Walk 29: Duckling Dramas - Steanbridge Estate (revisit)

After the rain and chill of the beginning of this month, this is more like May should be - a bright, sunny, soon-to-be-hot morning.  I'm revisiting the section of stream that runs through the grounds of Steanbridge House, first visited in July last year.

What's noticeable this morning is how after the earlier rain, everything has grown like topsy.  Everything below tree height is already looking lush, and summery, through some of the trees are not yet completely in leaf.  I'm here to see how different this stretch of brook looks in spring, rather than summer, but in fact I suspect it's going to look remarkably similar, because of this recent spurt of (under)growth.

What is different is the size of the ducklings on the pond.  Last year it was all teenage ducklings, beginning to assume duck-like shapes, this year we've got a mix of older ones and recent balls of fluff.  At first sight of me, the worldly-wise teenagers come dashing across the water, demanding to be fed.

Where the stream goes into Steanbridge House land, there is a bit of an obstruction and a bottleneck, creating a small, fast-flowing rill or race, heading in the direction of Steanbridge House.  As I approach, two of the ball-of-fluff variety of ducklings are swept over it.  Reaching the quieter water below, they immediately start paddling like crazy to get back to the pond, where their mum is calling frantically, but I wonder if they are going to make it, because they are very small and the race is very fast. They struggle in the rush of water, peeting desperately, and I consider trying to help, but can't reach them because of the undergrowth.  Eventually they make it, but now they have to get up the downflow of the stream on the other side of the bridge that carries the footpath, which is even harder work for small paddlers.  Sensibly, they head along the side of the stream where the current is less, and after a few anxious moments I catch a glimpse of them on the other side, heading back to mum (I hope).  So much drama, so early in the morning.

Relieved, I cross the stile and follow the stream into Steanbridge House land.  The grass in the field is knee-high, and on the banks of the stream the nettles are king, but there are also lots of buttercups, red campion, and Large White butterflies. I still feel this could be a place for watervoles, with its steeper banks and deeper, more managed stream. A buzzard is circling overhead, just where I saw one last year, so this is presumably a good buzzard hunting-ground.  No kingfishers today, though.  The stream looks cloudy, or perhaps it's only the angle of the sun that makes it hard to see into the water; something comes up to the surface with a big 'gloop', but I can't see what it is.

The field I'm walking along the edge has large contrasting patches of ordinary green grass and a rough, brown, reedy variety, giving it a piebald look, leavened with a sprinkling of buttercups.  The lake is busy with ducks of various kinds, though not, I think, as many as I saw last time, and there are ducks pottering around on the lawn in front of the house.  A coot is paddling purposefully across the lake towards me with a bit of reed in her beak, disappearing into the reeds by the edge, from which little quacky noises emerge, suggesting a nest. Swallows are swooping low across the water - they've been back for a couple of weeks now.

I see that the meadow on the other side of the house has already been cut, ready for the village Jubilee and Olympics event in 10 days' time.  Further along the lake, I'm hailed by Nigel, one of the ground workers on the estate, who claims to have thought I must be a poacher because I'm wearing a poacher's jacket, though I reckon poachers don't usually sport cameras and sketchbooks and wander in during daylight hours, do they?  Nigel says you'd be surprised, and they do get poachers regularly, though mainly teenage lads.  I straighten him out about my reason for being here and he waxes informative.  He remembers seeing watervoles on the lake when he was younger, though not recently, and kingfishers last year, but it's a bit early for them just now.  He comments on how fast the grass has grown this year, with all the wet - some of our local farmers are making hay already, which is unknown before June.  Apparently the meadow was cut yesterday, and afterwards Nigel saw the buzzards come swooping down, taking advantage of the short grass to catch field voles and other small mammals.  Now, there are ducks in the field, relaxing in the cut grass.  According to Nigel, there's a roe deer and her fawn who come down into the field, and he also tells me to look out for a massive rainbow trout which hangs out in the bit of stream below the outflow of the lake.

Further down the lake, the lack of ducks at the top is explained; most of the mallards are down this end today.  The glorious lone oak tree on the far bank is wearing a very fine dusting of spring green, last of the nearby trees to come into leaf.  Just here is a break in the reeds fringing the lake, a flattened section of grass with a sprinkling of white feathers, which must be where the lone swan (and he really is the only one, according to Nigel) hangs out.

