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

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

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

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

Walk 11 - A Flash of Blue: Steanbridge House lake and woods

Steanbridge House and stream

It's now high summer, or at least as high as it's likely to get this summer, which has been pretty patchy to say the least.  Today's reasonably summery, though, with blue skies, high clouds, sunshine and quite warm.  I've had a break from my walking project for the last two or three weeks, due to exhibitions and other distractions, and I'm glad to get back to it.  I'm starting from the village pond and the plan is to walk follow the stream through the land belonging to the Steanbridge estate.

Steanbridge House is the Big House of the village, and for generations the home of the Townsends, who owned most of this part of the valley including Steanbridge Mill.  The current estate is smaller, but includes a big chunk of the Slad brook ,which the present owners have kindly allowed me to explore.

A genuinely good place for kingfishers

The pond is busy with ducks today and they oblige me with a volley of quacks for the sound recorder - presumably saying "Give us yer bread then" in duckish - before I climb over a gate on the opposite side of the little bridge and set off into Steanbridge estate land with the stream on my right.  I've not taken more than a few steps when a flash of electric blue darts out in front of me and disappears downstream.  A kingfisher.  What a brilliant (literally) start to the walk.  It's really good to see it, because last winter was very cold and kingfishers are one of the species known to suffer in a bad winter. And not so far away from the bit of stream I imagined as a good place for kingfishers.  Though probaby this bit is even better, being deeper and less shaded by trees.

I'm walking through a field, the grass still shining with water droplets.  This part of the stream has a thinner clothing of trees than elsewhere, and the trees seem to be bigger and more varied than the usual hazel/alder combination.  Here's a sycamore, a stately willow, and a beech.  The stream itself looks as though it has aspirations to grow up into a real river one day, being wider and slower-flowing.  It has the air of somewhere that significant fish (i.e. ones you can see without a magnifying glass) might live, which presumably it is if kingfishers hunt along here.  I suspect the difference is the result of active management in place of the benign neglect that seems to operate along most of the stream up to this point.

The kingfisher is rapidly followed by fourteen teenage mallards, doing what teenagers do, viz: going around in a big gaggle, flapping their wings and making a fair amount of unnecessary noise.  I wonder if some of them are the group I saw a few weeks ago on the pond.  I follow them down to the point where the stream opens out and becomes a long, narrow lake, reflecting mown lawns and the handsome profile of Steanbridge House.

This is a very different environment from those I've been walking in up to now. There are only occasional trees along the bank and those that remain are well-grown, ornamental-looking specimens. Instead, the banks wear intricate sharp-edged patterns of tall grasses, reeds, bullrushes and iris, punctuated by brilliant pink spears of purple loosestrife and fluff-explosions of meadowsweet.  The water is deep and very clear and full of a curly weed that I've seen nowhere else on the stream.  I can't see any fish, but I don't doubt that there are some.  The centre of the lake sprouts an ornamental duckhouse and a lot more ducks than would fit into it, some mallards, some more exotic.  As I watch, a lone swan sails stiffly downstream, driving a swathe of ducks before him, including four baby coots (cootlets?) and a moorhen.

In the centre of the opposite bank a massive oak tree spreads its arms wide over the scene.  It's a truly magnificent tree, so large that I have to retreat some distance to get its whole width into the camera frame.  It must be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, tree I have seen along the stream so far.  It makes me realise that I've seen very few such huge trees anywhere in the valley.  I wonder if it was planted when the house was originally built.

A little further on is a similarly venerable and beautiful willow.  A scatter of Large White butterflies are enjoying the purple loosestrife.  As I follow the eastern bank, I'm startled by the sharp squawk of a moorhen, apparently under my feet, so she must be hiding in the reeds right beside the bank.  Overhead, a couple of buzzards are circling and mewing.  The scene is a curious mixture of wild-ish and garden-ish, and it does make a very interesting change from my walking so far.  The sound recorder isn't getting much action, though - apart from the occasional moorhen shout, there's not much noise on this wide, smooth, unobstructed water.

