Walking around Frenchay, north east of Bristol, we spotted this excellent mural of Joe Strummer (The Clash) painted by Ollie from Gage Graphics on the side of a cottage. The words of “London Calling” on the wall behind. As an added bonus, there was a late-1930s(?) Hillman car in front of it. It’s a bit quirky, Frenchay…
Cardiff’s “Central Park”, close to the University, Castle and the river Taff.
We’re in this small village in north Devon because it is on the Tarka Trail, a mostly off-road cycle and walking track, which follows mainly the course of a pre-1960s GWR steam railway. We last walked part of it with Lucy the dog in 2017: https://martinsmag.com/2017/05/11/tarka-trail-part-two/
We stayed on a busy farm, The Barton, with horses, ponies, goats and dairy cows, which all added to the general gaiety, if not the smell, of the place.
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.
Martin's Mag. 
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