iron age – Avon Stories

August Dundry walk: Malago source, Maes Knoll and Hengrove Brook

Back in August, Vik and I took the bus to Hartcliffe, and walked over the top of Dundry, via the source of Pigeonhouse Stream, down the other side of the ridge, then up over the Maes Knoll iron age fort, and down into Bristol via Hengrove Brook.

It was a weird weather day, the end of the heatwave, and the source of the Stream was a tiny trickle, with the walls around it pulled down. The fields everywhere were golden with stubble and scorched yellow by all the sun, and all day the clouds were grey above us, until it finally started raining.

Here’s a map of our walk:

And my album of photos – mouse/swipe over to start the slideshow, or click through to the album on flickr.

Some things we saw…

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Leigh Woods and the Avon silt banks

Back at the start of May, I had a morning trip to Leigh Woods, and it was wonderful – a perfect Spring day, with the clouds whipped across the sky, the light changing continually, from sunny to cloudy and back again. It was such a perfect Spring day, and I loved exploring the Stokeleigh Camp Iron Age Fort, so on the way back down Nightingale Valley, I turned north and walked up the silt banks, through the long grass, and along the tide lines. I have photos, and sounds, below, but let’s start with photos. The album is on flickr, but if you mouse over the first picture, it should bring up a slideshow…

and here’s the map of where I walked – without all the back-and-forth of looking at the same things over and over!

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Snow day Avon

Because we’re on the water, and in the south, it doesn’t often snow in Bristol, and if it does, it rarely sticks, so the huge “Beast from the East” snowmaggedon was a huge deal here, that I’m sure people in Scotland and the Frozen North are rolling their eyes at. But not having to get anywhere, with a warm house and a stocked pantry, it was a ton of fun, just for a weekend.

On Friday Vik and I walked along the Avon and up to Stokeleigh Camp, the Iron Age fort in Leigh Woods, and back. While the parks and slopes were full of children sledging, once we got to the Avon footpath, it was really empty, with much less traffic on the Portway than usual. All the interesting layers pulled into focus, outlined by snow, from the terraces of Hotwells, to the striations of the Gorge.

Up in the woods it was pretty magical, with everything so quiet we could hear the falling snow hit the evergreen and remaining dead autumn leaves. We walked around the Fort walls and talked about what it might have been like to live there, as the wind blew swirls of snowflakes off the drifts on top of the earthworks. As we walked home, a skier passing us on the Nightingale Valley path, the tracks we and others had made were already covered in snow, and it felt like we were the first people to walk on the path, and on the silt banks. It was a gorgeous day.

Photos are in the album – mouse over/click the first image to get the slideshow, or go straight to flickr.

A February walk: “The source of the Malago”, Stanton Drew and Maes Knoll

I’ve been walking a lot, recently, making the most of some free time, and trying to get outdoors as much as possible. last week, my good friend Tracy Homer and I had a long day out in the hills south of Bristol, starting off looking for the source of Pigeonhouse Stream (aka the source of the Malago, but more on that later) and then getting deep into the history of the area, walking through the hills to the megalithic stone circles at Stanton Drew, and back up to Bristol via Maes Knoll, the Iron Age hill fort on the edge of the city.

Photos from the walk are here – I managed to break two cameras, with my Canon 550D just stopping working, and stupidly dropping my Olympus XA2 35mm, so they end up being just from my mobile, and my friend Cee‘s Olympus OM10…. If you mouse over or click the first photo, you should bring up the slideshow – otherwise the flickr album is here.

Here’s the map of our walk:

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