At the far end of the lake, the stream flows out under a little bridge and drops down several feet into a stone-walled channel via a man-made waterfall, so there's meat for the sound recorder in that, and also further on where the stream loses more height in a series of small cascades.  At the end of its tumble the stream is once more its normal self - shallower, fast-flowing, surrounded by trees and busy with debris, like someone reverting to comfortable scruff attire after a poshed-up night out.  And the garden has morphed seamlessly back into woodland and scrub.  Hazels, alders and willows are once more the order of the day, but with an added leaven of sweet chestnuts, which is less usual.  The scrub is attracting butterflies - a pair of red admirals skitter past me, and others which won't sit still long enough to be identified - pale brown and vaguely brindled.  And here, in the middle of this wildish woodland, is an elegant little iron bridge.  It's a bridge to nowhere, since once you've crossed it you're hard up against the barbed-wire boundary fence with the field next door and there's nowhere to go except rather precariously along the opposite bank.  I can't work out why it's here, and feel there must be a story involved.

I'm now following a track through the woodland.  I'm back in the world of the secret stream; even with the iron bridge as a reminder, the world of the lake and the house already seems miles away.   It's that part of the year when the trees are summer-heavy with so much leaf that any view of the outside world is blocked as if by green velvet curtains.  A large brown bird flaps out of the leaf-curtain above me and crashes away into the canopy, only identifiable as a buzzard by its characteristic mew.  I can also hear green woodpecker laughter somewhere in the vicinity, but not, of course when I've got the recorder turned on.  Think maybe I should start a list of The Sounds That Got Away, which would include the earlier moorhen squawk.

On a deep meander in the stream stands another massive tree, all dolled up in ancient ivy.  It's so surrounded by smaller hazels that it's hard to make out what its own leaves are but I'm sure it's an oak.  I wonder, from its size, whether it was planted at the same time as the one by the lake, and whether there were once more of them.   An avenue of oaks?  The ivy growing on it is so ancient that its bark is as ribbed and textured as the bark of the tree itself.  It is currently home to a multitude of spiders who have spun their webs between its stems.

The woodland floor is carpeted with hazelnut shells here.  Having recently been on a course with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust on identifying signs of small mammals (starting to take all this a bit seriously, you see) , I am looking out for any that show signs of being nibbled by voles or mice.  Unfortunately, all the ones I can see have clearly been scrunched by squirrels.  It's like searching a clover patch for the one with four leaves.  But then I find a small mammal-sized hole in the ground, and satisfactorily close to it, a nut with a small circular hole chewed in the top of it.  Not squirrel.  Are there tooth marks round the edge of the hole?  Hard to tell, in this light, but there are no tooth marks on the rest of the nut (I think) so that means it could be a vole (bank or field) or a dormouse.  Probably a vole - judging by the number we saw on this excellent course (good fun - try it yourself!), voles are in the majority.  It's pretty exciting to think I might be sitting on a vole's doorstep.  Doing the equivalent of rootling through its dustbin.  Hmm.

Large white on purple loosestrife

The stream now disappears briefly into a pipe.  The track I've been following crosses it and heads for a gate in the field beyond, but the stream is still on this side of the field boundary, so I stick with it, despite the fact that this looks likely to involve wading through shoulder-high nettles.  Forging into the undergrowth, I disturb a wren, which darts away in front of me, calling names loudly.    Now my attention is attracted by an unexpectedly steep bank on my right, which looks for all the world as though someone - several someones -  have been sliding down it repeatedly on their bottoms.  Reasonably substantial bottoms - I have a mental image of roistering badger cubs...  On the far side is what looks like an old watercourse, perhaps a mill leat, which would explain the bank.  Following it, I find that it curves around and joins up with the stream.  I'm guessing it's probably part of an old mill system.  Only a little further on, barbed wire fences march right down to the stream on both sides and I need to cross one or other of them in order to find out where I am because I suspect that the fences mean I've now reached the end of the Steanbridge estate land.  It's surprising how difficult it is to pinpoint your position in country like this, even with a detailed map.  Some scrambling gets me over the right hand fence and into an area thigh-deep in nettles and brambles, all overlaid with a mattress of goose-grass.  A little more wading through this plant chaos gets me into a position to see ahead, and confirms my suspicion that this is indeed the church field, which is the next bit beyond beyond the Steanbridge land.  I've hit the furthest end of today's walk.  Time to retrace my steps.