Down by the outflow of the lake a few yellow iris are in bloom.  There's no sign of the monster trout, but there are a few bubbles rising by the edge, so maybe he's lurking under the concrete lip.

I leave the smart, esate-ish part and follow the stream down into the woodlands below, where the undergrowth closes in again and the air is full of dancing insects and an Orange Tip butterfly.  What is it that Orange Tip butterflies actually do?  This one is flitting around but never settling on any flowers, so either it's very picky or it's not looking for nectar.  Aha - here's another OTB, so maybe... I wait to see if they're going to hook up, but no.

By the 'bridge to nowhere' (the iron hump bridge that crosses the stream only to run almost immediately into a fence) I pause to look and listen.  I can hear a buzzard calling overhead, and as I step onto the bridge, a large bird takes off from the top of a nearby tree.  Which gives me goose-bumps because exactly the same thing happened last time I was here, and very close to this spot.  So is this the same buzzard pair, returning to a regular nest site?  I  can also hear a chiffchaff, and I now know what they look like, having finally managed to spot one the other day at Furners Farm, except that what they look like is not very much, to be honest.  If ever there was an LBJ, the chiffchaff is it.  Well, Little Buff Job, maybe.  Are those bluetits alarming in the tree next door?  I play the bluetit alarm call from my phone bird app, which causes the real ones to alarm even more vigorously.  QED, I think, though maybe not very kind of me.  I take myself off in case they have a nest they want to get to.

Whose path is this, running in the narrow strip between fence and stream - badger?  Too overgrown here for deer, I think.  Why walk on this side at all, rather than on the nice open path on the other side?  Perhaps 'open' is the problem, for an animal.  The sound of a helicopter overhead reminds me that it's Olympic Torch Day in Stroud.  It strikes me how deeply irrelevant the Torch is to, for example, the bumble bee prospecting in the wild garlic in front of me, or indeed every other species on the planet except us.

Down here, amongst clumps of hazels, the stream meanders seriously, real snake-bends, and is very much clearer, though I can't spot anything in it.  Hovering over it, however, is one of those flies which looks like a small brown teddy bear with a very long proboscis, sword-like, and swept-back wings.  It looks remarkably dangerous but is (I think) quite harmless. I give it a wide berth in case I'm wrong about that.

Towards the end of the Steanbridge land, the track emerges from the woodlands, which retreat up onto the steep bank on my right, and the nettles close in, making access to the stream difficult.  By following an animal path (what would I do without them?) I come to the old leat, if that's what it is, the steep-banked channel that runs parallel with the stream and rejoins it close to the boundary.  This time, the banks of the leat are deep in wild garlic.  Beyond it is a chunk of wall and a trio of trees which, from my recent revisit to church field, I now recognise as being possibly part of the old silk mill.  And that would make sense, if this was all part of the mill water structure.

For interest, I follow another animal path away from the wall and into the woodland on the bank, above the leat.  It becomes quite a highway, and there are some different sorts of tres up here, including beech, a few evergreens and lots of holly, all of which are rare around the stream.  There are some very beautiful and large beech trees, striking in their spring green, so I wonder if this is another scrap of ancient woodland. Three deer spring up from the bank at my approach, and skitter away, pausing to look back at me as if they can't quite believe their eyes.

Lone oak tree

The woodland path leads me back in sight of the lake and I drop down to it again in order to spend some time trying to draw the big oak.  An excercise in simplifying complexity, which isn't my strong point.  Why, I wonder, when there are all these ducks on the lake, are there no ducklings?

A narrow escape for ducklings

The answer to this arrives rather dramatically.  As I pass the house, I hear Nigel calling; he's waving at something in the stream just above the lake, which turns out to be a duck with five or six very small ducklings.  As we admire them, the lone swan comes rushing up the lake in full battle order.  "Oh no!" cries Nigel, "It'll have them all" and grabbing a handy hoe, attempts to fend off the swan.  The swan sheers off, the ducklings scatter in all directions and the mother duck flaps up onto the bank.  Now she can't see her brood, or, apparently, hear their frantic peetings, perhaps because of the sound of the little waterfall. Meanwhile the swan returns to the attack and Nigel fends it off with the hoe.  Mother duck is now moving up the lake, heading for the swan, and Nigel worries that she's lost the ducklings.  But what she's actually doing is bravely trying to lead the swan away, succeeding in decoying it up to the further end.  She then flies back, but arrives too far away, well up the stream above the waterfall.  The ducklings are still below the fall, paddling to and fro and yelling for mum.  Nigel tries to shoo her back in the right direction, but the swan is coming back fast and he has to rush back to fend it off again.  The situation looks desperate, but at last mother duck spots the ducklings and succeeds in getting them up onto the bank.  But then she appears to be leading them back towards the lake...  The swan, it seems, is very territorial and goes for anything smallish on the lake.  So that's why there are no ducklings.  Who'd have thought this peaceful lake was actually an oppressed land under the heel (or web) of a violent despot?

