Wiltshire in September

 

Tuesday September 20^th 2022.

Just a stolen two days between the Queen’s funeral and the scattering of an aunt’s ashes.

Looking at the road atlas for ideas for a mini-trip, our attention was drawn to an area we don’t know, to the west of Stonehenge and south of Devizes; it looks empty of settlements and roads – perhaps MoD land? Anyway, we’ll have a look. A larger-scale map will probably look less like The Empty Quarter!

We hastily piled the necessary baggage into the van and took off. It was a bright chilly morning with mists in the valleys. We stopped for our breakfast bowls of cereals on the northern edge of Dartmoor on Sourton Down. Dog walkers have found this place these days but we only saw empty parked cars on the chamomile-studded turf at the side of the track.

Sourton Down, north Dartmoor

A Robin was singing his soft autumn song from the nearby Hawthorns and a few Swallows were flitting low over the gorse.

Hawthorn roots exposed on eroding bank.

                      

                Chamomile at Sourton

We then got stuck into the drive, joining heavy traffic on the A303 going east. A light moment as we passed a small tanker with contact details for a tank-cleaning business on the back, and as we passed him, we saw painted on the side of his tank ‘TANK FULL OF POLITICAL PROMISES’

Our next stop, for mid-morning hot choc was a few hundred yards off the road along a field track in wide open rolling corn-land, all stubbles now. The discarded ears of wheat on the headland were very thin with sparse shrivelled grain, victim of the summer drought I expect.

Wide expanse of corn stubbles from track where we saw the SARUM marker stone.

Some years ago we walked further in along this track and came upon a marker stone inscribed SARUM,( I forget how many miles.) This must have been marking an old drove-way to Salisbury to the south. Old Sarum was a very early settlement, pre-dating the city of Salisbury a couple of miles away. On this earlier visit we saw a Corn Bunting singing his jangling ‘bunch of keys’ little song from a hedge bush. But this was many years ago. The hedge alongside the track has gone now, and so has the bunting.

We left the A303 at a turning for Wylie.     

and drove through this attractive village, and Lower Langford. The buildings here have an unusual wall style, with a chequered pattern of blocks of creamy chalk stone and alternating squares of a mix of rubbly chalk-stone and flint.

We were heading for a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve outside Langford where the River Wylie gives onto a couple of large lakes. The River Wylie is a clear chalk stream flowing over gravel and is a renowned fishing river. It joins the River Avon at Salisbury.

Langford Lakes Nature Reserve

This season has a bountiful crop of berries and, a novelty for us on the acid land of Cornwall, were numerous lime soil-loving Dogwood bushes, their leaves turning rich dark red, and the track-side wild roses had lots of big plump hips. As kids in the war we were paid 6d a pound at the Town Hall. They were used for Vitamin C--rich Rose-hip Syrup for children. It seemed to take ages to pick a pound, so we’d have pounced with glee on these rich pickings!

Dogwood.

                                      Rose Hips

 The lakes were pretty quiet for bird-life, with a few Mallards, Gadwall and a pair of Tufted Ducks, all dominated by a great flock of Canada Geese roosting on the far shore. As we got nearer they took off in small groups and landed on a maize stubble just outside the Reserve and started feeding. A Cetti’s Warbler gave his abrupt burst of song from the reedy fringe of the lake.

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Waterworks at Langford Lakes.

A gang of men were working on reinforcing the lake margin, using a big tracked swing-shovel machine which seemed to float in the water.

Looking for a night-stop we drove up a small lane beyond Langford which led up into rolling chalk hills with stubbles and clumps of trees and bushes on the steeper grassy slopes. The lane ended at a Private Road and a rough track with a thick hedge alongside, which gave us a sheltered secluded spot to stop for the night.

First Night-stop

 A very big Buckthorn with a stout old trunk and plentiful black berries.

Buckthorn (Rhamnus catharticus)

The leaves are very similar to Dogwood and my mother taught me as a kid, how to tell the difference. If you carefully pull the leaf apart crossways, the veins of the Buckthorn break but leave the white fibre within the vein intact, if it is Dogwood.

A hollow-way led up past a grassy meadow onto the nearest hill and alongside a beech wood and bushes of Dogwood and big sprawling Juniper, smothered with berries, still small and green. The hillside grass was still spotted with a few flowers; chalkland species , again a novelty for us: Carline Thistle seed-heads and rosettes of Stemless Thistles, Pimpinella , Salad Burnet and Small Scabious.

Small Scabious.

A Gall, Robin's Pincushion, on Dog Rose.

The evenings are closing in earlier at this time of the year and we settled at eight to read for a time and soon made up the bed and had a long but reasonably peaceful night, disturbed only by a couple of gamekeepers as they drove past us up the private road, to see to their pheasants.