I decide to try walking back up the old watercourse to see where it goes.  I think I've found it on the map, where it's shown as a straight, blue line coming away from the Steanbridge lake and parallel with the main stream.  So it is supposed to have water in it, as far as Ordnance Survey are concerned.  The plants growing in the bottom of it suggest this hasn't been true very recently, but its appearance on the map adds credence to the idea that it was part of a man-made water system.  It runs higher up the hill than the main stream and skirts the edge of an area of beech woodland.  Partway along it, dug into the steep and sandy bank in the roots of the beech trees above, is a series of holes, increasing in size and a substantial accumulation of poo.  Not twisty-tailed poo but well, basically just squidgy.  (Too much information?  Blame Chris Packham.)  Cudgelling my brains to remember what we were told on the mammal course, I wonder if this could be a badger latrine.  Which adds fuel to my wistful speculations about badger cubs and the bank...

Walking in the watercourse is tricky because it's deep in branch debris and leaf litter.  After stumbling along it for some distance, I emerge into sunshine and a major nettle patch behind the summer house at the end of the lake.  Which proves that I've been walking along the blue line shown on the map, although from this vantage point it seems to me that the lake and its surroundings are not quite as they are shown on the OS map.  The whole position of the lake relative to the stream seems to have changed.

Anyway, I'm now on the homeward path, back up the lake, past the swan, past a moorhen and her two small chicks, diving just in front of me, past the house and back to the gate by the village pond.  Here, just before I turn the sound recorder off, a buzzard flaps heavily away just ahead of me and gives me something I've been hoping for - a really good, closeup recording of his cry, which to me is one of the defining sounds of the Slad Valley.

Google map of this walk

Walk 10 - Of hazels, holes and giant squirrels: Upper Steanbridge Mill garden

I'm on my way back down Steanbridge Lane, having now got permission to go and look at the bit of stream which, after leaving Down Farm land, runs through the garden of Upper Steanbridge Mill and then under the lane to join up with the Dillay running through the Fairgrieves' garden in the other half of the mill.  And if that sounds confusing, it's because the garden of Upper Steanbridge Mill is actually on the other side of the road from the house itself, and is a narrow triangular tongue of land along the stream, projecting into the Down Farm fields.  This is going to be another short walk in distance (less than 100 yards, I judge) - but in time?  Who knows?

On my way down the lane I meet friends from the village returning from walking their dog.  They describe having seen a fox and two deer at unusually close quarters.  As I discovered after my recent fox cub experience, there's an element of mild competition about discussing wildlife encounters with local friends, of the 'I'll see your two deer and raise you five fox cubs' variety, which is quite entertaining, as well as instructive, since it makes you realise that for people who are out in the valley regularly, such as dog walkers, there is plenty of wildlife to be seen.

A brilliantly sunny morning, but chilly for this time of year, feeling almost autumnal, which is slightly worrying as it's still only early July.

Bosky path

I enter the garden via a gate from Steanbridge Lane.  The first part is relatively garden-like, with mown grass and a vegetable plot and summerhouse, but also plenty of trees and laurel bushes.  A fallen willow has been creatively propped to form a children's climbing frame and there's a platform in a tree which ought to be brilliant for watching birds.  Then the domesticated part of the garden simply stops, and I'm in woodland, following a slender green path winding through the trees.  The word 'bosky' must have been invented for this particular path. Once again there's that sense of being in a secret place - I can't see the outside world at all.  I tell a lie - I catch the odd glimpse of the racehorses grazing in the fields beyond.  But there's no sense that they might see me.  In fact, I feel I am walking unseen by all eyes except the birds chittering disapprovingly in the trees above me.  These seem to be youngish trees, for the most part, tall and slim, many of them ash.  There are occasional piles of old logs which have been left alone to be covered by moss and ivy and other creeping plants and must be appreciated by the local wildlife.