Can't bear to see any further drama, so in cowardly fashion I take myself off home.

Walk 28: Cow Parsley Cappucino - Steanbridge Mill and the duck pond (revisit)

We're well into the luxurious heart of spring, now, and I'm paying a second visit to the short section of stream which runs from the garden of Steanbridge Mill to the beginning of the Steanbridge Estate, via the duck pond. I can't really claim that this is anything but an indulgence, this walk, since I'm not doing it at a very different time of year from last time, but this little stretch was so lovely in late spring last year that I can't resist going to see it again.

I'm about a month earlier than last time, and the ground either side of the narrow path is almost waist-high in variations on the theme of cow parsley/wild carrot/Queen Anne's Lace - take your pick - plus nettles, goose-grass, wild garlic, ragged robin and all manner of other spring rampage.  If you crouch down on the path to take low-level photos, it feels like being in a miniature rain forest.  The variety of shapes, colours and patterns holds me spellbound for a while.  I'm particularly taken with a nettle-like plant with intricate yellow markings on the lower lip of its flower, which (with a bit of imagination) reminds me of a maharajah sitting under a ceremonial parasol. (Later I discover that this rejoices in the ethereal name of Yellow Archangel and is nothing to do with nettles.) The meandering line of the path stands out more clearly, cutting through the green shagginess around it.  Strong shadows tiger-stripe the ground and the trees stand up straight and dark like spoons in green coffee.  Must be a cappucino - there's a froth of cow parsley on top.

I remind myself to look up as well as down.  Above me, the canopy is a lacy, fresh spring green, that green which is as close to yellow as it can be and still be green, with the slender dark lines of branches scribbled against it.  And I can look out as well in; through the windows in the stream's cloak of trees, I can see white cattle grazing in the fields.  White cattle against spring-green grass, with a frame of dark branches, causes the camera to throw up its hands in horror and complain of too much contrast.

The stream itself is barely visible in the midst of all this richness, and it looks on the low side to me.  There is a good sized fringe of mud along most of its edge, attractively marked in some places with the prints of duck webs, like the scalloping on a pie crust.  I look for lampreys and find nothing but a determined-looking beetle dog-paddling in the shallows.  The duck pond, however, is satisfactorily full of ducks, including a party of newish ducklings.  While I'm wandering around its upper end, looking at the shapes and variety of the plantlife, one of them comes determinedly staggering up to me and almost runs over my foot, which appears to be in the way of somewhere he wants very much to go.

Maybe a murderer?

By the bridge that carries the footpath, someone has been throwing down grain, and mother duck and the rest of the brood are industriously hoovering it up, which makes them more amenable than usual to being photographed.  More ducklings are surging across the water to join them.  Just when the scene couldn't get more cuddly, I notice that one of the ducklings in the water is upside down and, on closer examination, clearly dead.  Not a heron or pike, presumably, since the body is still here.  Another duck?  A duckling is a very fragile thing to be, and according to nature, infinitely expendable.  Maybe it was the male mallard (I believe they are famously short-tempered) who is paddling around and flashing his irridescent green neck at me.

The ducklings aren't the only youngsters on the pond.  A trio of young moorhens, much shyer and less showy, are sticking close to their mother and hugging the island in the middle.

On my way back along the path, my eye is caught by an intriguing beetle, the same size and shape as a traditional ladybird, but bright orange with white spots.  Is this yet another example of the exciting but sinister harlequin ladybird, or something else entirely? Oh, the things I don't know would fill a library.  (And presumably do.)  There is so much to see here, even if you aren't actively looking for it, and so much to know.  Far more than anyone can feasibly discover in one lifetime.  You can't tell me that's right.

