Walk 27: In the steps of the animals - Church Field (revisit)

Friday 13th, eh?  I shall have to watch my step.  It's a beautiful but chilly morning, after a frosty night.  A couple of weeks ago we had a really hot week and everyone got sunburned, followed by a very wet week, and now we seem to be back to winter.  I'm taking advantage of the fact that everything isn't yet growing like topsy to revisit Church Field.  My first walk here was in the early autumn, with a whole summer's growth to contend with.

As far as the birds are concerned, it's now well into spring.  There's a bluetit sitting on 8 eggs in my nestbox and home and plenty of birdsong here this morning, with a buzzing base line of flies and bees.  Last time I was here, the old grassy trackway which leads down into the field was flanked by battalions of nettles and summer flowers.  Today there are few flowers as yet, and the nettles are all still small and trying to be cute. Young leaves are rather like young animals - all neat and perfect and so much more charming than the grown-up version.  I remember a multiplicity of shapes of seed heads last time, and one or two of them are still here, because the field hasn't been cut. There are also quite a few ladybirds, the first cowslips, and a dusting of blue birdseye.  The sun is shining obliquely towards me from Swifts Hill, throwing deep shadows behind the hedgerows, breaking the landscape up into areas of heavy contrast. There are leaves on the smaller trees but not most of the larger ones, so I can still seeing strong shapes of individual trees in the general shadow. I pause to take photos - I'm working on an idea for what I think of as 'slices of landscape', narrow sections of the valley view with particular interest in terms of colour or shape.  There are plenty to choose from.

The grass here is springy and soft, and apart from the path, very tussocky, like an ancient feather mattress.  It's beginning to recover its spring green from underneath, but there's plenty of tall brown died-off stuff because it hasn't been grazed this winter.  Dandelions are starting to come into their own, and I also spot celandines, and a tiny, perfect spider sitting in one of them.  A butterfly goes by me in a flurry of movement, too fast to be identified.  I hope it isn't regretting its decision to emerge, given the chill today.

Garlic flowers

At the bottom of the remains of the track, where it dives into a wooded area, nettles and wild garlic are fighting it out for ground space and the wild garlic is winning.  A few garlic flowers are already out, delicate as old lace, and the garlic leaves make strong sculptural shapes on the ground.  A strong smell of garlicky greenery surrounds me and orange-bottomed bumble bees are bumbling round the old silk mill spring and its shrine of stones.  The mill ruins are much more visible than before; I can now see that the wall runs all the way along the bank, and I can also see, about 15 feet away, a small curved archway sunk deep in the ground.  Could this be the top end of the culvert which I saw the other end of, down by the stream?

This wooded bank is a lot more accessible now than it was in autumn and small animal paths are visible, criss-crossing through the garlic.  I follow one of them downwards until it peters out in a series of holes beneath the roots of a trio of beech trees growing on a sort of hummock.  The trees have all grown into one another, their roots entwined, and on one side the hummock seems to have fallen away beneath them, leaving a whole section of roots sitting on thin air.  To add to the weirdness, one of the trees has a rather  elegantly-stencilled number on its side.  By clambering precariously round and through a holly bush I can get round behind the trees and see that they appear to be growing on great hunks of stone.  Is this part of the old mill, or a natural stone outcrop? Impossible to tell.

Blackthorn blossom

Following another animal path leads me to another hole under the roots of a tall tree hung with thick and furry ropes of ivy, like cats' tails.  It's well dug around, so perhaps it's a badger sett, and I've been following a badger path.  The path continues on its meandering way around this sloping bit of scrubland.  Bits of stone appear through the undergrowth in many places, and here's a tree growing on what looks like the remains of a wall.  I wonder what you'd find if you dug down into all this - the remains of more of the mill, maybe?  The path runs on down into the field.  If the whole field is an L-shape, I'm in now the short section of the L, and last time this part was so covered in deep undergrowth and head-high nettles that it was almost impossible to navigate.  My animal path continues down to the stream through the thicket of blackthorn and trees and bushes fringing the water.  I could follow it to the water if I was prepared to bend double, but I'm not.  The blackthorn is covered in blossom and the sun right behind it turns it to flurry of pearl.

