We haven’t walked around Ashton Court, a large estate owned by Bristol City Council but actually in North Somerset, since early March, due to you-know-what. Nice to be back. This view of the house shows warehouses and factories behind it in Bedminster. Bristol City FC’s ground is beyond to the left, actually a good kilometre beyond the house.
It’s a race with the blackbirds! Sally has used some old net curtains (when did we ever have net curtains?) to protect a few branches of our cherry tree, but the rest have to be picked quickly to avoid avian competitors. They’re welcome, really, as long as they leave us a few. Saves us putting out bird feeders.
Now we are allowed to use cars to get to beauty spots, we didn’t really want to contribute to the chaos on the roads, but, as it’s Sunday, felt we should do something special. In the end, we did an eight-mile route from home to Portbury, then across the Gordano Valley to Clapton, down over the A369 to Big Wood and up to the coast and back past the Windmill pub (closed of course) and to Portishead Lake (very busy). Apart from the start and end it was quite quiet. Here are Sally and Lucy where we stopped for lunch at the quarry in Big Wood.
Without the allotment we’ve had to use every area of the garden. Summer wouldn’t seem the same without home-grown courgettes, peas, beans, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, chard, currents, figs, strawberries, plums, raspberries, cherries, pears, rhubarb. I’ve forgotten some. All down to Sally’s green fingers and my willingness to eat it all.
Apart from a few trips to local supermarkets, we haven’t driven anywhere for two months. It’s been quite nice in many ways. But today we braved the outside world and went to Uphill, south of Weston-super-Mare, an old favourite of ours, and of Lucy as it was the first place we ever took her, three long years ago.
Too late for any residents this year, but I’ve amused myself by making a sparrow bird terrace out of some left-over decking.
A daily challenge is to find slightly different variations on our standard walks from home. We are very lucky in that we are close to the coast, three nature reserves, woodlands and a popular lake as well as the, mostly closed, High Street.
This is the old railway line which was scheduled to be re-opened soon. For now, though, we have it to ourselves. You can just see the sleepers, the metal rails are covered by the undergrowth.
And this is some farmland below the Black Horse pub in Clapton-in-Gordano:
The greenhouse is fantastic in many ways, but occasionally you wonder if its worth it. This beautiful little goldfinch flew in and, presumably, knocked himself out trying to find the way out.
Martin's Mag. 
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