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

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

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

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

Garlic flowers

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

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

Blackthorn blossom

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

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

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

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

New leaves by stream

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

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

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

Little Mill Court

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

From Slad Mill

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

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

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

The weir and the wagtail

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

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

The last bridge

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

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

Walk 25: An unexpected walk - Rycote land

The factory by the stream

It's a warm, verging on hot afternoon, near the end of March.  The whole week has been warm, with blue skies and sunshine every day.  A drift of daffodils beside me, and the leafless trees, say spring, but the temperature says summer.  I'm standing in the car park of Rycote Microphone Windshields Ltd, in Libby's Drive, Stroud.

You'll recall that the Slad Brook was last seen disappearing into the back of this industrial estate.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get permission to access the stream from the northern section of the industrial estate, but the owners of Rycote have been more than kind in allowing me to follow it through the land beside their factory.  And after a brief session with an attentive salesgirl, I'm trying out one of their microphone windshields - there always seems to be a breeze in this valley and so far it's featured quite prominently in lots of my sound recordings.  The shield makes my little mic look as if it has aspirations to be a teddy bear and it no longer fits in my pocket, so I hope the extra furriness is worth it.

For most of its journey through the industrial estate, the stream is underground, so I don't think I've missed much.  From the corner of this car park, through thick bushes, I can just see it emerging from the culvert under a stone arch.  It's now in a very much deeper, partially-stone-faced channel, and what with the depth and the undergrowth it's impossible to get closer to it here.

I'm now very much in the outskirts of Stroud - on the hem of Uplands, to be more precise - and there's a certain amount of man-made noise around.  However, this is a surprisingly peaceful site, and I can still hear the stream and the bass humming of a large, fat bumblebee moseying about in the blackthorn blossom.  All the excitement of microphone-windshield-making goes on inside the long, low building in front of me, but none of it seems to spill into the outside.  The stream runs along the edge of the site, through the car park, past the factory, and alongside a largish area of grass at the back of the building, before disappearing into a housing estate.  By the look of things, no-one disturbs it much.  It's flowing in a channel some 6-8 ft below the car park level with steep banks on either side, lined with trees as usual, and I can find no easy way to get down to it until I get to the grassy bit at the back of the building.  Here, the brook is flanked by two huge willows, their furry buds just bursting, and there's a flattish area beside it.  With some caution, I clamber down the bank.  It's not difficult, if you don't count putting my hand on a baby nettle by accident (which I do).  Once down at stream level, I feel as if I'm in hiding.  This is a spot which just asks to be sat in, looked at and listened to, and here is a fallen tree across the stream, perfectly positioned for sitting.

So what can I see and hear?  There's now a section of field at the top of the bank on the opposite side of the stream, barely visible through trees and thickets of bramble.  A narrow animal path winds through it close to where I'm sitting, and leads to - a traffic cone.  A splash of incongruous colour amongst the brown undergrowth, and another intimation that we're not far from town here.  A surprising amount of birdsong spills out of the trees, much of it from a chiff-chaff.  I think of the chiff-chaff as a Bird of Mystery.  It was one of the first birdsongs I learned to be sure of, and I hear them all over the place in this valley, but never see them.  There are also stereo wood pigeons, one on each side of me, bass backing for the staccato chiff-chaff.  It's just in the last 2-3 weeks that I've begun to notice birds other than robins starting sing - robins seem to keep going all winter, but you know it's spring when everyone else starts to join in.

There are bits of broken stone lying in the stream here, and a couple of big slabs on the bank.  Not enough to be anything identifiable and too moss-covered to guess at their age, but there was another mill here, so they might be its very last remains, who knows?  The stream is not very efficiently fenced with barbed wire on this side and very efficiently fenced with brambles on the other side.  Barbed wire intrigues me for the intricacy of its shapes.  It's forbiddingly aggressive, but can be oddly beautiful, in amongst greenery like this.  A series of largish willow trees marches along the bank, each one wears a miltary-style metal dog-tag with a number, which is curious.  I wonder who keeps track of them, and why.  Is this some sort of Health and Safety thing?  Is each of these trees on file somewhere, its condition the subject of regular check-ups?

The stream looks a bit low, to me, showing an underskirt of mud below the greenery on the other bank.  The bank on this side deep in old leaf litter, clumps of reed-like plants which make a distinctive rustling sound, and patches of what seem likely to turn into yellow irises.  Oh, and bits of last year's fireworks.  I climb rather intrepidly round and over a big area of fallen wood and undergrowth to reach the next section of the bank.  Here, something has been digging.  Could be badgers, even though we're close to Stroud - I've heard stories of badgers wandering into people's houses along this outlying edge of the town.  And it seems likely that the stream bank here would be used as an animal highway, being so well-hidden and generally ignored.  In fact, I imagine this bit of stream having quite a life of its own.

