Wednesday 21 December 2011

Walk 18 - The case of the disappearing stream: Hazel Mill

Hazel Mill
This walk covers a section of the Slad Brook which is flanked on one side by Stroud Slad Farm, and on the other side by the garden of the house called Hazel Mill.  It's called Hazel Mill for the very good reason that it used to be a mill, and its garden contains the remains of one of the mill buildings, an old leat, and a waterfall, all of which I got tantalising glimpses of when I walked this section of the brook from the opposite side, through Stroud Slad Farm.  By the kindness of the owners of the house, I'm now going to get a closer look.

Hazel Mill is a large and attractive old house on the western side of the valley, sitting between the stream and the main road.  I'm not clear (and neither is my reference book) whether any of the current house was actually used as a mill, but there is a second building in the garden which definitely was a mill used in the woollen industry during the 19th century.  The garden, like most in this valley, is on a steep slope.  I'm given the opportunity to explore on my own.  Well, I say on my own - in fact, I acquire a companion very early on in the proceedings, in the shape of a black-and-tan dog with a hopeful expression and a tennis ball in his mouth.  I harden my heart and resist his attempts to hypnotise me into throwing the ball, because we all know where that leads...

Hazel Mill owns another piece of secret stream, in the shape of the old leat, which runs at right angles to the buildings like a pointing finger, extending out into the fields beyond.  I start by walking to the far end of the leat, so that I can find out how and where it joins up with the stream.  I read a definition of 'leat' on Wikipedia recently (It's a southwestern word, apparently - these water channels are called other things elsewhere in the country) and this one would seem to be a textbook example.  It diverges from the stream in a Y-junction a hundred yards or so from the house, then runs along the contour towards the mill while the stream itself continues down the slope, so that by the time the leat water reaches the mill there's enough height differential to power the mill wheel.

So far, so good.  The leat diverges from the stream at the top end of a triangular piece of thick scrub which I remember noting on the Stroud Slad Farm walk, because it was firmly fenced off and I wasn't able to see the stream through the undergrowth.  At first, I can’t work out why I couldn’t see this very obvious junction from the other side of the fence, but walking across the apex of the triangle I see the problem – at the apex, the leat forms one side of the triangle and the main stream does appears to form the other, but within a few yards, it has vanished altogether.  A fierce combination of thick undergrowth and fences frustrate my attempts to see exactly what has happened to it, but I’m forced to the conclusion that it’s gone underground.  Remains of low brick walls on this bit of land which make me wonder if this was another holding pond or other mill stream structure.  As with so much of the stream, this area is such a mess of undergrowth and fallen wood, that it's hard to see exactly what’s happening to the ground, but there does appear to be a depression, or gully, where the line of the main stream ought to be.

View up the leat
Once again, there's this feeling of being enclosed - afloat in a capsule of stream-world bobbing in a sea of fields.  A substantial bank separates the leat from the stream, growing more substantial as the height difference increases.  The top of it is flat and grassy, reminding me of a canal towpath.  A thin coating of trees separates the further side of the leat from the open field beyond, and the bank side is wooded and well-scrub-ed, so to speak.  The leafless branches of ivy-hung trees meet overhead.   One, a large one, has collapsed comprehensively across the stream and been partially sawn up to allow passage, but large chunks of it remain locked in the arms of the other trees.

The leat is a good size, three feet wide or more and very busy with water.  It's fringed with reedy grasses and clumps of what might be irises (it’s December – no flowers!), ferns and patches of dead leaves.  The long view down its length, with the green path winding away from me and the filigree of tree branches, is very attractive.  Everything is soft shades of brown and green, gentle and quiet, like today's weather, which is unexpectedly mild and damp after a week of low temperatures and frosts .  There's no wind, which is unusual in the valley this year.

My canine friend decides that I’m not a ball person.  Maybe a stick will please me?  Or a stone?  Surely the stone?  It’s quite a large stone and after he has lovingly placed it on my foot a couple of times I give up and throw it purely to get him out from under my feet.  It falls into the leat, and the dog enthusiastically plunges in after it, drawing my attention to a pile of pale feathers spilling from the opposite bank into the stream.  Some bird, a pigeon by the look of it, met its end here recently, or, from another point of view, a fox got a meal which was probably much appreciated at this season.

Throw it?  Please?!
Branching off down the bank to investigate the depression where I think the main stream ought to run, I find that it's very boggy, which is suggestive.  And a little further on I come to a point where a tributary stream, running down one of the Stroud Slad Farm field boundaries, meets the line of this depression and does a dog-leg to join it.  By the time this gully reaches the main garden, it's clear that this has become the main stream again.  So what happened in between?  Is it that the leat takes off so much water that the main stream becomes just a bog until fed with more water from the tributary?  This doesn't quite add up because the main stream was visible for the first few yards after the leat water was taken off.  A mystery.

My friend the dog has found a new, and increasingly muddy, stone which he continues to lay beseechingly before me, but which I’m not going to throw.  Really, really not.

There is a point here where you can see a brick edging to the leat, submerged in moss now, but the individual bricks still visible in some places.  And here is a glass bottle which has the air of having been in the water for a long time.  It looks old, but once it’s in water, it doesn't take long for glass to start looking ancient, so who knows?  (I've discovered that a side-effect of the mood of intense looking that these walks generate is the risk of investing unexpected objects with spurious qualities of age and importance!)

Flounces of fungi
I've come to the stump of what was once quite a big tree, adorned with tendrils of ivy and frilly flounces of fungi.  I'm sure this has been a particularly good year for fungi – it can't just be that I'm noticing them more, can it?

The dog decides that perhaps his stone is too small to be a worthy offering.  He finds a much larger one which, when dropped on my foot repeatedly, does at least get my attention.  But it's much too big to throw, and really too big for him to carry around easily.  This confirms my opinion of the intelligence of dogs, viz, low, compared with cats.  A cat would have wasted no time in getting me to carry the stone.

I've arrived at stone slab in the path, which crosses a channel running out of the leat and down the bank.  The channel looks like an overflow, designed to take off surplus water if the level in the leat rises above a certain height.  It was presumably intended to flow into the stream, but appears to stop short of the gully where I think the stream should be.  So was the main stream originally wider, possibly covering the area where some of the trees are now growing?

Triple tree sentinel
I'm now entering what the owners obviously think of as the main garden.  Ahead of me are mown lawns and the crash of falling water.  Standing like a sentinel at the end of the wooded area is a very handsome triple-stemmed tree – three equal trunks soaring up out of the same root.  Multiple trees are a feature of this garden; a gleam of sunshine lights up another one down by the stream, with quintuple – or possibly sextuple – trunks grown to a considerable height.  It shows what these streamside trees are capable of when they've really got space to express themselves.

The dog has finally got the message that I don’t want the stone.  In desperation, he brings me a branch, and when I pick it up (to avoid falling over it) he runs so hilariously in tight circles that I can’t resist throwing it. Good move.  He dashes off before the branch has left my hand which means he misses seeing where it falls and ends up running all over the garden looking for it – giving me the chance to get down by the leat and make an undisturbed sound recording of the water running over a single large stone.  Otherwise, the leat itself has been very quiet, running smoothly and mostly unimpeded by debris.

