Riverside walk

(Click on the photos to enlarge)


I have been back-sliding with my hour-long walks recently. Whilst I didn't feel quite the ticket yesterday, I decided it was best to try and drag myself out for a bit of fresh air, which I duly did. My husband followed after me in the car about 25 minutes later and picked me up. Then at lunchtime we both did the same walk again, camera in hand. It was a bit grey, drizzly and gloomy, so the photos are a bit that way too! I spent half the afternoon asleep on the sofa, and actually READ the newspaper for once. I really needed the sleep as I slept so badly the previous night.

Looking downstream from the bridge. The water levels have subsided to almost normal levels for August, despite the amount of rain we have had recently.

There is always the burble of water and the chuckling of loose rocks against the river-bed as the water swirls over them.

Fungi have been encouraged by the wet summer.

Near the Mill, the rapids are still evident - you can see why the Mill was built at just this spot.



I can remember someone once saying that summer begins when the Foxgloves come into flower, and ends when the last ones drop their blooms. These must be the last Foxgloves of summer.


You can just make out the end wall of a cottage which was a family home until a generation or so ago. It became derelict, and then the owner decided she would sell all the stone from the walls for building elsewhere, and put in for planning permission for a modern bungalow. This plot is a small, narrow-ended triangle, and the Council decided that a) the property was too close to the road, and b) there was no room for the massive once-around-the-house driveway they now consider a mandatory component of any new building plot and turned down the planning application. Now nature is claiming her own, and the frosts are loosening the limestone mortar around the stones of the last remaining wall, and the empty window apertures are now criss-crossed with ivy.


This was once the cow byre.

The family walked down a now nearly completely concealed pathway to fetch their water from this spring which is on the next lane over on the far side of the triangular plot.


Above the river, in the gloom of an August! day, ferns colonise the damp branches of the beech trees, demonstrating how good the air quality is here.