Pause for a Chris Packham moment as I discover a little mound of poo.  All those of a sensitive disposition, look away now.  This does not look like the usual (i.e. dog's) and some of it has a twisty tail coming off it which (I seem to remember from Springwatch) means it could be fox.  Nearby are signs of shallow digging, so someone, fox or otherwise, was busy here recently.  Why do I get excited about finding signs of the other mammals who share this countryside with me?  As my earlier conversation with my dog-walking friends indicates, there are plenty of them about.  Can't imagine a badger nosing thoughtfully at a dropped crisp packet and saying 'Hmm - looks like human; wonder what they were up to last night?'

The woodland gets narrower and narrower until it comes to a stop up against fences on both sides.  I'm now at the apex of the triangle, and the point where I stopped on my last walk, but on the other side of the fence I saw the stream disappearing under.  The sound recorder and I stand here for a while, listening to the sound of the stream squeezing itself past the debris which has accumulated against the fence.  There's an unusual-looking tree in front of me.  I think it's an ordinary ash tree, but it has lost a long, v-shaped swathe of its bark, like a tear in a piece of paper, up to a height of about 10 feet.  Unfortunate for the tree, but it gives it a most striking appearance, revealing watermark-like patterns in the heartwood, and orange tinges along the torn edges of the bark .  I wonder what might have caused this - if this was Africa, I'd have guessed elephant, but we only have squirrels here. I'd have thought it would take a squirrel an enormously long time to achieve the same effect.  Pause to ponder the possibility of an elephant-sized squirrel lurking somewhere in this woodland.  Return of The Beast of Slad?

I've got stereo stream noise in my ears; in the left ear, the sound of the stream forcing its way noisily past the fence and its accidental dam of debris, and in the right ear the rush of another set of miniature rapids 10 or 12 feet further on where it flows round a bend and drops over a lip of stones.  In fact, this bit of stream is noisy along most of its length; its bed is rocky, and every now and then a jutting rock creates a little rapid, or the roots of a tree induce a tiny waterfall.  (I'm piling up the sound recordings now.)  Where branches have fallen across the water, creating mini-dams, you get a brief pool of smooth water above the dam, then rapids below, in some places a series of them, like a necklace of smooth pearls held together with twisty ropes.  This transition from smooth water to the texture of the rapids fascinates me for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.  I try to draw it, to find out, and utterly fail to capture what I'm seeing, only succeeding in fixing it in my mind as something to remember.

I have an odd sense of freedom because this is such a short stretch of stream to cover and I haven't arranged to go any further today, so I don't have to worry about how long it will take me to walk it and can spend time exploring it in as much detail as I like.  Also, being a fenced-off garden, it's safe to dump my bag of art kit by a tree for the moment and scramble about the banks of the stream looking closer at things.

Multi-stemmed hazel trees lean down protectively over the stream, accentuating the sensation of hiddenness. It looks to me as though their roots are what's mainly keeping the banks together.  As well as roots, the banks are clad in ivy, hart's tongue ferns, brambles and nettles, with a scattering of pink and yellow wildflowers like battenberg cake crumbs.  There must be bluebells here in spring; their trefoil-shaped seedheads are visible in some places.  In a muddy area I find vague signs of some small animal having come down to the water to drink, and in a steeper, undercut section of bank, shaded by curtains of trailing ivy, I spot a significant-looking hole, perhaps three or four inches across.  Is it a lived-in hole, I wonder?  If so, by who?  Vaguely remember that water-vole holes can be identified by neatly munched 'lawns' close by, which rules this one out since there isn't a scrap of grass to munch.  It occurs to me that human dwellings can often be identified in the same way, though not always.  Perhaps this hole belongs to the vole equivalent of someone who prefers paving stones to grass.

Further on are other, smaller holes.  The undercutting of the bank suggests to me that at some point the stream had more water in it than now.  There are slots in the mud by the stream - maybe deer.