I'm now joined by a second dog, larger, browner and more solid, but while apparently glad of my company, this one doesn't seem to require me to throw anything, thank goodness.

There are now grassy banks on both sides of the water and a board bridge carrying a path across it from higher up.  Halfway across the garden, I come to the main event.  The water from the leat turns left through a sluice gate, plunges rather spectacularly over a waterfall and flows back into the small stream below, which, augmented by the extra water, clearly becomes the main brook. The stern practicality of the sluice gates is rather undermined by a jauntily-castellated stone wall which makes the waterfall look more like a garden feature than a piece of industrial engineering.  Although the water now all goes down the fall, the leat is still visible as a grassy channel, running straight ahead to the old mill building and ending in a fenced-off drop into the mill wheel chamber.  Presumably the original idea was that the sluice gates would be closed to build up the water pressure to the mill wheel.



And that's the big surprise of today - when I follow the line of the leat to the old mill building, I'm astonished to find that the original mill wheel is still there, suspended under a brick arch and well below me.  Visible, but barely photographable, because it's well fenced off for safety.  The building itself is in pretty good shape and I'm told that more of the old mill machinery survives inside.  I scramble through bramble and nettles to the back of the building but find no windows into the working parts of the mill.

The main brook is now in a deep, walled channel flowing alongside the end of the mill building.  By the corner of the building is an old pumping mechanism labelled ‘Blake’s Hydram’, the work of ‘John Blake Ltd engineers, Accrington, Lancashire’.  The dog and I examine it carefully.  After that, the stream plunges into a mess of undergrowth and out of my ken for today.  Not wanting to outstay my welcome, I leave the world of leat and mill behind and walk up past the house where a prominently-displayed Christmas tree reminds me how close we are to The Big Day now – it doesn’t feel like it, in fact it feels more like spring today.

This is another walk that turned out more interesting than expected - the length of the leat, the view of the mill buildings and the mill wheel were all great discoveries.  Plus the dog.  I definitely hadn’t expected him.  My indefatigable friend makes one final attempt to delay my departure by bringing me the very dead remains of a football which I am not at all tempted to throw.  I leave him disconsolately punting it around with his nose.


The view from the main road is one of the best of this end of the valley.  It strikes me once again that trees are one of the beauties of this time of year, whether close up or in distant view.  Close up, they are individual, calligraphic scribbles against a pale winter sky.  At a distance, woods and tree-lined field boundaries are now strong, angular shapes, no longer fuzzy-edged with leaf,  emphasising the swell and fall of the fields.   Every winter I vow to use the opportunity to get to know the different tree species by their shapes so that I can recognise them without reference to their leaves. (And do I do it?  Not so far.  Still, it’s a good ambition.)

Enough fun for one day - time to go home and wrap Christmas presents.

Google map of the water structure for this walk

Thursday 15 December 2011

Walk 17 - Sluice gates and secret stream: Upper Vatch Mill

Two and a bit weeks to Christmas, and in the midst of days of rain, sleet and even the occasional snow flurry, we have a morning of bright blue skies, fluffy clouds and sunny intervals.  Oh, and a side helping of icy wind, but you can't have everything at this time of year.  I'm catching up on a bit of brook that got missed out earlier on, due to inefficient scheduling.  I'm in the garden of Upper Vatch Mill, courtesy of the owners, walking their section of the brook, which lies between the Painswick Slad Farm field and the garden of Vatch House.

From the field side, I was able look down and see (and hear) the weir which tumbles the brook into a culvert through this garden – now I’ve come to look at it from in front.  The first, and unexpected, thing I discover is that Upper Vatch Mill has a bit of secret stream. I hadn’t realised, looking at it from the field, that their garden includes a short section of the brook before it falls over the weir.  I’ve rather over-used the word ‘secret’ in relation to the Slad Brook, because of the way it is largely shrouded in trees, but this little bit really does feel secret because it's fenced off on three sides as well.

Secret stream
As so often by this stream,  I'm standing in the deep green shade of trees looking out at sunny fields, like a traveller at dusk looking at lighted windows.  Specifically, I'm looking back into the Painswick Slad Farm field, where the bullocks are looking back at me in some surprise.  But also, from the bit of bank I'm standing on, I can, most unusually, look straight up the middle of the stream.  The reason for this is that the stream does an odd wiggle here so that this section of bank is projecting into the main flow like an elbow. By standing on the point of the elbow, I can look back up a long, straight section flanked on both sides by tall trees.  The trees have all lost their leaves and look even more than usually architectural as a result.  It’s like looking up a watery corridor in some sort of palace with fan vaulting designed by an architect with a hangover.  Out comes the camera, but as usual I struggle to capture this cathedral-like quality.  It’s another area where the camera falls short compared with the eye.  By flicking my eyes up and down, I can see at almost the same moment the whole corridor of trees from the spreading filigree of branches overhead to the point where the roots reach into the stream.  The camera can’t, even on widest angle.  Why not draw it, I hear you say?  Do you know what the temperature is out here today?  Not much above freezing, and that's before the wind chill factor.  My hands are already frozen from taking my gloves off to operate the camera.  Instead, I try taking a short movie, panning up and down, which might give a better idea of it.  Judge for yourself how well I succeeded (not very!).



This 'secret stream' is also unusual because while on the opposite side of the brook the banks slope down to the water in the normal way, on this side there is 10-15 feet of flat land beside the brook, and then a bank which slopes up into the field beyond.  For some reason the trees have chosen to grow on the bank, not by the stream in the usual way, so this little bit of flat land, covered in dead leaves, nettles and fallen wood, is like a tiny bit of no-man’s-land, neither brook nor field.  It's like a long narrow tray with a lip round the edge.  It's only after I've been walking up and down it for a while that the obvious conclusion occurs to me - this was probably once a section of a man-made channel, designed to be much wider than the stream itself, and part of the mill system.

There were indeed once mill buildings in the grounds of Upper Vatch Mill, though according to the owners the house itself was never part of the mill.  The mill buildings were somewhere in the garden, nearer to the weir – which makes sense.  Evidently it was all part of the Vatch Mills complex which included Vatch House and its leat.

We've had a lot of rain in the last week and the stream is fuller than it was, and fast-flowing here.  Walking back down the 'secret stream' towards the house, I can hear the weir well before it comes into view.  It's good to be able to get close up to the stream - in the last few walks, it's been mostly fenced off - but it means clambering over a lot of dead wood, such as this hazel whose main trunk has completely collapsed. But it's still alive - a mass of slender new stems have sprung up from the roots, young turks taking advantage of the fall of the grand old man to make a bid for their place in the sun.  The main trunk is covered in rampant ivy.  Almost the only green around here comes from the jackets of ivy leaves on the trees, and the occasional fern, but even then it's an apologetic, knocked-back green.  Otherwise I'm surrounded by browns, buffs and greeny-browns.  No strong colour anywhere except in the (temporary) blue of the sky.  The winter sun is so low that its light bounces blindingly off the water straight into my eyes, turning the house to a Gothic silhouette.   The drama of winter light - I love it. The camera doesn't, apparently, since it keeps trying to compensate for the massive backlighting with flash.