Wednesday Sep.21st

We awoke to another quiet, bright morning with a cloudless sky. We drove out after breakfast, slowly to avoid great numbers of Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges (‘Frenchmen’) which were making their way down from their release pens on the woodland on the hilltop, to the grassy pastures downslope and across the road in front of us. Shooting must be a big business here. The only other bird life we saw here were a pair of Stonechats, a Buzzard and a couple of Red Kites circling overhead.

Crossing the A303 we then drove north across the wide-open spaces of the road atlas, towards Chitterne in the middle of Salisbury Plain.

As we suspected, the road passed through big areas of MoD land with red flags, yellow-painted posts marking military crossing places and frequent notices saying No Admittance for Civilian Vehicles. A lot of it was tank training ground and we saw various shapes and sizes of dusty dull military vehicles driving on the tracks within the prescribed areas.

Area in red is the Imber Training area. The green line marks the permitted path. Access to the red area is prohibited to civilians.

This, the largest Army training area in Britain is notorious because of the compulsory eviction of the 100+inhabitants of the village of Imber. They were only given 47 days’ notice to be out. It was just before Christmas 1943 and despite assurances that they would be allowed to return after the war, this in fact has never happened, despite numerous protests, demonstrations and legal proceedings. Only burials are allowed in the graveyard of the Imber Church which was extensively restored a few years ago. The original houses have deteriorated to ruins now but replica houses have been built by the army for house-to-house combat training.

Pub in Chitterne. This shows the local wall building style with a  chequer pattern of blocks of chalk-stone alternating with flints.

The Imber Tank Range.

Just outside the prohibited zone we stopped in a bit of a car park and after some deliberation we went along a path onto tall neglected grassland in gently undulating country. It looked as if it had once been parkland as there were isolated clumps of biggish ornamental trees including Cedars, Pines and Copper Beeches. The grassland was cut up by flint-surfaced tracks and small paths through the tall plants. Vipers Bugloss, Wild Parsnip and yellow Melilot grew at the track side and we saw quite a few butterflies : Common Blues, Small Coppers and Brown Argus.

Track through the permitted 'buffer zone' beyond the MoD land.

A rather tattered Brown Argus basked in the sun.

There was a Clouded Yellow, and a few empty Burnet Moth cocoons shone on the grass stems, but the bird life was once again, very sparse, though we heard a Raven and Tony heard a Yaffle.

A party of solders walked past us about 50 yards to our left and soon after, we met a man walking his dogs. We stopped to chat and commented that we’d neither been shot nor thrown out by the soldiers and asked him about permission to walk there. He called this area, outside the MoD land, ‘Dry Ranges’ and civilians could walk on the tracks and paths. We assumed it was a sort of buffer zone and hopefully clear of any shooting or risk of stumbling on unexploded devices.

It was a very pleasant walk in idyllic weather and the butterflies were a treat.

Then on further north to Tilshead and then took a road running west.

We walked up a track where to the north we looked beyond the plain and to another well-wooded ridge with distant white horses carved out of the chalk. The one on the left we identified as the Westbury White Horse which we’d last visited when I was expecting Kim. We didn’t fix a location for the one further east.

Further on we drove up a narrow lane going south again onto the Plain, seeing various patterns of old strip fields or lynchets running round the contours of the hills.

The Lynchetts follow the contour. These are picked out by hedges, but more often they are just indicated by banks.

Hops

                                  Haws

Yet another walk up a flint-surfaced field track with good crops of hips and haws, sloes, buckthorn berries and swags of hops. We sat on a well-placed seat and looked out across the flat expanse of the Vale of Pewsey to the north. We looked down on the buildings and extensive playing fields of Dauntsey's School. this is a co-ed Public School in West Lavington.

Several acres on one side of the track had been sown with a bird-seed mix. It was all rather tall and 'gone over' although Chickory plants were still identifiable with their clear blue flowers. A big flock of about a hundred Goldfinches flew out of a hawthorn and circled repeatedly in a bouncing flight over the crop.

Looking towards Tinhead Hill Farm. Red Flags flying!

We spent the rest of the day exploring Tinhead Down, a high area of MoD Land with extensive stubbles, ungrazed grassland, areas of scrub and wood land and one or two clusters of very large farm buildings apparently devoted to grain and fodder storage and cattle sheds. There was no sign of dwellings. It is lovely walking country; no wonder it’s so popular with the local dog walkers. The tracks around the MoD land give fine access to great areas whereas ironically the other farmland still in private hands, has PRIVATE LAND> NO PUBLIC RIGHT of WAY’ notices on every gateway!

Tottenham Wood, beyond Tinhead Hill Farm, was laced with tracks and we walked among beech and sycamore trees, with bushes of elder and hawthorn and patches of self-seeded Ash saplings. 