Remind myself to look up.  Because the trees are close together here, they have all grown up very tall and slim with few branches at the lower level, but the ashes, in particular, make a beautifully patterned canopy of gold and green, sun and shade.

My attention is caught by a lot of buzzard mewing going on in the field, in much the same area where I heard a lot of bird fussing going on at the end of my last walk, so I'm wondering if it was the buzzard causing the general alarm then.  I've noticed that I often see them in the same places on my regular walks, so I assume they have regular roosts and hunting areas.

With time to spare, I've no excuse for not making a more detailed drawing, except that there's so much visual stimulation here that it's hard to decide what to concentrate on.  In the end, I choose a view up the stream towards the top-of-the-triangle fence, because of the intricate patterns made by hazel stems across the stream.  While I work, I vaguely register movement in one of the trees in front of me, track it to a hole in the trunk.  This hole is definitely occupied; a wood pigeon is nipping in and out of it, so presumably has a nest there.

It's always good to spend time sitting still and drawing - I find it fixes my impressions of a place much more vividly than any amount of looking through a camera lens.  Trouble is, I'm not a quick sketcher, and one can capture so many more impressions with a camera.  Wish I'd been trained to draw fast.  Wish I'd been trained to draw properly...

I follow the stream back into the domesticated garden, past a triptych of majestic willows, tall and graceful, past the spears of irises growing with their feet in the water, to the point where it tumbles over a small waterfall and disappears into the mouth of a pipe and under the road.  A few yards from here, in the Fairgrieves' half of the mill garden, is the point where it joins up with the Dillay.  Before leaving the garden, I look back towards the beginning of the woodland path, disappearing into a haze of green, and it strikes me that it could have been the original for the road to fair elfland, the one that (according to the song) runs at right angles to the road to heaven and the road to hell.  Those who follow it disappear for years and return, still young, to a world grown old without them.  This place has something of that other-worldly spirit about it.   Certainly I seem to have spent a lot longer here than I intended.

Walk 9 - Root, branch and green canopy: Down Farm fields

This morning's problem is to find my way back to the point in Detcombe Woods where I finished the previous walk, via a footpath through Trillgate Farm which turns out to be easier to find on the ground than it is on the map.  It runs through the corner of a field full of red and white clover, dusted with a scattering of Meadow Brown butterflies.  Last week we had temperatures in the 30s, but today is slightly chill and altogether better for walking.

Green marquee

I can hear the stream even before I reach it, tumbling over a little waterfall before vanishing behind a curtain of undergrowth.  My aim now is to walk back upstream until I find the big fallen trees which mark the point where I finished the last walk.  As usual, the stream is wrapped in a protective shroud of trees and undergrowth.  An animal path gives me an entry point into a world made even more than usually secret by the steepness of the bank which means that the first branches of the trees growing out of it are on a level with the ground.  It's like being in a big green marquee, formed not only by the usual multi-stemmed hazels but also one or two really large trees, including beeches, which, so far, have been rare beside the stream.  The sun breaking through the clouds at this point carpets the ground with golden dapples. This closed-in area has the appeal of a child's den, and I'm tempted to stay a while, but I really need to get on because I'm not sure how much further up the stream I need to go to get to where I ought to be starting.

The boundary on the stream between the shooting consortium's land  and the land belonging to Down Farm, which I'll be walking through this morning. is easy to spot from this direction.  It's marked by another little waterfall, caused by the build-up of debris against the wire fence which runs right across the stream.  The stream above the fall is muddy and below the fall is quite clear and sandy as if the impromptu dam is acting as a filter.   This isn't where I left off, though, so I forge on through the trees, startling a deer which had been grazing on the edge of the meadow beyond.  It seems a shame that my first sight of wildlife on these walks is invariably the movement as the animal turns to flee, and I resolve to walk more quietly.  That's not so easy; I have the impression that humans don't take much interest in the stream along here - the banks are steep and littered with twigs and the stream itself is bridged by so many fallen branches so that just walking alongside it is a tricky exercise, never mind walking quietly.  I'm eventually forced out into the meadow beyond.  There are compensations - sunshine on dew-soaked grass picking out many spiders' webs in shining droplets; the occasional spotted orchid; a vociferous marsh tit bouncing about in the low-stooping branches of an ash tree.  I like marsh tits, with their neat black heads and dapper buff waistcoats, and the way they whisk to and fro with verve and confidence, like James Bond birds on a mission.