The stream itself sparkles with rippled sunlight, fretted with long, pin-sharp tree-shadows.  I walk on to the furthest part of the bank I can actually reach.  Beyond here, the bank becomes too steep to navigate, turns a bit of a corner, and then disappears into the housing estate.  Through the leafless trees, I can see the silhouettes of houses, like distant mountains.  It's all surprisingly wild and lovely, a patch of rampant nature right in the arms of the town.  I make an extremely unsuccessful attempt to capture the scene in watercolour, dropping half of my new watercolour pans into the brook.  Decide watercolour is not my medium.

Bullfinches are whistling shyly from the trees above me.  I spot a parson-in-the-pulpit, aka lords-and-ladies or wild arum, a plant which fascinates me for its shape and slightly unsavoury reputation (traps flies overnight for the flower equivalent of kinky sex-games).  Scrambling back up the bank, I follow a little animal path along the back of the grass patch as far as Rycote's boundary fence, where the path proves it really is an animal path by disappearing under the fence, where I can't follow.  So there's nothing to do but retrace my steps to the car park, where a grey squirrel delights me by posing on the bank of the stream, rearing up on his hind legs to gape at me as if the human shape is altogether new to him.

This has been a most unexpected walk.  I'd assumed, from what I could see from outside the site, that I'd be making a quick stroll along concrete paths to peer at the stream from above.  I didn't anticipate finding yet another beautiful bit of secret stream.

Google map of this walk

Walk 24: The Tree Building-Site - Dillay Farm South (revisit)

This is my fourth 'second pass' walk and this time I'm revisiting the lower part of Dillay Farm land, from below the farmhouse to the boundary with the Snows Farm nature reserve.  The last time I was here was in early summer, when everything was in leaf.  So now I want to see it without either leaves or undergrowth. This is a day of sunshine and cloud; there are few new leaves to be seen elsewhere in the valley, but not here.

Last year, this part of the valley was unusually dry, and I could walk right up to the stream below the farmhouse.  When I was here six weeks ago to revisit the upper part of the valley, the stream here was fast held in frost, and a large area around it was sparkling with frozen bog.  Now the stream is running free and the bog is quite definitely a properly boggy bog.  Good thing I brought the wellies.

Pursued by a cacophany of barking dogs and squawking geese at the farm, I walk down through the field, cross the stream and follow it south to where it enters the wood just below a track. The steep fields on my left hand are barred with long shadows from the woods above, where a patch of olive-green fir trees float amidst a sea of buff-coloured leafless beeches.  Down by the track, it's now possible to see exactly what happens to the water at this point, which I couldn't figure out last year.  The main part of the brook disappears into a pipe under the track, but a small tributary comes in from the right and another from the left at almost the same point, from the side valley past Rose's cottage, so that what we have here is a stream crossroads. The ground between the streams is covered in mini-plants, a pattern of many small new leaves, including the promise of nettles, but at present they are no more than a pretty pattern on the ground.

By walking a little way up the track going westward, I find some beehives, which I don't remember seeing last year, and surprise a small vole or mouse which goes leaping for cover underneath them.  Good move.  I'm not going closer to look for him there.  Just below the beehives another small stream seeps out of the hill and heads for the main brook.  The ground is boggy here, too, and a strong medicinal smell arises from the plants my wellies are crushing.

Lower down, yet another small stream seeps out of the ground close to the track and runs parallel with the main brook, turning an area of ground into an almost-island.  The ground here is covered in baby nettles and was pretty much impassable when I was here last, which may be why I missed this extra stream, or perhaps it wasn't even here in the drier weather.

Walking by the water rather than on the footpath is looking like a possibility at the moment, so I decide to continue at this level, on the western side of the smaller stream.  It all looks quite different from before, with very little undergrowth.  This area belongs to the trees just now and the stream winds around and through them.  I'm guessing the ground is honeycombed with  springs because there seems to be a lot of bog and bog plants, especially whatever makes the medicinal smell.  The further I go, the swampier it gets, and the deeper and steeper the channel in which the stream flows.