Jelly fungus
Here is an intriguingly revolting sort of fungus growing on the side of a fallen tree, and it's a new one on me – like brown jelly with a bit of pale jelly on top, which I suppose is a new growth.  I've seen a lot of interesting fungi this autumn and I meant to find out more about them, but when I happened across a reference book on fungi it was so huge, and so complicated, that flicking through its pages I rapidly lost the will to live.

By the weir the stream turns sharply to the right and goes through what would once have been sluice gates.  Sections of wall remain on either side with a large tree growing out of one end of the wall.  The gates themselves are mostly gone but on one side the gatepost remains and you can see the channel cut in the stone where the gate would have run.  On the other side, the stone has fallen over, partly blocking the gap, and the whole thing is covered in swathes of ivy.  Nevertheless, the stream is finding its way through; water can always find a way.  I catch glimpses of small birds nipping in and out of the ivy and dodging under the undercuts in the stone and guess that it must be a pair of wrens.  I'm proved right when one of them appears right in front of me, shouting abuse. Size is no guide to chutzpah in birds - I'm always amazed by the boldness of wrens compared with the relative wimpishness of magpies.  I watched a magpie being seen off by a wagtail once, but that's by the by.

Remains of sluice gates
Beyond the sluice gates the water rushes through the gap, down the stone steps of the weir, and vanishes into the arched entrance of a stone culvert.  Above the culvert is an old terrace fenced with decorative stonework which is also somewhat battered and broken, and what with that, and the ivy, and the fallen blocks by the sluice gate, the area has the feel of the ruins of some sort of temple.

In my mind I try to reconstruct what all this might have looked like when it was a working mill.  It's hard to see exactly how the water was supposed to run.  There are three streams of water coming over the weir, only one of which comes through the main gap where the sluice would have been.  The other two come from a sort of tunnel on the further side of the weir and what looks like a deliberate gap in the wall beside the sluice.  On the far left of weir is what was obviously another run-off channel, with more moss-covered stonework at the top of it, so presumably some of the water could have been diverted down it.  From this angle, by the weir, I can see a sharp little bank at right angles to the sluice which could well have been the edge of a mill pond, if that's what that flat area by the stream was.  But if so, shouldn't the sluice gates have been higher up rather than at the level of the current stream?  I give up my speculation and concentrate on recording the sounds of the weir and of the stream running into the culvert with a satisfyingly hollow glopping.

Weir and terrace
Following the underground line of the culvert, I walk past the house and across the bottom of the garden to where the water reappears through another stone arch.  It pools in an impromptu pond in front of the arch before rushing over a lip and down into the garden of Vatch House, making a good deal of noise about it.  Standing on the boundary between the two gardens, I can see why.  The cause is the Great Flood of 2007.  Originally there was a wall – it's now hard to see where it ran - which was completely demolished by the flood water and its debris still lies in the stream, forcing the water into rapids and rivulets.  Looks like the flood also carried part of a fence away at the same time because there are bits of wire and whatnot all over the shop.

Giant toadstools
Here's an interesting thing.  When I was walking this end of the Vatch House garden a couple of weeks ago, I photographed some tiny toadstools growing on a tree.  I can see them now - grown to four or five times their original size in a mere fortnight.

The owner of Upper Vatch Mill was talking about wanting to restore the sluice gates and the stonework if he ever had the money to do it, and that would be really interesting to see, but I’ve been very glad to see the stream and the remnants of the mill  as they are now, on this cold, bright winter morning, just as time has left them.  All low light, long shadows and gentle decay.

The sun is still out, so on my way home I detour up Swift’s Hill to get the last of it.  Over the apex of the hill, one of the local kestrels is being mobbed by a couple of rooks.  Much higher up, a buzzard floats undisturbed, sunning his wings.  On the way back, I spot a single spray of white flowers growing out of the hedge in the lane, and a rosebush in the garden of Knapp House is sporting two perfect red rosebuds.  Small intimations of spring in the depths of winter.  Odd,  but cheerful.

Google map of this walk



Wednesday 7 December 2011

Walk 16 - In winter dormancy: Wade's Farm field


 It's a cold Wednesday morning, but sunny - and this time of year one grabs sunshine whenever it shows up.  So I'm going out to walk the next section of the brook after Stroud Slad farm.  From here on, it looks like it's going to be lots of short walks, because as it gets closer to Stroud, ownership of the land the brook runs through gets more and more piecemeal and co-ordinating permissions gets more complicated.  Today, it's a single field's width belonging to Wade's Farm.

We are very much into winter now.  There has been frost this week, though not today, and the trees are almost bare, though some are still hanging onto their leaves in the face of the weather.

Oaks glowing in the sun
My walk begins along the main road in order to get access to the field in question.  Not so much fun, because of the traffic, but it has its compensations because of the views across the valley.  I don't actually walk along this part of the road much - I'm normally whizzing down to Stroud in the car, and though you can see the views from the car, you don't really get a sense of the size and 'presence' of the valley.  It's good to have a reason to walk this section and appreciate it.  The valley is now getting more concentrated, as it were.  As it gets narrower and steeper, the woods and fields and the road and the brook are all squeezed closer together like toothpaste forced out of a tube. (Stroud as the exit point of a toothpaste tube.  Is that a happy mental picture?)   The fields are increasingly lumpy and bumpy, and flat land is in ever shorter supply.  I can see most of the route I walked through Stroud Slad Farm's fields a few weeks ago - interesting to follow it from above.  A few trees still have leaves, in particular the oak trees which appear occasionally in Stroud Slad's hedgelines.  Today these few oaks are glowing in the winter sun, unexpected beacons of colour amidst the mass of grey, skeletal trees about them.

I enter the field close to a significant hairpin bend in the road.  It slopes steeply and is currently well soaked and squidgy with recent rain.  There is the occasional flower - small dandelion-relatives - still hiding in the grass, which says something about how warm this autumn has been, I guess.  As I squelch my way down to the stream, I disturb a deer lurking in the trees by the water and a squirrel or two.  The stream runs along the bottom in quite a steep little cleft.  The owner of the field reckons that it's only half as full as it used to be in earlier years.  He says he used to see water voles and other wildlife down here which he thinks have now disappeared because the water level has fallen.  Higher up the valley, some parts of the stream run in a much flatter bed and give the impression that it couldn't hold much more water than currently, but just here, it's obvious from the shape of the banks that it could be a lot deeper, and has been in the past.

Steep banks and low water
There's the inevitable barbed-wire fence along the stream and I spend a little time looking for a way through it.  There is a dip in the wire and a corresponding dip in the ground scraped by animals pushing their way under the fence but it's not a big enough dip for this animal to follow so I have to stay on this side of it.

Half way along the field and by the stream is an old stone building -  a barn, I think, though round here there's always the possibility that it's a bit of ex-mill.  It does have some curious winding gear sticking out of one side of it and there is old machinery lost in a clump of brambles behind it.  On the other side of the barn the fence has moved and it's possible to get down to the stream.  The opposite bank is steep, sandy and sharply cut-in, like a miniature cliff.  Most of the stream doesn't really have the kind of bank you can imagine water voles living in, but just here it does seem possible.  And indeed, there is a small hole down by the water, though I very much doubt it belongs to a water vole.  No 'lawn', for a start.  What else makes holes by the stream?  Rats?  Kingfishers?  My list of UQs (Unanswered Questions) grows longer.