I find a less exciting way to the edge of the stream.  Here is the island effect I saw before, between the main stream and a dry ditch, and at one end of the ditch is a stone arch identical to the one up by the mill ruins.  QED, I reckon - this is the other end of that culvert.  The ditch meanders round the island and joins up with the main brook, so presumably was the run-off for the culvert.  My noisy footsteps on last year's leaves startle something large in the undergrowth, which blunders away unseen, and something small, a wren, which, being a wren, remains to shriek abuse at me.

Following animal paths has served me well so far, so when I find another one at the further end of the stream, by the boundary with the next field, I follow it down the bank and beside the small tributary stream which runs down from the bend in the road, frightening blackbirds into spiky song as I go.  I couldn't get down this far, last time, for the undergrowth.  The bank is dotted with ladies-smock and primroses and I can hear a chiff-chaff but not, of course, see him.  Here is a hollow tree decorated with attractively minimalist ivy.  I peer inside it, but because I'm not Gerald Durrell, it's empty.  I can see that the path continues right down to the water, but not get there, because a tree has fallen across it, creating an arch which is just the right height for, say, a badger to pass underneath but not a clod-hopping human.  Back up the bank, now, then, and diagonally across the slope to get back to the gate, just in time to see a buzzard spread his wings and float down from a tree, over my head and into the valley.

Walk 26: The Last of the Brook - Stroud end of Slad Road

New leaves by stream

Our early summer has worn off.  After a week of temperatures in the teens and 20s, it's now not much more than 10 degrees, with a cold wind, though there is sunshine among the clouds.  I'm setting out to see what I can of the very last part of the Slad Brook, from where I last saw it to where it finally disappears into a major culvert close to central Stroud.  This is not so easy, as the brook runs behind numbers of private houses and a series of factories and workshops, like a footpath through a shooting estate - tolerated, but not (I have the impression) particularly welcomed.  In fact there only a few places where I can go to see it.  The first is Little Mill Court, a newish development of red brick houses which run right up to the back of the industrial estate in Libby's Drive.  From the far end of this road, I can just see the back of the Rycote factory, and catch a glimpse of the point where I last saw the stream, leaving the Rycote grounds.

In this estate, the stream is well below road-level, with steep banks, and is firmly fenced off on the pavement side with railings and heavy-duty fencing.  On the other side, the gardens of the houses slope right down to the water and most are either open to it, or have gates in their fences suggesting that their owners at least go and look at it now and then.   The brook runs behind one set of houses and in front of another for 50 yards or so and then disappears into a square concrete culvert covered by an iron grille which carries it underneath the road and into a different part of the estate.

Even here in this patch of neat and regulated housing, the stream gathers the last remnants of the countryside around it.  By the bridge which carries the road over the culvert is a young chestnut tree growing right down on the stream bank, its sticky buds bursting beautifully into leaf at my eye level, and further back are a couple of big pollarded willows and smaller trees growing on the bank. The stream is flanked by brambles, the odd wild buddleia, nettles and similar.  A patch of daffodils makes a bright spot under the trees.  A tiny path runs erratically along part of the bank – possibly a badger path?  The fences are no doubt a health and safety measure, but they also suggest a concern to keep this wildness at bay.

Little Mill Court

Part way along this first section is a concreted outflow with a fair amount of water coming into the main stream from the uphill direction, which could be either a tamed tributary, or just a water run-off from the houses higher up the hill.  On the other side of the bridge, the stream reappears from a neat concreted hole into a narrow, vertical-sided, stone-faced channel in front of another set of new houses.  It's even further below me now, and the opposite bank is buttressed by blocks of stone in cages of wire mesh, and topped off with severe iron railings.  The houses, built within the last few years, still look very new, their sharp edges and stark colours not yet mellowed by time.  On this side, the wall also has a crown of railings.  20 feet below, the stream runs on almost silently beside a small fringe of bank overgrown with grass, the hardier sorts of weeds and several burgeoning buddleias.  Neater and more domesticated bushes planted in the gardens opposite are pushing through the railings as if trying to see their wilder cousins below.  There is a minute children’s play area on this side of the railings before the stream disappears into more concrete.

From Slad Mill

Now the water travels under the beginning of Lansdown Road, underneath the handsome brick buildings which were once Slad Mill and are now residential apartments, to emerge on the other side behind the gardens of houses on Slad Road. From the car park by Slad Mill, I get a glimpse of it running straight as a silver arrow into the distance, flanked by more concrete and iron, but also by white cherry blossom and the unrealistically luminous green of a newly-leafed weeping willow.