This time of year is definitely about shape rather than colour; what colours I can see are shades of green, buff and brown, with the odd patch of brighter, more saturated colour on the exposed innards of broken tree stumps, a deep coppery colour, or patches of bright green new moss.  There are an awful lot of tree stumps, in amazing shapes and colours.  Last May, I saw this as a tree cathedral,  but this time it's more like a building site.  An image which is assisted by some serious mechanical noises from the farm behind me.

It really is tree-stump-ville here; I count one stump for every three trees, all naturally fallen-over rather than cut down, as far as I can see.  Some of the smaller ones are like bits of broken eggshell, completely hollowed out, and ringed about with teeth of shattered bark. Seeing four particularly bits of tortured-looking wood in a row reminds me of a petrified forest I saw last year on the island of Lesbos.  I pause to try and draw some of their details.  The farm noise has now stopped and its so quiet, even the birdsong seeming muted, just the small trickly sounds of the stream finding its way around fallen wood and tree roots.  The sound of the stream is the sound of obstacles - I suppose that if there weren't any, it would make no sound at all.  It's quiet enough for me to catch the distant sound of a tawny owl hoot - you do hear them sometimes in the daytime, and the last time I heard one was also in this part of the valley.

Following up the remains of an old track, partly blocked by a fallen tree, I discover a lone clump of primroses, and a tiny patch of the first bluebells of the year, just five of them.  There's an enormous amount of fallen wood.  The stream itself is so crossed and re-crossed by branches that it seems to be wearing a wooden hairnet.  Does it matter if the stream is not looked after, if no-one clears it of dead wood and fallen trees?  Humans have a great urge to manage things; a friend of mine in the village who was formerly a head forester for the National Trust subscribes firmly to the 'let it be' school of forestry.  While I'm pondering this, a buzzard takes off from a tree close by, sailing by on absolutely silent wings.

I find what looks like the shoulderbone of a pheasant, well picked clean.  And there was me thinking I might get along the Dillay this time without finding anything dead.

Another smaller stream runs off the hill here, and abruptly the main stream arrives at a very definite fence, running right across the water.  Is this the boundary with the nature reserve?  The only way to check is to walk up the fence to the footpath above.  I attempt to cross stream by standing on what looks like a solid log, which promptly tips up at the same moment that the branch I'm holding onto breaks, causing a sudden scramble through mud and water.  The fence goes round a few corners in its path up the hillside, and in one of them there is a curious little door, not more than a foot high, at the base of the fence.  For rabbits? Small dogs?  Hedgehogs?  A squawk in the undergrowth gives me a clue; it's for pheasants, of course.

The fence comes joins the footpath some distance into the nature reserve.  I remember thinking before that it's surprisingly difficult to work out where you are in this bit of the valley.  At least I now know I've pretty thoroughly explored this part of the brook all the way from the farm to the nature reserve.

Walking back along the footpath I notice a lot of deer slots - they obviously find it easier to follow the paths sometimes too.  There is a serried row of willows, all leaning over the path at the same angle, like a sideways arch, their structural shapes particularly noticeable at moment without their leaves.  There is a chunk of old farm machinery pushed up against their trunks, and now the same colour as their bark, so almost disappearing amongt them.  Ahead of me, I hear the daytime owl again, and an explosion of jackdaws.

Rose's cottage looks ever more broken-down and sad; a patch of daffodils are blooming in what must once have been the front garden, now just a chaos of weeds and rubble.  And now I'm crossing the fields again below the farm, and being greeted by another volley of excited barking from above.  I notice for the first time how each staccato sound is answered by an echo from higher up the valley.  I must be standing in exactly the right place to hear it.  This walk seems to have been all about sounds and shapes.

Walk 23: Fungi and Small Mammals - Detcombe Woods (revisit)

This is my second walk in Detcombe woods and my last opportunity for a while, because the requirements of pheasant rearing will put the woods out of bounds to casual visitors in the next few weeks.  Last time I was looking for the first appearance of the Slad Brook and following its course through the woods, but this time the walk is about the woods themselves as well as the stream.  It's a cold, sunny morning with a little frost.