Lover's knot in hazel
Growing right into the middle of the stream at this point is a massive multi-stemmed hazel clump, elbowing everything else out of its way, including the fence.  One of its trunks has managed to grow through and round a fork in one of the other trunks, creating a curious lovers' knot in the middle of the tree.  The shapes of trees feature heavily in memories of the stream so far - mine and the camera's - so I have a feeling they are going to find their way into my work.  As will the ivy that so often covers them.  There's a splendid specimen here, clothing the tortuous trunks of a willow like a coat of chain-mail.  Up to this point, the stream has been flowing quite quietly with little interest for my sound recorder, but the obstruction of the hazel's roots and their load of trapped debris creates some good trickling noises.

From here on, trees grow only on one side of the stream, allowing more greenery to spring up on this side, including something which looks a lot like watercress but probably isn't, and the occasional clump of irises.  The stream is bridged by a fallen branch from a willow which is so straight that at first glimpse I assume it's a pipe of some sort.  The illusion is helped by the hollow noise the stream makes running over and under it.  Noises are actually in rather short supply this morning - pausing to take in the general atmosphere of this field, it seems to me that 'quiet' about sums it up.  Not much noise, not much activity, unless you count the traffic.  I've heard very few birds and seen very few insects.  No spiders, slugs, snails or anything.  Even the squirrels seem to have gone to ground.  Winter dormancy reigns - even the plants by the stream give the impression of having battened down the hatches until spring.

The end of the field is marked by a very definite red brick edifice, the wall of someone's garden.  Beyond here, the stream is flanked on this side by houses - the first tendrils of Stroud reaching up into the valley.  The wall looks old and extremely solid, topped by a massive ruff of ivy (well, better than barbed wire) but down at its base is a small hole.  I like the thought of some little animal industriously setting out to undermine this great barrier for its own purposes.  There's been evidence all up and down the stream of how unimpressed the rest of the mammal kingdom is by our human boundaries.  They just patiently set about finding a way over, under or through them.

I start to make my way back along the field to the barn and I'm pausing to contemplate the view back up the field and around the curve of the road - another perspective on the valley that I've never seen before - when a movement catches my eye.  It's a grey heron landing in the field with a flurry of big wings.  He then proceeds to stalk slowly towards the stream with a stiff, old-gentleman gait, pausing every few steps with head and neck thrust forward, the better to watch and listen.  So intent is he on the stream that he doesn't notice me and continues his stately stalk for some minutes before disappearing into the undergrowth.

Elated by my heron encounter, I get brave enough to shimmy under the barbed wire for a closer look at the stream in the earlier part of the field.  Down here, throwing up multiple stems seems to be the order of the day for trees - they are all at it, even the hawthorns.   I remind myself to look up - it's so easy to go around seeing only the bottom halves of trees, failing to appreciate their full height and the complexity of the canopy - and am rewarded by a spark of brilliant colour as a jay flashes away from a branch above me.

I'm glad I persisted with the fence, because from this side of it, I can now see that there's a small tributary stream running into the brook.  From the other side, it was very thoroughly hidden by a group of sagging and half-collapsed willows, their limbs gnarled and rheumaticky-looking.  They have no leaves, but I'm pretty confident that they are willows because of their fantastically heavy-duty bark, like flock wallpaper writ large.  This small stream winds down the field crossing and re-crossing the field boundary with blithe disregard for human fences.  I trace it back to a tiny trickle of water not far below the road.  By now the afternoon is getting short on light and warmth, so I decide to call it a day and go home for tea.

Google map of this walk






Monday 28 November 2011

Walk 15 - A Cat's-cradle of water: Vatch House garden


Here we are at what should be the back end of autumn, but autumn has gone in fits and starts this year and seems to be lasting longer than usual.  Many of the trees have now lost their leaves, but not all, - the oaks, in particular, seem to be hanging onto theirs.   It's a semi-cloudy winter afternoon with not too many daylight hours still available and I'm in the garden of Vatch House, being given a guided tour of the extraordinary things that happen to the Slad Brook as it travels through here by the owner, John.  This is a walk out of sequence - if you remember, I had to miss out a section of the brook between Painswick Slad Farm land and Vatch Cottages, and this is part of that missing section, the other part being in the garden of Upper Vatch Mill.

Beyond Painswick Slad Farm, I saw the stream disappearing over a waterfall and into a culvert in the garden of Upper Vatch Mill.  Evidently it then goes around the house (I haven't seen this yet) and reappears from another stone culvert at right angles to the boundary with Vatch House - this much I can see from the fence - before flowing into John's garden.  At this point there's an accumulation of debris from a collapsed wall and fallen tree, which according to John is a legacy of the Great Flood in 2007.  Apparently the pressure of flood water surging out of the culvert carried all before it and swept the wall away.  It's a visible reminder of the power of the flood, when the water was thigh-deep in the lane.  There is also a startling clutch of toadstools clinging to the side of one of the trees like muddy soap bubbles.


Situated at stream level as it is, most of this garden is flattish, but the valley rises rapidly on either side of it. The stream is about 3 feet wide at this point and running close to the edge of the garden, flanked on one side by alder and ash trees, which mark the boundary with the field next door, and on the other by a flat area which John describes as 'wilderness' and has had a chequered history.   During the valley's industrial past, this section of the stream was extensively reorganised to serve the Vatch mills.  As far as I can work out from local history books, there were several  mills in the Vatch mills complex, including Upper Vatch Mill, a couple of buildings on the site now occupied by Vatch House, and the seven-storey Vatch Mill which once stood in front of Spring Cottages. There was a complicated water infrastructure which served the various mills, in which John's 'wilderness' had a bit-part as a 'balancing pond', filled from a spring on the further side of the garden.  At some point in more recent years the old pond was filled in and became a tennis court, which was eventually abandoned, and is now a haven for the likes of nettles and rose bay willow herb.  John has an ambition to restore the balancing pond and take its run-off into the former swimming pool, now lily pond, built next to it by a former owner.

The leat
Through most of the garden the stream flows in a man-made leat which runs along a bank and straight as a die towards the back of the house.  According to John, it's now at the lowest they've seen it in the four years they've lived here, probably as a result of the dry summer.  Halfway along is a massive multi-stemmed tree - hazel? alder? I'm still getting them mixed up, even now - the largest I've seen so far, anyway, with a great mat of roots trailing in the water which causes the stream to chatter noisily as it struggles to find a way round.

There are some sycamore trees here, which are not as common as you would think along the stream, plus a couple of slim and elegant birches.  As I approach the house, the winter sun is fast dropping behind it and the last golden rays are lighting up the fine haze of small yellow leaves still clinging to the birch branches and reflecting off the pale bark of the trees so that they seem to glow all over.  There is that feeling of pleasant melancholy which I associate with late autumn, when everything is dying back and revealing its beautiful bones.  A scatter of windfall apples lie on the path amongst a litter of dead leaves.

Stream descends in steps
The stream now divides; one arm of it continues along the leat, directly towards the back of the house, while the other arm branches off at right angles, descends quite steeply by a series of steps to run parallel with the house, then turns left towards the front of the house, round two sides of a square.  If you were feeling poetical in a Victorian sort of way, you might say that the house sits in the arms of the stream.  Though that might suggest rather too kindly a relationship, given its history -' in the clutches of the stream' might be nearer the mark.