The field opposite the wood had a carpet of what looked like rape, self-seeded from the previous crop. A ragged flock of Chaffinches flew up and down from the adjacent trees to feed among the seedlings. Constant patrols of Crows flying over them made them very restless and interrupted their meal.

Having eaten our evening meal we sat and gazed at the view and were surprised to see two very odd planes, like a cross between a helicopter and a small mono-plane with short stumpy wings. They reminded me of the ramshackle appearance of the war-time Flying Bombs which had very rough-sounding engines before they cut out, plunged to earth and blew up, whereas these planes sounded more like helicopters.

The morning after our second night stop was misty and with a heavy dew.

Next morning we had planned to walk a path which went along the side of the wood and then looped round through the long grass and back to where we were parked. However the mist and dew would have meant we wouldn't have seen any butterflies so we abandoned that plan and instead began a leisurely drive back to the A303 and on to Exeter and the South Hams for the family rendezvous.

SHARPNESS REVISITED

 

August '22 visit to the Severn Estuary

50 years ago Tony and his brother owned a Trawl Fishing company out of Plymouth, fishing in the Channel between Portland and Land’s End. Those were the days when the raping and scraping of the seabed wasn’t regarded as a sacrilege. Attitudes have changed since then. However, going back to about 1978, their biggest boat needed her prop shaft examined and the nearest dry-dock which would accommodate her was at Sharpness up the Severn estuary. Tony spent several weeks up there, overseeing the job and became interested in the area. The docks are at the entrance of the Gloucester Canal from the Severn.

We have revisited the area and followed the canal, several times since, and now in Post-Covid(??) times we felt we’d like to have a few days in the van’s first outing since the pandemic began, and renew our acquaintance with this area, so different from Cornwall.

August 23^rd 2022

We left home late, at ten am. We must be getting old! There were a few drops of rain and the sky was looking very unsettled as we left, but it gradually brightened as we got beyond Exeter. Our first interest was a Red Kite flying over the M5 as we approached Cullompton.

We reached Bridgewater about midday and crossing a small swing bridge over a canal reached through an industrial estate on the outskirts of town, we parked near a waterside pub.

Swing Bridge over the Taunton to Bridgewater Canal. This connects the River Tone to the Parrett  at Bridgewater

                                  Canal-side Pub.

The canal, constructed in 1827, connected the River Tone at Taunton to the River Parrett and thence the sea.

It is 14.5 miles long and has seven locks.

Patches of floating Frogbit and luxuriant vegetation in the bank-sides almost hid the boats moored at intervals along the towpath

Home from Home?

In the afternoon we drove on up the A38 and driving through Cannington we took the lanes out towards Steart Point at the mouth of the Parrett estuary.

We stopped in 'our usual corner' where there is now another ubiquitous notice forbidding overnight parking and camping.

A very workmanlike rig was already parked. We walked out to the long cobble bank protecting the salt marsh from the sea. It was low tide and a wide expanse of mud was ahead. A few Black-headed Gulls were loafing on the mud offshore but otherwise there was little birdlife to be seen.

The nuclear power station at Hinkley Point looms to the south, but the huge construction of Hinkley B. could hardly be seen in the rather hazy conditions.

After a quick walk out to the cobble bank we headed back down the road a little way to  where we could park and walked along a bank to a 'blind' ; a wooden 'wall' from which bird-watchers could watch any birds on the saltmarsh. This is now part of a very extensive wetland reserve created in 2014. 

The new wetland reserve, created by allowing sea water to flood extensive areas of wet-lying grazing meadows and alleviating flooding of properties.

Showing flooded area. This is now a wildlife area of great significance, although at this time of the year as the autumn passage of birds has barely started, the marshes as we saw them at low water and during this very dry spell, were very quiet.

We then drove  towards Glastonbury along the A39 and along the top of the Polden Hills and down to Catcott Reserve on the Somerset Levels. The  Levels were looking refreshingly green as the water management here is to keep the water table high by closing the sluices in the rhynes (drainage ditches) so they were full of water, covered by bright green Duckweed.

Looking from the hide by the small carpark at Catcott,  we were pleased to see between 40 and 50 Cattle Egrets among the cattle. They now breed in this area and are another addition to the increasing number of heron species now settling and spreading their range in Britain.

Later in the evening the cattle had wandered off into the marshy ground to graze, the egrets had dispersed and we saw a Great White Egret striding the adjacent rushy lagoon, long-legged , its long neck leaning forward, pointing its strong yellow beak ahead as it hunted.

As the evening light faded, black duck-shapes were making duck movements, leaving scarcely a ripple on the glassy water. The silence was profound and the stillness complete.