Once again, as I walk down the steep track into the valley, I have the sense of stepping away from the 'real' world.  The noises of the road and the scrapyard above fall swiftly into the distance, to be replaced by birdsong. The valley is very steep here, and though it's already 9.30 am, the sun is only just reaching the eastern rim, lighting up the very tops of the trees and throwing long, high-contrast shadows.  Three deer, a stag and two hinds, erupt from somewhere nearby and dash across the path in front of me.  Further along the path, a tiny rustle in the leaf litter catches my attention just in time to see a vole, or possibly a woodmouse, zipping into a hole.  Funny how even my untutored ear can pick out unexpected animal noise from the general background noise.

The track follows the lowest point of the valley and trees sweep up the hill on either side of me.  To see the wood from a different angle, I veer off the main track following an animal path.  Most of the trees at this end of the wood are young, slim and straight, as if all planted at the same time, and not so long ago.  Mostly beech, some sycamore, and here in particular, a bunch of trees with small cones and lacy branches, of an evergreen sort of build but obviously not evergreen, since they haven't currently got any leaves.  My tree-knowledge, shaky at the best of times, throws up the word 'larch' as a possibility.

I love this time of year, when you can focus on single plants and hear the voices of individual leaves on trees, before it all melds into one huge summer shout of mixed greenery.  Mind you, a lot of the green around here is currently emerald-green moss, growing on trees, stumps and ground indiscriminately like green fur.  And talking of voices, I can hear a woodpecker in the background, and a squirrel scolding.

The path leads me to another track, the highest of a trio of tracks which radiate out from the sharp end of the valley.  Last time, I followed the middle one, which stays at the lowest point, tracking the stream.  This new one winds through the woods on the western side, keeping to a higher contour, and the topography of the valley is very visible from up here as a sharp v-shape cloaked in trees.

I'm glad I began thinking of the valley in terms of sounds as well as sights.  Just now, for instance, I'm aware of several things going on around me, none of which I can see.  Small scurrying-away sounds in the underbrush suggest small mammals, or maybe blackbirds.  A squirrel is 'chucking' quietly but persistently in a tree nearby.  A jay shrieks in the distance.  I can also hear bluetits, great tits and wood pigeons.  So I know that all these creatures are somewhere around, even though I can't actually see them.

Here are several clumps of curious green, bell-like flowers.  Stinking hellebores, I think - I know this, because someone from the Wildlife Trust told me they were one of the Iconic Plants of the Slad Valley so I went and looked them up. This is the first time I've actually seen them on the ground.  They look slightly strange, in their big, pale-green clumps, the flowers heavy-headed and extravagant, like something tropical that escaped,or a sci-fi plant with malign intentions.

The track climbs almost to the level of the road, and I can hear cars, but not see them, because the screen of trees remains intact.  The hillside is so steep here that I wouldn't want to go off the path without crampons, but with so little undergrowth that I can see all the way down to the middle path where the brook runs.  A pair of pale brown flies are scrapping - or possibly mating (don't know fly body language) - on the path in front of me, rolling over and over, with lots of buzzing.

The beeches hug the upper part of the valley; downhill of me is another patch of evergreens and larches (if that's what they are).  The beeches are mainly small saplings but a few big old trees, too, particularly along the edge of the track.  One of the things I love about beeches is the smoothness of their bark, and the way it wrinkles like skin around lumps and bumps and where branches emerge.  It gives the trees a sinuous, animal look, whereas on other varieties of tree the bark is more like a hard carapace.

Taking photos of the trees, I'm reminded again of the limitations of my five-foot-six viewpoint.  Most of the time, I pay attention only to the first four feet of the tree trunk, noticing interesting root shapes and bark patterns.  I pay much less attention to the canopy.  Even if I remember to look up, my perspective is compressed; if I get far enough away to see the whole tree, it no longer looks so impressive.  I think again about small animals and trees, wonder if a vole, like the one I saw earlier, is even aware of the tree having a canopy?

Returning to the intersection of the tracks and picking up the middle one, I'm surprised by how the temperature drops appreciably as I drop down and leave the sun behind.  I had forgotten that on a section of this middle path there is a whole grove of evergreens in straight lines, in the middle of which is now a pheasant pen, sporting a rash of little lean-to constructions. I guess they are shelters, but can't help thinking they look more like runways for teaching young pheasants to fly...