I elect to follow the leat along the back of the house, where it becomes no more than a trickle of water, choked with plants, and ends abruptly in a sort of earth bank.  Originally, it would have continued straight ahead and into a culvert behind the house which then took it across the lane and into the mill pond, up behind the big mill at Spring Cottages.  (This mill pond is still visible as a swampy area of woodland behind an earth bank.)  But the old culvert is long blocked off and the water now runs off at a right angle, under a bridging chunk of concrete, and down a steep mill-race into a stone channel which carries it right underneath the back of the house, round the corner and into another culvert at the front of the house.

Unable to go further, I return to the other arm of the stream, the decorative arm which branches off from the leat in a series of steps, created by low stone-and-tile walls which the stream doesn't exactly flow over, more through, with a flat pond behind each wall.  The whole thing wanders prettily through the garden before veering back towards the corner of the house where its twin emerges.  Here, things get even more complicated.   The water from the race which goes under the house then dives into a Victorian brick-built culvert (John takes the lid off an inspection chamber to show me water gurgling away in the depths) whereas the water from the decorative steps runs into a modern plastic pipe.  Both then run in parallel under the driveway to join up with the main culvert which carries the reunited stream under the road and down the small lane opposite towards Spring Cottages.   Whew!  With me so far?  There's a manhole cover at the point where they join, from which issues the sound of rushing water, particularly after heavy rain.  During the flood, I remember the water absolutely foaming out of it.

That's not the end of the cats-cradle of water in this garden, though.  On the further side of the garden, John shows me another, much smaller stream which comes down the hillside, through the garden of Vatch Cottage, across the field next door and into this garden where it runs in a narrow stone channel and then, via a series of stone steps, executes a bizarre u-turn back along itself and down towards the house.  John reckons that originally it went into the old balancing pond, and that after the pond was filled in, it was given a new life as another bit of ornamental water, and directed back into the garden. Hence the strange hairpin bend in the middle of it.  After coming down the levels in a mini-version of the main stream's pools and steps, this spring water runs back down the garden and into a pipe - John removes another inspection cover to show it trickling below - after which, it presumably joins the main stream somewhere, though no-one knows where.


Confused?  You and me both.  After John has left me to wander round the garden with the camera, I have to walk the whole thing again to try to get the water system sorted out in my head.  This is the most visual evidence I've seen so far of the industrial past of the stream and this valley.  It's sad, in a way; like an abandoned house, or a once-busy road now going nowhere, the purposeful straightness of the leat ending in a purposeless bank, the carefully channelled spring water now wandering about the garden without a job to do, and the whole complicated water-weaving disappearing into a bodge-up of pipes and culverts.  On the other hand, the stream has a life of its own, no matter what we do to it, and it brings movement and interest to a garden like nothing else can, even in the dull days of autumn.


Google map of this walk



Wednesday 9 November 2011

Walk 14 - Fungi and flashes of colour: Spring Cottages and Stroud Slad Farm

I'm a little out of sequence here, because I haven't yet managed to make arrangements with the owners of Upper Vatch Mill and Vatch House through whose gardens the Slad Brook runs after it leaves Painswick Slad Farm's land.  So I'll have to come back to that section shortly. From the garden of Vatch House, the brook disappears into a culvert that runs under Slad Lane and parallel to Vatch Cottages, emerges by the little bit of woodland opposite Spring Cottages.  Today I'm walking the bit that follows, courtesy of the owners of 2-3 Spring Cottages and Stroud Slad Farm.

View down the valley across Stroud Slad Farm's fields
The season has moved on since my last walk, over a month ago.  We're now in the season of shorter days and colder nights, mists and mellow fruitfulness etc.  Well, mists and general dampness, anyway.  I've been looking forward to seeing the valley in autumn colours, but that hasn't happened quite as expected.  It's being described as a 'double dip autumn' because many of the trees started changing at the end of August, but then the weather went very warm at the end of September and slowed things down; it's only in the last two or three weeks that we've begun to get the traditional colours, and the process has been very patchy.  Some trees are already bare, others have turned interesting shades of orange and yellow, and some are still quite green.  In fact, as far as there is a 'normal' autumn, this is not it.  The weather's gone on being quite dry until very recently, but a real downpour at the end of last week started the leaves coming down in a big way.  Today is misty, moisty and low on light, so the ambience is going to be quite different from the other walks.

I know the beginning of the walk very well because it's almost outside my house.  The stream emerges briefly from the culvert, currently almost invisible under the weight of undergrowth, before disappearing under a bridge of railway sleepers which gives acess to our cottages.  Just here, I know the brook mainly as a noise of water, but I've learned to tell its likely depth from how it sounds.  I've learned not to underestimate it, too.  It's perhaps three feet wide here, if that, but in 2007, the year we moved to the The Vatch, after days of heavy rain, the culvert backed up and the stream burst its banks, surging thigh-deep down our little lane.  Vatch residents in pyjamas and wellies lugged sand bags, cleared drains and lifted the railway sleeper bridge so that the water could flow back into its course.  (It's a strange but curiously effective way to meet your neighbours!)  The water lapped at the doors of the lower cottages and then subsided.  I regard the brook with more respect now.

Spring Cottages
Today it's a peaceful trickle and, if anything, a bit low for the time of year.  After the plank bridge, it's in a pipe briefly through the corner of the cottage gardens before emerging in the garden of the middle house.  The gardens here are complicated; Spring Cottages were mill-workers' cottages originally, with a seven-storey mill building behind them.  What now looks like the back of the cottages was then the front, and each cottage had a strip of land away to the side, presumably for growing vegetables.  The strips have been rationalised over the years, but it's still hard to tell who owns what by looking at it.  The stream runs plumb through the garden of the middle house and Rod Shaw, who owns this bit, has tales to tell of the wildlife he's seen on it over the years, ranging from water voles to white egrets.  The latest visitor is a dipper, apparently, which he spotted earlier today.  I'd like to see it, but the chances aren't good because the garden is open up to this point and while Rod can watch hidden behind his windows, there's no way for me to approach without being in full view of any wildlife on the stream.

Needless to say, there's no sign of the dipper when I get there, but Rod's pretty plank-and-rail bridge is a good place to stop and watch the stream finding its way round the roots of several big alder trees.  These trees are still mainly green, but a nearby silver birch is bright with orange and yellow and there's a scattering of red rosehips and other berries.  With much of the colour leached out of the landscape by the change of season and the flat, low light, these bright spots really stand out.

Google map of the first part of this walk

The same is true on the other side of the gate, in the first field belonging to Stroud Slad Farm.  From a distance, it's all monochrome, but up close, there are little specks of colour and interest.  My eye is caught by a single fallen leaf, bronze-coloured except for a couple of symmetrical, bright green spots.  And another with green stripes, and a hawthorn leaf in red with brown speckles.  The more I look, the more pattern and colour there suddenly is to see.  I could spend a whole morning looking at individual leaves, if I didn't have four fields-worth of stream to cover.