Spider's webs in the meadow

At the corner of the meadow I recognise the point where I climbed the hill away from the stream last time and after climbing through the fence to rejoin the stream, lapped about by the scent of wild garlic, I find the big fallen trees and know I've rejoined my previous path.

Heading downstream again, I decide to try and stick with the stream this time rather than climbing back up to the meadow.  The green marquee effect continues.  Along the banks, areas of dead leaf-litter with no sign of greenery alternate with areas thick with very-much-alive nettles and other colonising plants.  I guess it must be the amount of light penetration through the canopy that makes the difference.  Many of the trees are clad in a fretwork of ivy.  The stream itself is noisy with many little rivulets and mini-falls caused by the amount of fallen wood which has landed in it.  In spite of which, the water seems very clear.  I spend a little time looking hopefully for anything that might be living in it, but can't spot anything.  A fat bumble-bee drones around me and I wonder what he might be looking for, because so far I haven't seen a single flower down here under the shroud of trees, but perhaps he's just come down to drink.

My progress down the stream is slowed by fences which regularly veer right down to the water and force me to cross and re-cross it.  The fences are presumably to control the access that stock has to the water and walking along this part of the stream is obviously not normally on anyone's agenda.  This a problem I've encountered before with trying to walk through the valley on a route which doesn't correspond with human pathways or ways of thought.  Arriving at a particularly serious fence which coincides with a small, steep-sided tributary coming in from the hillside, I debate whether to cross the stream again or attempt to cross the fence.  Someone else has gone ahead of me; there are scrabble-marks in the soil of the steep bank below the fence and a fairly significant dint in the bottom of the wire where something largish has pushed its way underneath.  Badger, maybe?  No helpful hairs on the fence to tell me.  I consider trying to do the same, but decide that as I haven't got a thick fur coat and claws it might not be such a good idea.  Instead I wade through deepish mud, cross the stream with the aid of a discarded tyre and move on to a point where a semi-collapsed alder tree has helpfully pushed the fence down to a point where I can step over it.

Self-Heal (not vetch!)

There seem to be far fewer birds here than there were in Detcombe Woods - perhaps because it's basically an area of fields and the only trees are the ones along the stream.  It's very quiet, apart from my galumphing, twig-breaking steps, and very still, apart from the small, subtle movemenf of the stream.  After a while the green gloom gets a little oppressive and I take a detour into the adjoining meadow to recover the sun, marvelling afresh at how its corridor of trees effectively isolates the world of the stream from the valley around it.  It's a nice meadow, with buttercups and red clover and something small and purple which I feel should probably have the word 'vetch' attached to it.  (My knowledge of wildflowers, beyond the obvious ones, is incredibly hazy.  Like my mother before me, I go out on walks, spot flowers, wish I'd brought a spotter's guide with me, mean to look them up when I get home, and hardly ever do.)  Lots more spiders' webs amongst the grass, too.

I've now arrived back at the point where the path from Trillgate joins the stream.  Continuing on the eastern side of the stream through Down Farm land, I presently come across an old brick housing half-drowned in nettles and containing what looks to me like a non-operational ram.  The sound recorder and I can hear water trickling down inside the housing but there's no movement in the mechanism.  A brass plate attached to its corroded dome declares it to be a Blake's Hydram.  I wonder how old it is and whether it would have provided water for Trillgate Farmhouse, which is just visible from here, prettily framed by the trees.

Old ram mechanism

I'm now walking down a narrow field.  The stream here is a couple of feet wide, shallow and boggy-edged, and its cloak of trees has become ragged, with gaps.  In fact, the whole area is much more open than it was higher up.  As a result, the likes of thistles, nettles and bracken have managed to get their feet under the table, so to speak, and the stream is a good deal more overgrown.  It's also narrower and deeper, maybe half the width it was before.

