Martin's Mag.

This plant, also known as Traveller’s Joy, grows near streams and there is a fine display alongside the rhyne (old Somerset word for a drainage ditch) which runs through the town to the sea near the marina.

We revisited Crickhowell on the river Usk. A pretty and interesting town. Then picnic lunch in the hills to the west of the town and a circular walk, from about Aberhowy to Llangattock, following the Usk Valley Walkway and returning along the Monmouth and Brecon canal.

The M5 motorway, south of Bristol, was completed in the nineteen seventies. From a distance the section passing along the side of the Gordano Valley looks rather elegant and the dual levels of the separate carriageways are certainly a feat of engineering. But I’ve always felt sorry for the houses and farms which lost their idyllic location.

A visit to our, once, home at the southern tip of Devon. It hasn’t changed much. We spent a while walking around Kingsbridge, commenting on the the few new shops and recalling what they replaced, then to South Milton sands (where we once had a cottage) and a walk along the coast path to Hope Cove. Lots of memories.

While we were in Kingsbridge we stocked up our seafood at the legendary Salcombe Smokies, including this huge crab:

Portishead Bowling Club seemed to be having a fine old time yesterday, down by the Lakegrounds. Maybe one day, but not yet.

Wallingford is in Oxfordshire, on the Thames, and we last visited it, we think, in 2010 when we walked the Thames Path. We stayed in the camper by the bridge to the east of the river, opposite the main town. It was very hot, maybe the last really hot days of Summer.

On the way home we had lunch by the River Kennet in Hungerford. Some sort of word association, I suppose.

Nice display of Bracket Fungus in Weston Big Wood (between Portishead and Weston in Gordano) this morning.

Well, hay rakin’. The meadow in the fabulous Penny Brohn Cancer Care Centre gardens in Pill, near us, was in need of some emergency composting work, so, as well as the usual expert gardening volunteers (Sally included), some additional heavy lifting was required (e.g. me).

Llansteffan is a little village on the west side of the River Tywi estuary, south of Carmarthen. It has everything a proper Welsh village needs, including a fantastic beach, pubs, cafes, fish and chip shop and a stonking great castle overlooking the whole place. On Wednesdays and Thursdays there is a mass cockle-picking/digging session out in the estuary.