The valley feels much narrower and more single-minded from this angle, with only a field's width actually visible on either side of the brook, fringed by woodland on the heights.  The mistiness of the upper edges, reduced to grey silhouettes, helps to close down the perspective.  This is what my mother calls 'quiet weather', with hardly a breath of wind.  Everything is cloaked in droplets of water and the trees by the stream are wading in wet brambles and hung with soggy-looking ivy.  There are plenty of birds around - I disturb a blackbird having a bath in a puddle and spot a robin on the wing snatching a blackberry from a bramble thicket.  In the trees above, any number of others are providing material for the sound recorder.   It's bad light for identifying birds because most of them are just black shapes in black trees against a dead white sky, so I'm rather pleased with myself for spotting the bird I've just been recording - a nuthatch, lurking in a hawthorn bush.

As at Down Farm, I have to zigzag up and down the fields to cross from one to the other via gates at the top.  It's brighter up here, with open views towards Stroud, but also feels wetter.  I seem to be closer to the mist and cloud - almost in it, rather than merely under it.  At the top of the first field is a hawthorn tree heavily colonised by mistletoe.  .  It's a good time of year to enjoy the shapes of trees, especially the ones that have already lost their leaves, and from up here, I can take them in better than when I'm right underneath them .  Down by the stream I notice an unusual shape for the Slad Brook treescape - an oak tree.  The only others I've seen so far growing actually by the stream were the giant by Steanbridge House lake and another one just downstream from the lake.  Were there once more oak trees, I wonder, and are these few the survivors of felling in an earlier age?

Toadstool collar
I go down to take a closer look at the oak, and find an old stone bridge, similar to others I've seen along the stream.  Closer inspection underneath it reveals water flowing out of an opening in the side of the bridge - a spring or underground stream or run-off, I suppose.   Also nearby is a slim young tree with few branches and fewer leaves and an extraordinary lacy collar of fairy-like toadstools.  Fungi are due to become one of the defining features of this walk - by the end of it I've seen more different kinds than I think I've ever seen in one day, enough to need a whole separate folder for the photos.  I've never been a great fungi enthusiast, but when they force themselves on your notice in such variety it's difficult not to get interested,  I've also noticed a proliferation of different toadstools on Swifts Hill recently, so maybe the weather conditions have been just right for them.  That's the thing about weather - whatever it is, it's always good for someone.  I guess the amount of dead wood and general dampness encouraged by the trees round the stream may mean good conditions for fungi.

There's no doubt that this is an oak tree because, apart from the leaves, the ground beneath it is covered in acorn-cups.  The actual acorns are missing, but the cups are mostly undamaged, which means that whichever nut-eater took the acorns sat down and carefully extracted them from the cups first.  Does that sound like squirrels to you?  No, me neither; in my garden I get hefty, thuggish squirrels with a very direct approach to food gathering.  But perhaps a colony of dainty, maiden-auntish squirrels lives in this oak tree.  Something fairly thuggish has stripped a couple of small trees nearby of most of their bark, though.

While I'm musing into the sound recorder about the way trailing tree roots have coralled dead leaves into patterns in the stream, bright yellow against dark water like an Andy Goldsworthy artwork, I'm stopped in mid-sentence by an unexpected sound.  A tawny owl, unless I'm much mistaken, hooting from one of the trees in the woods above.  Unusual, but not the first time I've heard them in the daytime around here.  There is other evidence of the local mammals - badgers have been rooting up patches of grass just here, and as I pause to look more closely, a deer dashes out of cover and away from me.  It was lurking in a triangle of rough scrub which is fenced off from the rest of the field.

As higher up the valley, the divisions between the fields are defined by small streams running in clefts down to the main brook, carving the landscape into manageable chunks.  The further towards Stroud I go, the more lumpy the landscape becomes and the sharper the hills between the clefts.  Walking in the third of Stroud Slad's fields, with their sheep for company, I find myself looking across the stream to Hazel Mill, a beautiful Cotswold stone house with part of an old mill building in its garden.  From this side of the stream, I can see a leat or channel of some sort running through the garden parallel with the stream but higher up, and a cascade where the water from the channel joins the main stream.  I make a mental note to investigate more closely at another time.  From here, the stream plunges into a thicket of brambles.

In the garden of Hazel Mill is a tree which has turned a uniform, vivid gold and makes a brilliant spot of colour in an otherwise drab landscape.  Something similar occurs at micro level down by the stream - here is an unexpected flash of shocking pink where the last red campion is still flowering.  Otherwise, the brightest colours in this field are the identifying flashes of orange on the bottoms of the sheep!



And while we're on the subject of colour, here's an interesting thing.  The hazel and alder trees by the stream are mainly still green, but the ground beneath them is carpeted with yellow and brown leaves.  In this third field  I find a beautiful example; a classic hazel clump, its remaining leaves mostly green, but with a russet-coloured leaf shadow beneath it.   Which means that the leaves must be turning in stages and falling off almost as soon as they turn - perhaps because of last week's rain?

Leaf shadow
The final field is not so much a field as a big green hump, with a view from the top up to a bronze glow of  beechwoods on the ridge.  At the field boundary, the stream suddenly becomes broad and quiet, the water spreading like glass and reflecting its entourage of trees beautifully.  Drifts of yellow and orange leaves lie on the water, leaves sitting on reflections of leaves.  Then the stream plunges over a little waterfall and becomes narrow between steep banks, noisily negotiating an obstacle course of trailing roots and seeming to gather speed as it rushes towards Stroud.  It's been less of a secret stream today - the trees growing beside it are confined to the very edges of the banks and are more widely spaced, so there isn't this overhung area of bank to walk in and it feels more open.  At the end of this field is another tributary, coming in from the road side this time, and making a pleasing noise as it splashes into the stream via a discarded bit of metal.   I have to make three attempts to record it because of aeroplanes going over - I've noticed this before, that every time I hit the 'record' button there seems to be a plane looming.  Do we really have so many planes here?  I don't seem to notice them normally.  I'm now close enough to Stroud to pick up, faintly in the distance, the voices of children in a school playground.

Leaves and reflections of leaves
That's the end of today's section of stream, but not of the walk, which has to be of the there-and-back variety.  I walk back along the tops of the fields to take in the views I've missed being down by the brook.  This is a great privilege of doing these walks - I get to see the valley from angles that I never otherwise would, in this case in a great sweep up to Knapp Farm and Swifts Hill.  The mist is fading, there's a gleam of sun, and patches of colour in the woodland fringes are coming into focus.  After a morning by the stream getting up close and personal with individual leaves, flowers and fungi, it's good to stretch my eyes.  (Not that I've called time on the fungi; in fact, now I'm officially on my way home and am supposed to be getting a move on, I can't seem to stop seeing them, in all varieties, from tiny, bright orange ones, to huge, squidgy rambling ones.) I'm also getting a new angle on our own Spring Cottages.  I've never actually seen them head-on like this before, and I now see why the southward-facing side, which I think of as the back, is actually the front - they look less rambly, and almost elegant, from this side.

One final flash of colour: the red underside of the tail of a greater spotted woodpecker, perched at the very top of a tree on one of the field boundaries.  I feel rather proud of myself for recognising his silhouette before getting that confirming red flash in the binoculars.

And a flash of black-and-white to end with.  As I climb back through Rod's garden, I'm passed by a fast-moving streak of black wing and white underbelly shooting up from the stream.  I'm almost certain it was the visiting dipper.  Almost.