Where does it go from here?  Stern signs warning ‘Beware Steep Bank and Water’ suggest that it runs beside the car park of the Salvation Army housing at Streamside, still running parallel with the main road.   Further towards Stroud, I turn off the road, following a  footpath sign down a concrete path past a bank studded with the golden stars of celandines, to a concrete bridge where I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the noise of water.  On the left, the stream appears from behind houses and plunges down a three-step weir with great force.

When this weir was new, not so very many years ago, it must have looked very stark and stern, but now the concrete wall is softened by a bead curtain of trailing bramble, and various plants and small trees are growing into the stream at the top of the weir. A yellow-chested wagtail flits up from the water as I arrive, and settles on a branch above the water where he poses for a surprisingly long time, long enough for me to coax my recalcitrant camera into focusing on him.

The weir and the wagtail

On the other side of the bridge the stream calms down and disappears behind the concrete backs of several light industrial buildings. It’s possible to get down onto a small bit of overgrown bank beside the bridge which gives a view of the water under the bridge and a brief sense of having re-entered the world of the stream.  On the flanking wall, someone has abandoned, or possibly concealed, a bottle in a bright blue plastic bag.  There is a fair amount of general litter in the stream here, the penalty of being in such close proximity to lots of human beings.  There’s something joyful about the weir, though, with its multiple waterfalls flashing in the sun, its tresses of brambles, and the jaunty yellow wagtail.  What’s odd is that the noise of the weir vanishes utterly as soon as I return to the main road, so that if it hadn’t been for the footpath sign, I wouldn't have discovered it.  I've been travelling along this road regularly for five years, and up to now I had no idea of the existence of the weir.

The very final glimpse of the Slad Brook is less joyful.  After passing another block of buildings I turn down an unnamed and slightly gloomy alleyway which leads to a scrubby open area of backs of buildings and car parking, and also to another tiny bridge and a view of the stream running behind old workshops.  Here are big iron gates saying ‘Danger Keep Out’ and ‘No Unauthorised Access’, more heavy-duty railings. and an iron grid allowing access to a big box on the wall which announces itself as a ‘River Level Measurement Station’ provided by the Environment Agency.  This, I'm guessing, has been installed since the Great Flood of 2007 when this end of the Slad Road was deep under water and people were jet-skiing on it.  Hard to imagine that now, looking at the stream, so small and close-trammelled in its concrete channel.  On one side are the red brick backs of old workshop buildings and on the other, more concrete and fences.  There are no banks to speak of, but nevertheless the stream still keeps its fringe of greenery, plants growing between the bricks, ivy and brambles climbing up the walls, small saplings sprouting from the water itself.  Nature takes every space you give it, and in some strange way I find that reassuring.  Underneath this little bridge, the stream vanishes into an altogether more final culvert.

The last bridge

An odd walk this, with quite a different feel to it from all the others.  For one thing, it’s the shortest section of audio I’ve recorded so far.  I've got used to talking to my sound recorder as I walk alone through the countryside, but feel massively self-conscious about doing it in the town, and there’s no doubt that this is now the town.  As I stand taking photographs of the last view of the stream as it disappears into the culvert, a woman leans out of her car and asks suspiciously what I’m doing.  When I explain that I’m photographing the stream (to reassure her that I’m not some sort of industrial spy), she tells me that there’s another bridge (she means the one by the weir), in the sort of tone that suggests she’d rather I wasn’t on this bridge.  OK, that may be paranoia, but I’ve noticed that other people (not just me) get more paranoid in towns.  Someone with a camera is just a regular sight in Slad village, with its fine views, but a source of suspicion in an alleyway in Stroud.

After this, the stream is underneath the buildings - possibly, or possibly not, in its culvert.  I'm told that in some of these houses the stream runs in an open channel through their cellars, and a few months ago, when work was being done on this end of the Slad Road, it was possible to hear the stream gurgling sepulchrally below the hole in the road.  But in any case, this is its last public appearance before it flows into the river Frome somewhere below central Stroud.  And beyond this point I’m no longer in the Slad Valley, by any stretch of the imagination. So this is the last of the valley, and my last view of the brook.