Here's a spot where two alder trees growing opposite each other have forced it into a narrow squinch (is that a word?  If not, it ought to be) between their roots and created a rapid and a waterfall.  Further along is a major gap in the trees and the stream runs over what look like stone blocks.  It's obviously been a crossing point for animals for some time - the banks are well worn down - and I wonder if there used to be a bridge, or a ford, which would explain the stone in the stream bed and the lack of trees.

Further along, another gap in the trees reveals where the racehorses are today, viz, in this field, but on the far side of the stream.  Discretion being the better part of valour, I decide to walk further up the field in the hope that they won't notice me.  Not really out of non-valour (honest, guv) but because being surrounded by racehorses, or doing a fast dash to the edge of the field to avoid being surrounded, isn't going to help my powers of artistic observation.

The upside of being forced further up the slope to avoid the horses is that I get a broader perspective on the stream in its surroundings.  The fields on either side of the stream slope more gently from here on as the valley widens and I can see right up to the woods on the other side of the valley.  I've stepped out of the secret world of the stream and back into the human world, where the network of fences makes more sense and human sounds of chainsawing and general activity are carried up to me on the breeze.  Ahead of me, a rabbit's white scut vanishes into the hedge.  (Once again, I'm seeing the wildlife back end foremost.)  I can also hear the horses huffing and puffing on the far side of the stream; I suspect they know I'm here, but apparently I haven't done anything to arouse their curiosity.

The rest of the valley may be opening out but the stream is still running in a steep little gully and hanging onto its cloak of trees, only one tree deep on each side now, but still an effective screen so that unless I'm actually inside the line of trees I can't see what's happening by the stream at all.  When I walk back into the trees to check, I don't seem to have missed much.  The stream continues in its v-shaped gully, full of fallen wood, devoid of any sign of fish or other inhabitants.  To my eyes, anyway.  Something is happening in the trees at the end of the field, though - I can hear a lot of bird fussing noises, probably not caused by my approach because I'm still too far away, so possibly someone is trying to steal someone else's eggs or impinging on someone's territory.  We humans like to think of 'nature' as calm and peaceful but in the course of my walks there always seems to be something to remind me that for the non-human participants it frequently isn't.

When I reach the end of the field, and the end of today's section of stream, because here it stream vanishes into another chunk of woodland and is crossed by a fence marking the boundary between Down Farm land and the garden of the other half of Steanbridge Mill.   - which I have yet to get permission to enter. Before climbing over the gate back into Steanbridge Lane, I take a final sound recording.  Debris has gathered against the fence, where the stream goes under it, creating another dam-and-waterfall effect as the water forces its way round.

I think this is what I'll take away from this walk for future consideration and/or inspiration - the way in which trees shape the stream and give it voice.  Tree roots influence its route and its depth, forcing little meanders and narrow rapids; tree debris creates mini-dams, waterfalls and small pools; the thickness of the tree canopy dictates what can grow along its banks and (I guess) what can live in the water.  It strikes me that without all the small obstacles created by the trees, the stream would run smoothly and almost silently and there would be nothing in the way of noise for me to record.  As if to make the point, as I walk back through the section of woodland owned by the Fairgreaves', I'm struck afresh by how open and uncluttered their section of the stream seems compared with what I've seen elsewhere.  I think the Fairgreaves do regularly clear it and remove fallen wood, and I'm guessing that's why the stream is a more even width and seems stronger-flowing. Is that also why lampreys flourish here?

I'd assumed a tedious walk along the lanes and the main road to get back to the Bulls Cross layby, where I left the car, but I'd forgotten about King Charles Lane, an old sunken track which runs from close by the lake straight uphill to the main road.  I'm told it forms part of the route that the armies of Charles I took from Bisley to Painswick during the Civil War - hence the name. Today it's a demure tunnel of green, its steep banks overflowing full of ivy and wild garlic and mother-in-law's tongue and all manner of other things, the surface of the track faced with white stone.  Too pretty to have much military cred now, but a much more satisfactory way to finish my walk.

Google map of this walk