Google map of second part of walk - Stroud Slad Farm

Thursday 6 October 2011

Walk 13 - Cattle and Casualties of Time: Painswick Slad Farm

Early autumn now, with the sort of weather you would think normal for October, if last weekend hadn't been more like high summer with temperatures in the late 20's.  But today we're down to the middle teens, blowing a gale and alternating sharp showers and sunny intervals.  Sunshine has been in short supply this week, so now it's appeared I'm grabbing the opportunity to do this walk - a shortish one, like the sunny interval - through a field belonging to Painswick Slad Farm.

I'm not sure we're mentally prepared for autumn, what with an Indian summer happening at the end of September, but the valley is definitely beginning to look autumnal.  Hints of orange and gold are beginning to appear in the trees and there are already drifts of leaves lying on the ground.  The main road runs along the boundary of the field I'm about to walk through and whenever I walk up to the village I tend to stop by this wall because the view from here across the valley is another of my favourites.   It's an unusually open view straight up the valley, and both arms of the upper valley are visible as well as Slad village, the hamlet of Elcombe, Swifts Hill, the Vatch and indeed quite a lot of the ground I've already walked on this project.  It's one of the best spots from which to get a feel for how the valley works.

View from above the field
Normally this isn't a particularly peaceful spot because the main road is humming with traffic, but just now the road is closed for the repair of a major chunk of the retaining wall above the Vatch and the village is almost traffic-free.  This is a pain in the neck for day to day life, but has compensations for lovers of scenery and wildlife.  I've already seen - and heard - two buzzards moseying around above the trees which line the stream.   I seem to be seeing a lot of buzzards in the valley at the moment, so perhaps they bred well this year.

The stream is now running parallel with the road and forms the lower boundary of the field.  This is working farmland, so this field is mainly pasture and is currently home to five or six half-grown cattle.  Earlier in the year I spent a happy afternoon taking photos of young calves with the owner of the field, but these are not the same beasts, apparently.  I'm not even sure if these are the same as the ones I was hobnobbing with at the end of my last walk, which I reckoned were heifers.  Some of these definitely look like bullocks, if not young bulls, with little horns, so I'm hoping they won't find me too interesting.

Entering the field via a gate from the road, I walk diagonally across the steep slope towards the boundary with the church field and the point where I left off last time.  There's a beautiful walnut tree in the middle which is something of a landmark.  The tributary trickle which drops down from the bend in the road and winds to and fro across the boundary is much more visible from this side of the fence.  Sometimes it's a trickle and sometimes more of a steady seep.  At the point where it joins the main stream there is a row of big alder trees whose trailing roots have formed a one big debris-collecting raft across the stream so that the water finds its way around with difficulty.  

The bullocks who have been grazing by the stream are giving me very dubious looks so I walk slowly and talk to them in what I trust is a reassuring way.  Presently curiosity overcomes fear and they come over to have a better look at me, going 'mrrurr-mrrurr' and producing hearty smoker's coughs while shuffling their feet like bashful teenagers. Producing the camera causes them to sheer off temporarily but when I stay put, they sidle back and set about providing me with half an hour's distraction.  I like drawing animals on the move - more exciting, though hugely more difficult, than when they're sitting still - and the bullocks make delightful subjects, barging each other, play-fighting and generally larking about.  Eventually they get bored and wander off, by which time I have pages full of very scribbly and deeply disappointing drawings, but also a very vivid recollection of their shapes and antics.  This is the value of drawing for me - a way of constructing vivid mental impressions which can later be converted into something glassy.

I turn my attention back to the stream and start to walk along it, ducking in and out of single-strand wire fences.  The stream is fenced on both sides very close to its edges as if the water were a real no-go area.  It's quite broad here and the water is beautifully clear.  Despite the usual chaos of fallen wood  around it, it runs fairly unobstructed, except where narrowed by alder roots.  

Broken willow
The defining feature along this stretch is the trees - mainly alder and willow, some of them very well-grown.  As elsewhere, it's like walking behind tree-curtains with only the occasional window through the leaves onto the sunlit fields beyond.  It's easy to over-use the word 'secret' in relation to this stream - I seem to do it every time I talk to the sound recorder - but in most areas it really does feel cut off from the world around it.  Here, with tree-free pasture on both sides, the distinction is even sharper.  This stretch of stream seems not so much secret as forgotten, with many of its trees falling into gentle decay.  Here is the massive stump of a very old willow, snapped off about 8 feet up.  Fence supporters have been screwed into its sides, ivy has heavily colonised its deeply-crevassed bark and rusty-winged flies are sheltering in its crevices.  Yet the tree is sprouting green again from the broken-off top.   (I'm always impressed by how tenacious life is in plants.  Except the ones I particularly want to grow in my garden, obviously.)  It isn't the only casualty of time here; there is a whole series of fallen-over, half-broken, ivy-covered, cragged and gnarled tree wrecks.  Their shapes loom weirdly in the green gloom and the sound recorder picks up gothic groanings where one ancient tree continuously rubs against the one next door.

My overwhelming impression of this stretch of stream is of a slice of raw nature sandwiched between two human-controlled areas - like a stratum of striped quartz running through an area of smooth rock.

It's dawning on me that I'm not properly dressed for this walk.  My mind was still in Indian summer mode when I set off, but not only are my light summer trousers not proof against the drifts of nettles, they aren't keeping me warm now that the sun has gone in and I can feel my camera-fingers stiffening with cold.  I step out of the light-and-shade world of the stream into the world of light and sunshine in hopes of warming up.  There is a good view from here of what I think of as the underside of the village - the back end of the pub and the gardens of the houses on the old lane.  

The shadows of the trees are long now, at 4 o'clock, reminding me that it's getting late in the year.  At the far end of the field there is a row of 7 or 8 massive alders, some of them double trees, along the stream edge.  For some reason the pasture marches right down to the stream here and there is very little undergrowth between the trees so that the low sun can shine between them onto the water.  I take this rare opportunity to photograph the stream itself in sunlight - along much of its length, in the shade of the trees, it looks too amorphous for interesting photos.  I also try to capture the magnificence of this row of alders and run up against my lack of photographic expertise and the problem that if you can get the whole tree into the shot, you're so far away that it tends to come out looking small.

On the field boundary, something unexpected happens.  The stream suddenly plunges over a waterfall and literally disappears, perhaps into a culvert of some sort, in the garden of (I think) Upper Vatch Mill.  So that's the end of my section of stream for today and time to walk home along the road, admiring the effect of the golden late-afternoon light on the stone buildings at this end of the valley.

Google map of this walk

Friday 2 September 2011

Walk 12 - A short walk though long grass: the Church Field


View from the church field gate

Almost a month since I last managed to fit in one of these walks, due to general busy-ness, so I'm feeling seriously deprived and looking forward to this one.  This is the first walk I've been able to do without getting in the car first, since the entrance to the field is ten minutes up the road from us.  The church field (so called because - ta-da! - it belongs to Holy Trinity church, Slad) is a curiously L-shaped field running steeply down the hill below the church and wrapping itself around the gardens of the houses on the Old Slad road.  It adjoins the Steanbridge estate on one boundary, and farmland on all the others, except for a gate at the apex of the triangle which goes out onto the main road.  It's this gate I'm now heading for.