Wednesday 24th Aug.

Yesterday evening's threatening black clouds didn't come to anything and we awoke to a fresher breeze and early sun which soon clouded over.

A pre-breakfast visit to the hide produced five Gadwall among the numerous Mallards. They were picked out by the white speculum in their wings, and black stern. The Great White Egret had resumed its patrol of the rushy lagoon to our left, watched by a family of Mute Swans with their well-grown brood of seven in grey-brown plumage. Bands of light drizzle swept across the marshes at times.

Sharpness was our main destination this trip and we resumed our northward journey in heavy traffic till we reached the Sharpness car park beside the big lock which gives access to shipping coming up the Severn to the docks.

The dangerous moving mud banks and erratic currents in the huge tidal range of the Severn make it compulsory to take a pilot on board any vessel over a given size, to navigate the estuary from Bristol to Sharpness and on up to Gloucester.

The tricky entrance to the big lock giving access from the estuary to the docks and on up the canal to Gloucester.

Common Gull perching on the lock wall.

The docks, dating from 1825 are said to be the eighth biggest in the UK apparently. We were sorry to see there is no longer a notice at the lock office about notification of shipping due in and out of the docks. They used to give the date, the tide time, the cargo and originating or destination port of ships due in the current week. It is always good to gongoozle the manoeuvres.

The port is important for the collection and export of scrap metals of all kinds and there is a busy traffic of heavy lorries carrying scrap to the extensive warehouses lining the waterway between the main lock and the start of the canal.

Sarah B, a bulk-cargo coaster, being unloaded. The cargo looked like fertilizer.

The port is a muddle of big warehouses both in use and derelict, areas of scrub, securely fenced places, tag-ends of old rail tracks with marooned and rusting old rolling stock, and busy active dock activities. The whole area has the canal running though, crossed by several swing bridges, until it abruptly gives way to the moorings for leisure and long-boat basin and the canal proper, going on its wide placid way between trees to Gloucester to the north east. In Sharpness itself there are few dwellings; the main housing, shops and facilities are just beyond, in Newtown.

The Dockworkers' Union Clubhouse area where camping is tolerated. We have stayed there on several occasions; now, with the internet connections, the word has spread and we arrived to find several others already there and were later joined by a couple more vans.

A path leads from here back to the docks or down to the canal basin and towpath.

At the bottom of the footpath down from the Dockworkers' club. Looking down the estuary from the canal basin. The two Severn Bridges are blotted out in the haze, but they span the gap in the far horizon.

Just behind the previous camera shot, we saw fresh Otter footprints in mud as it trekked across to look for shore crabs in the seaweed on the shore.

Note the Otter prints have 5 claws. The smaller paler prints on the right have only 4 front pads and are of a dog or a fox.

Looking up the estuary  at about half-tide. The water is hiding the stumps of the pillars supporting the spans of the original railway bridge.  This railway crossed the canal on the right by a swing bridge and then several spans crossed the estuary to Lydney on the Gloucestershire shore on the left.  In 1960 two big barges loaded with fuel lost control in thick fog and collided  under the bridge. There was a huge explosion and the bridge was destroyed. Five lives were lost. The damaged bridge was eventually totally demolished in 1967.

The older, original lock from the estuary, leading to the upper canal basin. It is now silted up and out of use .Below is a picture of the original canal basin, pre-dating the present docks.

 

The head of the canal basin with moored leisure and longboats.

The memorial to the Merchant Navy training ship.

When I was a child the boy next door trained on her in the early 1940s, before becoming a cadet officer. He was torpedoed twice in the war as a teenager but survived.

The towpath going towards Gloucester. The Severn is close on the left at this place and makes a good vantage point from which to see and hear Reed Warblers in the reedbed below the wall.

The Purton Hulks.

A couple of miles up the towpath is another swing bridge over the canal at a hamlet called Purton..In 1909 there was a catastrophic collapse of the canal bank which threatened to drain this all-imp0rtant canal. In this place, the canal and river were less than 50 yards apart. An emergency plan was swiftly put in place and several old wooden barges, locally built and once locally used but now derelict, were floated to the collapse and beached to shore the bank up .Ships from all over the country were subsequently added to the defences. Over time, several concrete barges were also beached here to prevent further erosion by strengthening the bank.

A group of dedicated volunteers known as 'The Friends of Purton' have researched the history of all the beached barges and have erected explanatory plaques. The site has become known as 'the ships' graveyard' and is a modest tourist attraction.

All that now can be seen of the barge 'Envoy'

.The remains of several of the concrete barges reinforcing the river bank.

Short though this trip was, we always find the combination of the history and the current on-going life of this working port, very interesting, and with the added attraction of a very pleasant towpath walk.