Martin's Mag.

After a visit to a rather tired-looking Exmouth in South Devon, we nipped along to nearby Budleigh Salterton.

Some members of the Bogs of Somerset Hash House Harriers, and friends.

Copyright Toni Mallin 2025.

We had a nostalgic walk around Brandon Hill and Hotwells, passing Miles’ old primary school.

We’ve had the ludicrous idea of walking the Welsh coast this year, so we thought we should make a start. Beginning near Chepstow, near the island of Beachley. We walked to, and under, the “Old” Severn Bridge (now demoted from the M4 to become the M48), taking pictures, not of nature but this graffiti in the tunnel below the motorway.

Then under the newer M4 bridge to Caldicot.

We diverted to visit The Magor Nature Reserve:

It’s important not to let her get a head start!

I worked, briefly, in this Bristol building over fifty years ago. It is at the junction of Bristol Bridge, Baldwin Street and High Street, at the corner of the pre-war and pre-Luftwaffe main shopping streets, now Castle Park. It was built in the nineteen sixties and surrounded a war-damaged saxon church (St Mary le Port). It housed several financial companies and the Bristol branch of the Bank of England, at a time when there was far more cash used in business. It is now empty, boarded up and, I expect, due for demolition. If there was a law which prohibited the demolition of any building until it was, say, three-hundred years old, we might take more trouble with the quality and design in the first place.

As it was:

W and G visited, partly to meet our grand-children but also to get Sall to dress a well-travelled crab. It’s a long story.

A week later, Jan and Simon, visiting from Australia, braved storm Bert to see us with Gill and Alex.

Later we all visited Rob and Soph in their Bristol house with G & A and Lizzy and her children.

Walking along the beach between Dunster and Blue Anchor in North Somerset, Sally took this picture of a row of well-camouflaged knots (or sandpipers) along the shore line. The posts are some sort of old break-water, or maybe WWII sea defences.

Natural colours on a boulder on the beach between Seaton and Beer in Dorset.