The thing about the church field is that it isn't grazed or managed, except that the grass gets cut annually, which hasn't happened yet this year.  It's used occasionally for village events, such as the newly-traditional Easter Egg and Bonio Hunt (children and dogs welcome), but its steepness saves it from fetes worse than death or other more genteel activities.  Last time I saw it, which was from the Steanbridge estate boundary, it was elbow-high in nettles and other vegetation, so although it's warm and dry today, I'm wearing wellies, jeans and a thickish canvas top, and feel somewhat overdressed.

Wild carrot seed heads
Which is OK, because the field is somewhat overgrown.  Even on the rough path which runs down from the gate, the grass, nettles and hogweed are knee-high.  As I climb over the gate, I'm greeted by a dunnock from a nearby bush, and a couple of bluetits, and a shower of small green grasshoppers bounce away from my feet.  The days have been hot recently, but at this hour of the early-ish morning it's cooler than of late, and slightly misty, with intimations of autumn.  I think this may be the last walk of summer.  The field already looks pretty autumnal - there are blackberries appearing along the boundary hedge and though there are a few wildflowers still blooming, particularly the knapweeds, the grass is browning at the edges and is full of seedheads.  I love seedheads - their shapes are intricate and more subtly interesting than the flowers that precede them.  I particularly like one which belongs to a plant which is common along this path and which I ignorantly accuse of being cow parsley.  Its seeds are clustered together in what looks like a particularly intriguing birds-nest.  Later research (this time I did look it up in the spotter's guide when I got home) reveals it to be wild carrot, a much prettier member of the same family.

The view from the top of this field across the valley towards Swift's Hill and the hamlet of Elcombe is one of my favourites in the valley, particularly on an atmospheric morning like this one, when the opposite hills turn blue and seem to float on the mist.  Most of the view is fields, with a dark line of trees below me marking the path of the stream.  A great squawking of magpies from one of these trees heralds the eruption from the tree canopy of a big buzzard, calling mournfully.  The field boundary away to my right is a fold in the land running down from the big hairpin in the road and hosting a small stream, audible but not visible from the road, which I mean to try to find today.  From up here, the church field looks like a large, shaggy and somewhat unkempt animal with flowers caught in its fur.

My progress down the hill is slowed by the detail that's all around me.  I remember thinking about a section of ground near Dillay Farm that it would be fascinating to choose a square foot of it and work out how many different plants were in it, and this is another place with that kind of density of species.  There is so much more here than just grass.  Here, for example, is a clump of many different seedheads, even less identifiable than usual (to me) without their flowers, but fascinating.  The whole clump is glazed with what I think must be slug-slime or similar, which sounds revolting, but shining in the sun is actually ethereally beautiful.  And here is a patch of pinky flowers which once again I feel ought to be something-or-other-vetch, amongst which are many small spiders going about their business.  That makes it feel like autumn - I associate autumn with spiders being much more in evidence, for some reason.  The pink flowers are shaped like medieval wimples and I stop to try and draw them.  It's one thing to admire a shape, quite another to commit it to memory, and a whole quantum step away again to transmit it from brain to hand and pencil accurately.  Why this should be, I don't know, but I think we see things in different ways.  There's one sort of seeing which registers an opinion, and a different sort of seeing - a much more intense seeing - which allows you to draw what you see.  For example, someone once pointed out to me that you can look at your watch and not remember what the time was afterwards, because you looked at your watch to answer the question 'have I got time?' rather than 'what is the time?' - apparently, answering the two different questions involves two different ways of seeing.

The path - which is more like a sort of green ramp - follows the curve of the field round underneath the gardens of the houses above and peters out close to a clump of trees which bulges out from the northern boundary.  Now I've been told that somewhere in these trees are the remains of an old silk mill from the days when this valley was part of the great British textile industry.  Silk mill?  I doubt that silkworms were cultivated in Gloucestershire, so I guess the silk was imported in its raw state for finishing here.  I can't imagine the economics of that but presumably there were some.

At first I think there's no chance of spotting anything man-made for the grass and nettles and general plant mayhem under the trees, but then I come upon a section of old stone wall, which has become part of the hill.  Ferns and ivy and whole trees are growing out of it.  And a little further along is a spring trickling out of a brick surround.  The ferns and plants clustering round it makes it look like a pagan shrine, not at all like anything industrial, but I'm guessing this may have been part of the silk mill building.  I'm struck by the light effects down here - green gloom punctuated by sudden shafts of sunlight which highlight the shapes and colours of the ferns, making them look hyper-real.

Exploring the bank in more detail I find no more signs of man-made things but some beautiful big trees and a barbed-wire fence, on the other side of which the old watercourse I walked up on my Steanbridge estate walk is clearly visible.  Turning downhill along the fence I seek out the stream, following an animal path that eventually disappears with a flurry of scrabbled-up earth under the fence which closes off the stream in both directions. Following the example of the unknown animal, I manage to roll under the fence in order to get close enough to the stream to record its placid burbling.  I'm inside the usual stream-shroud of hazels and willows but I can't follow the stream bank here because of the fence, and because the tree cloak is augmented by thorn bushes, so  I have to return to the grassland, outside the trees, avoiding nettles which, in some cases, are over my head.  The nettles are popular with tiny snails, if not with me.

I come upon a real autumn sight; a hawthorn bush covered in brilliant red berries.  Or fruits.  Whatever.  Are these haws?  I know the phrase 'hips and haws', but now I come to think about it, I've neve known what 'haws' are.  'Haws' for hawthorn?  It seems logical.  There are also sloes.  At least, I think they are sloes.  (Never drink sloe gin made by me, just in case.)  The animal path I'm following winds back to the stream and spends the next few minutes playing cat's cradle with the barbed wire fence, which snakes all over the place crazily.  Presently I find myself on what appears to be a small island, the stream on one side and a shallow but definite ditch, with a small amount of water in it, on the other.  Crossing the ditch higher up is what at first glance seems to be another little arched stone bridge like the ones I've seen higher up the stream, but almost buried in the earth and accumulated leaf litter and with a tree growing on its head.  Looking closer, and feeling the cold draught coming out of it, I think it's actually a culvert of some sort.  I try to work out where it's coming from, but it's impossible to see because of the undergrowth.  I'm wondering, however, if it's something to do with the water system that drove the old mill.

This stream-and-ditch arrangement continues almost to the edge of the field and the main stream is really quite small here - it's amazing how much it varies in size along its length.  Just beyond where the two finally meet, I can now see where the tributary trickle, the one which comes down from the hill by the bend in the road, joins the main stream.   This little tributary winds in and out of this field and the next, where a huddle of young heifers are watching me.  When I amble over to say hello to them, they stick their noses through the fence for a closer look, whiffling curiously.  I can't resist their liquid eyes and neat, blunt noses so I stay to make a few scribbly drawings of them, probably providing the most excitement their day will offer.

My aim is to walk the final boundary of the field by following the tributary back up to the road, but this is easier said than done as it's well hidden in a melange of blackberries, brambles, nettles, hawthorns and general plant mess and I keep having to depart from it to avoid being ripped to shreds.  In the end, I give up and strike back across the hill towards the gate, wading effortfully through long, tussocky grass punctuated by scabious and cow parsley (aka wild carrot), arriving back at the gate hot and out of breath and feeling like I've covered a much greater distance than I have.



Google map of this walk