via Gloucester and, per chance, Swindon, I drove him to and from work on the days it was possible for me to do it - four in all.

Although eight hours is a long day out, I wanted to stay in Wales if I could, to reduce costs and my carbon footprint, but one day was forecast to be full of heavy rain and thunderstorms, and another over 30°C, so on those days I made the two round trips, regretting my decision the second day when it took me two and a half hours to cover the 36 miles from home to his workplace on Newport Road in extreme heat. 

The other two days were hot but not oppressively so, so Cwtch and I pored over walk books and websites and found two places in nearby Gwent for us to visit.

First stop, the Sirhowy valley, in the next valley from where Son the Younger used to live, so full of familiar skylines. The outward leg of our circular walk started just south-west of Crosskeys and took us along a disused railtrack, the former signal box now seeing service as a toilet. 

high above the River Sirhowy

sycamore and whitethorn

foxglove

It's an easy walk through the woods, though given the number of little streams crossing the path, I imagine it must be muddy in places when it's not summer.

There were some quite steep steps to climb at the point where our route turned back on itself, which caused my knees to grumble a bit, but we made it. 

Cwmfelinfach

Returning along a higher path, there were some lovely views along the valley to where the Sirhowy meets the River Ebbw. I was thrilled to hear both a cuckoo and a curlew.

non-native fiddleneck

enough hemlock water dropwort to poison the entire population of the British Isles

one of many self-seeded alders lining the path

broad-leaved marsh orchid

marsh valerian

The worst bit of the walk was right at the end when our route took us down an extremely steep, stony path to our starting point, but again I managed to negotiate it without doing myself any damage. I think I might try the longer walk through Sirhowy Country Park next time, as it's definitely worth a revisit.

Our second destination in Gwent was Wentwood , formerly ancient woodland that was part of Chepstow Castle's hunting grounds and is now mostly conifer plantation (though the long and laborious job of replanting native species has started). I was following a walk I'd found online that would take me to the Curley Oak, reputed to be between five hundred and a thousand years old.

                                                   

distant view of England adrift across the Severn

Our route took us past not one but two Bronze Age round barrows in a truly lovely spot.

Fallow deer slots

The track through the woods was still quite muddy in places, despite the warm and (mainly) dry summer weather we've been having.

heath-spotted orchid

honeysuckle

yellow pimpernel

Our route to the oak relied heavily on waymark posts, rather than giving estimated distances between instructions, which was a shame as many of them were no longer in place. Much of the time I had to guess whether a path was the right one, and we did get a bit lost, but not in that trackless-middle-of-the-wildwood way; it was more 'well, I'm pretty sure the car park is back in that direction so I'll take this path for now and head left when I get a chance'. I made a few of my own waymarks for the return leg. 

Eventually - having been distracted by its fence and missed it altogether - we looped back around and reached the Curley Oak. I have to say, it looks rather older than five hundred years to me.

As is the custom with ancient trees, people had left little gifts for it, the most striking of which were limpet shells. I'd picked up a bit of blue pottery earlier on our route, so I left that.

I felt a bit of a pang standing there, as Curly was my father's old nickname and the name his grandchildren called him. I'd have liked to have learnt about this tree thirty years ago, when he was still strong and I could have walked to see it with him. But in any event, it was a stunning high point for a walk.

Since I was in the area with time to spare, I did stop off in Cardiff to visit another memorable tree, this one a London Plane near Roath Park that's in the process of eating a Victorian pillar box. 

And I also got to while away a couple of hours in a favourite spot in Llandaff, namely the wild bit of the graveyard in the Cathedral precinct. Even under the trees it was hot, though, so Cwtch and I headed down to the River Taff where there was a bit of a breeze.

Cwtch is still too scared of water to chase the ducks, thankfully.

It must have been during the 1980s that I last stood in this spot. Much water over the weir since then.