Martin's Mag.

Waiting to go home from the hospital.

The SS Great Britain in the distance, framed through the rigging of the youth charity training ship Fridtjof Nansen. On opposite sides of Bristol’s Floating Harbour.

Back in Gloucestershire, but the slightly bonkers part, between the Severn and the Wye, otherwise known as the Forest of Dean (“The Forest” to locals). Here, sheep wander freely through towns and on railway lines, and nature is slowly reclaiming areas of Victorian industrialisation. We usually avoid published walks, preferring to do our own thing, but we made an exception today. See http://bhwalk.uk. We started at Bream and did a circular route via the railway station at Whitecroft.

A Gloucester Wildlife Trust reserve, south of the pretty village of Apperley and next to the Coombe Hill disused canal. Something for everyone! The canal ran from the river Severn, east towards Coombe Hill (not up it, as there were, as far as we could see, no locks) and carried coal.

Nothing to do with ships of the desert, the Camel is a river in Cornwall alongside which a railway line once ran, before being “axed” by Dr Richard Beeching in the nineteen-sixties. Dr Beeching unintentionally created many miles of cycle path during his brief but, most people think, disasterous time as the chairman of The British Railways Board. Volunteers are preserving some of the original track and a station. We cycled the path from Wenford Bridge to Padstow and back, via Bodmin and Wadebridge, staying at the pleasant, tranquil and exotic-sounding Camp De Lank camping and glamping site at St Breward.

The Pier to Pier Way is a new 13-mile cycle route linking Weston-super-Mare and Clevedon. After years of campaigning and negotiating with landowners it has been completed at last. We cycled it, despite an annoying creak from Sal’s bike (later fixed)!

A few days away in a village cottage in Dorset, with Miles, Flora, Esme and Mabel the dog. And the next addition to the family who, fortunately, was happy to stay where he/she belongs for the time being. We spent time in the cottage garden, (where Esme learnt how to fill her water-pistol from the padding pool and, more importantly, drench everyone), local beaches and Weymouth. Includes pics by Flo and Sal.

On the way home, Sally and I walked around the stone quarries on Portland Bill.

We met Hannah and Harry with their friend Lizzy at The Cottage pub. Bristol Harbour was looking good for the annual boat festival.

Rob has been working on a project to decorate a sea defence wall on the Avon estuary, under the M5 motorway bridge. It is adjacent to the Lamplighter’s Marsh nature reserve, known locally as “the yellow brick road”.