I like Wotton-under-Edge, though it's not the best of places to start a hill-top walk from. The clue is in the name.
To avoid the long haul, we decided to drive up Old London Road and tackle the walk to Tyndale Monument from a higher elevation. It was a good call.
Already there was a sense of being right on the edge of the scarp, with a fairly steep drop to the west of the path.
I love bluebells contrasted with the lime of new leaves ...
... and the copper of old.
How does the moss know when to stop?
The sides are so steep, you need to be careful you don't fall down them.
There's an Iron Age promontory fort in the woods called Brackenbury Ditches.
It's hard to get a proper sense of it amongst the trees. It's still impressive, though.
As we left the camp, our destination - Tyndale Monument - came into view through the trees.
The monument's been part of my life all my life, but it's only the third time, by my reckoning, that I've been up onto Nibley Knoll to see it at closer quarters. My father used to point it out every time we drove past on the A38, long before the M5 was built.
With it came the story of the scholar and linguist, whose prosperous family moved down from the north of England during the Wars of the Roses, but who, being Gloucestershire born, is deemed one of our own. Born c1494, he was the first to translate the bible from Latin into English in 1526, and was strangled, then burnt at the stake in 1536.
I keep meaning to read at least part of his translation, which has more than a flavour of the language and cadences of the Vale of Berkeley - just below the Edge there.
Looking back at Westridge Woods
When I was last up here, 14½ years ago, the Victorian monument was closed to the public for safety reasons, but it's since been restored and now it's open. I figured I should get up there while my knees were still up to it - just. So I did.
Looking down to the Severn Bridges ...
... and up towards Frocester Hill.
Back in the woods, I was taking photos as if we hadn't seen a single bluebell at all on the way up.
Heading back to the car, I recalled that on the previous walk up here, the day before my 41st birthday, the kids, my ex-husband and I had been joined by a dog who accompanied us all the way back to Wotton.
It happened a few times on various walks around the West Country. I've yet to sort through all the photos of those years, but when I've come across any taken on those particular walks, I've been tickled to see that the dogs in question are invariably border collies.
It's as if the universe was giving me reassurances of what was yet to happen: keep going, keep going - it's going to get so much better.
Still glad, every day when I wake up, for how my life has changed for the better. Sometimes there's a sunrise to match. Though I'm not expecting to see too many for the next few months as they'll mostly be happening while I'm asleep. So here, by way of a temporary farewell, is a year's worth. (If you stand very still, you can feel the planet move.)
5th August 2016 5.50am
13th September 2016 6.40am
26th September 2016
30th September 2016
3rd October 2016
20th November 2016
1st December 2016
9th December 2016
21st December 2016
23rd December 2016
24th December 2016
3rd January 2017
13th January 2017
Snow!
6th February 2017
8th February 2017
24th February 2017
Rosy-fingered dawn takes up smoking
Tree down 😢
2nd March 2017
Bloomy damson and gold
6th March 2017
Sheeny as the inside of a fish skin
Twenty minutes on 7th March 2017
13th March 2017
3rd April 2017
When you wake up and find you've been scratching in your sleep
5th April 2017
6th April 2017
A sun pillar, when sun light reflects off the surfaces of falling ice crystals
7th April 2017
8th April 2017
13th April 2017
Wednesday was the first time my parents had been in St Andrew's Church at Clevedon. Not so me ... though I'd always been too busy reading the Hallam family monuments to study these rather cheery choughs on the opposite wall properly.
I showed my father the memorial to Arthur Henry Hallam - 'snatched away by sudden death' - but decided against pointing out the sheela-na-gig.
My parents have not been snatched away by sudden death. They are 95 and 89 respectively - in fact, we were in Clevedon because it was my mother's birthday. We'd had hot drinks in a pub on the front with sea views. Now we were up in the cliff-top boneyard.
Which might seem a strange place to bring such elderly people to, but it was beautiful up there and surprisingly sheltered. Plus there were ravens too - always a bonus.
If the church and churchyard look familiar, it's because they have a second career as extras in Broadchurch.
Here is a rare sighting of a pair of walking sticks, pride and falls being off the agenda.
And my mother, still proving there's puff in the old girl yet.