I've arrived at the small pond where the Slad Brook effectively makes its first appearance.  It's a lot less overgrown than when I last saw it, and the water is still and dark, carrying tremendous reflections of everything around it.  I pause to make a colour sketch.  As so often when I stop and concentrate on drawing, the bird activity around me increases.  There is a lot of fluttering of wings, and suddenly a little marsh (or possibly willow - can never tell the difference) tit alights on a branch almost beside me, apparently unaware of my presence.  Suddenly noticing me, he gives a stage start, utters a tiny squawk and takes off again in a hurry.  Or it may be the buzzard circling overhead that has spooked him.  Another buzzard comes swooping in, flying quite low.  I'm pleased to see, when I get up to go, that there is a big patch of frogspawn in one part of this pond.

The stream is there, but it's a small oozy ditch, though rather more visible than when I was here in summer.  I zigzag across it to investigate the evergreen grove.  More tall, slim trees, but these with needles and cones.  The ground is soft underfoot with accumulation of needles.  I don't know if it's the shape, but these slim trees don't half attract ivy.  They are green on top with their own needles, then green all the way down the trunk with newly-leafed ivy.  Ivy is also growing across the ground.  Given half a chance, I suspect that ivy could take over the world.

Here is a good reason for getting off the path now and then - I've come across some fallen branches with clusters of startlingly bright red and orange fungi growing on them.  I have never seen these before, and they are quite stunning.  And further on is a fallen silver birch on which are growing some tiny peach-coloured toadstools, smaller than my fingernail, and also some massively chunky bracket-style fungi, with pie-crust crimped edges, larger than my spread hand.  I never suspected the wonderful variety of colours and shapes of fungi until I started walking this valley.  While circling the fungi trees, I disturb another little vole-like animal, glimpsed as no more than a tail and a furry backside disappearing into the leaf litter.

What with all this zigzagging across the hillside, it's lunchtime by the time I reach the lake, so I stop to picnic. This feels like good place to be alone in, to listen to the quietness, without other human noise getting in the way of natural noises. While I'm sitting still and talking softly to the sound recorder, another little mouse/vole appears within a foot of me and trots off fast through a patch of baby nettles, apparently not particularly alarmed.  I sit tight, he reappears, scampers off again like a clockwork toy and vanishes into thicker undergrowth further down the bank.  I try to sketch what I remember of him - he's about 3 or 4 inches nose to tail, buff coloured on top and pale underneath, and moving too fast to get idea of what sort of tail he has.  That makes three small mammals I’ve seen in one morning, and I’ve not been particularly quiet.  I suppose it's easier to spot them at this time of year, when the undergrowth is all much thinner and lower, but it reinforces my impression of this as a place that people don't come too often.

Below the lake is anarchic country, no paths, lots of fallen wood, no stream for a while until it suddenly reappears in a steep little gully. Someone has removed great swathes of ivy from trees on the western side of the stream and left it lying, which adds to the general air of untidiness.  This west side of valley has more grass and moss and ferns growing under the trees than the other side, which I suspect is because this side gets more sun.  I progress crabwise up the hill like a herd of baby elephants (beech leaves do not make for quiet walking), finding little clumps of the wonderful scarlet fungi everywhere, including in the brook.  A pair of jays seem to be dogging my footsteps, to be replaced by a pair of woodpeckers as I return to the level of the stream.  Their staccato drumming is joined by the bass thump-thump of the two rams and the 'ching' of the ram pipework - the whole Detcombe percussion section.

One last foray into the woodland around me - this time up a sort of small side valley in which a grove of sapling beeches gives way to a patch of pines, then a patch of mixed trees, and a patch of very impressive molehills.  A track appears, leading up into an area of mixed beech and fir.  Many of these trees are large and elegant, and this has the air of being an older bit of woodland, longer established.  It's more like my picture of what woodland should be, with trees of various ages, sizes and species.  There's less lying wood, possibly because the hillside is so steep here that anything that isn't actively holding onto the ground probably rolls down to the bottom, as I will if I don't watch it.

A spring oozes out of the ground part way down this side valley and finds its way down to the main brook, which, with sunlight glinting off the water, is much more of a personality in this winter-minimalist landscape than I remember it being in summer.  Then this area was all shade and undergrowth so that the water almost disappeared.

At last, I've reached the end of the shooting consortium's land and have to head steeply back uphill to reach the beech-lined track which leads to Bulls Cross, stumbling across a big badger sett under the roots of a hazel tree as I go.  The leafless shapes of the big beeches along the track are even lovelier, I think, than the summer version. I imagined this walk would be mainly about trees, but what I will actually remember are three glimpses of small furry beasts and those amazing scarlet fungi.