mud – Avon Stories

How the heatwave changed the mud texture

You know I love the mud in the Avon, especially the silt banks that block the second entrance lock to the Floating Harbour at the Cumberland Basin. I love the way the light catches on the ridges and textures – but something about the summer heat and maybe the lower river levels seem to have changed the consistency of the mud. It looks more porridge-y, and like the meanders have flattened down.

I like it just as much, though. A flickr album of photos from walking home on 19th July, with patches of seaweed on the oddly flattened mud:

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Low tide adventures

The heatwave may have dried up the rivers, scorched the grass and given farmers a terrible year, but I have some good memories too. Back on 3rd July I walked home from work “the long way round”, and went to the very end of the Floating Harbour, where it meets the Avon in the curve of the Entrance Lock walls. It was low tide, a gorgeous day, and one of the highlights of my summer.

Here’s a flickr photo album of 35mm film shots from my Olympus XA2 (if you mouse/swipe over the first photo below, hopefully you’ll get a slideshow…)

And some words about some of the photos, and a sound:

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My pictures in Photographique

Excuse my terrible phone photo!

Photographique is Phil Searle’s fantastic Bristol print lab: developing photos, printing them from digital and negative, selling frames and doing all kinds of things. They’ve recently moved into their new North Street premises. I’ve been using their services, or just dropping in for a chat, for 10 years, so I was completely delighted when the manager Hamish Trevis, asked me if I’d like to have my photos on their walls this month.

It was a really good process for me. This Avon Stories project is about a year old, but while it exists in different forms online (including the podcast and social media), and of course all my walks are In Real Life, I haven’t started showing it yet. In fact, I haven’t had a show, or put photos on walls since my Photography degree finished, nearly 4 years ago. I’ve really missed the process of editing, and taking this huge pile of stuff I’ve been making, and thinking how I can present it, so my huge thanks to Hamish and to Phil, for giving me this chance.

We are currently displaying a series of photographs from the @Avon_Stories project. Sarah's images usually come with an interesting story behind them and the location they were taken, so we have also put together a little booklet regarding the images on show. pic.twitter.com/A25XUnP1x0

— Photographique (@photographique) May 2, 2018

If you’re in/near Bristol, please do pop into Photographique, 53 North Street, and check out all their services online – and while you’re there, have a beer in Phil’s fantastic pub, The Hare, next door! And if you like film photography, you can also enter their Analogue Photography Competition from anywhere in the UK, and win cash prizes. But if you’re not nearby, I’ve put the photos I’m showing into a flickr album.

As well as putting the photos on the wall, Hamish made me a fantastic little booklet to go with them, so if you can’t get to see the pictures in person, here’s what they are, and why I’m showing them.

A gas leak on the closed Avon path

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April Avon Nature Reserves walk

Last Thursday was the hottest day of 2018 so far, a truly beautiful day, where it felt like summer, not spring, and a perfect day for a walk. Tracy Homer and I were exploring some of the nature reserves along the Avon – a very similar walk to one I took in November last year with Vik, but in reverse. It includes four very different nature reserves: the Goat Gully; White’s Paddock & Bennett’s Patch (aka the home of the wicker whales); Bishop’s Knoll Woods; and Old Sneed Park Nature Reserve.

My map is here:

and there’s a photo album on flickr, or if you mouse over or click on the first photo below, it should open up the slideshow.

So what did we do?

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Dreich Holga photos

It’s a dreich, dull April – I laughed, because double-checking the spelling of dreich, the Oxford Dictionary example of how to use it is ‘a cold, dreich early April day’. I still haven’t replaced my broken film cameras, but on Saturday, I took one of Vik’s Holgas – a plastic-lensed, medium-format, very basic camera, with 160iso film, because we didn’t have any 400. And I’m really enjoying the results. First, some shots from Ashton Avenue Bridge, with the outflow from Colliter’s Brook into the Avon, and across the river, Ashton Brook (a historic County boundary).

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Footprints on the Avon mud, and other Thursday photos

On Thursday Vik and I met in town and walked round the Harbour for the Suffragette talk at the Bristol Archives. We were early, so went to the very edge of the Harbour to look at the river, one of our regular walks.

The first thing we enjoyed was this tiny glimpse of one of the silt islands, looking like a whale coming up for air, or a sea monster lurking on the bottom of the river. And an aside – if you look on the maps on Know Your Place, you can see there have been silt islands here since the 1880s, including this one, which I find fascinating.

Of course we went to look at the mud that banks up in what used to be the Brunel lock, one of my very favourite places. There are almost always bird footprints here, but I’ve never seen as many as then. I don’t know if it was a flock on in the middle of migration, or something special had been left on the mud after the spring tide, or it was just that the conditions were extra good for retaining footprints, but it was delightful.

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Tuesday: footprints in the Avon mud

It was gorgeous February sunshine on a cold Tuesday, so I headed out to the mud at the very end of the Floating Harbour, my go-to walk. Since the Chocolate Path is closed, I now take Ashton Avenue Bridge, and stopped to make a little film, taking photos once that was set up.

There was something about the light on the texture of the mud that made the bird footprints look fantastic, especially the way the tracks would be so clear in one place, but a few steps back the mud was slooooooooowly oozing back to eradicate them.

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Self indulgence, Avon mud

If you look at my site for even a few minutes, you will have realised that I obsess about a lot of things photographically, and especially about the Avon mud. More specifically, about the way the light hits it, and how it continually looks different. It makes me happy, and film cameras make me happy, so combining the two is great, though it makes me feel guilty and self-indulgent to keep shooting the same thing.

It’s especially an issue now, when camera film is so expensive, and getting the pictures developed it as well. It can be around £16 in total for a roll of 35mm, and over £20 for 120 and that just hurts (you know I am missing the days of film in the Pound Shop, and cheap film outlets). So I’m thinking of cutting back on film photography, and predominantly using digital, which is very sad for me… but before I do, I had a completely self-indulgent day shooting nothing but mud on my beautiful waist-viewfinder Bronica ETRS, for medium format “who cares about the cost!” photography. The sad thing is, all that happened when I got the roll back is I want to do it again, and again, and again. Ah well.

Here’s the flickr album – if you click on the first picture below, it should bring up the slideshow. The first four are along the Chocolate Path, which feels even more poignant now the Path is closed indefinitely, with no hint from the Council as to when it might open (I’m genuinely worried they’ll decide to just let it fall into the river, because there has been so little upkeep of the New Cut, going back years). I’m glad that at least I did this while I could.

Avon mud

I don’t know why, but the mud around the Entrance Lock has been covered in muck at the moment – maybe because there hasn’t been much heavy rain recently? It’s one of those things I laugh at myself for being frustrated about, and then suddenly see it in a new light, literally and figuratively. I love the patterns it makes, around the paths made by rivulets finding their way to the river.

Avon mud

I have so many photographic obsessions, and one of them is the mud on the Avon banks, especially around the blocked up lock at the entrance to the Cumberland Basin. The silt has banked up here in corrugations, with lines where water has flowed meandering through it. It’s fascinating in every kind of light, but my favourite moments are when the sun is low, making the water on the surface turn to silver. The ridges and lines look like landscapes – mountains and rivers and hills. And on windy days the light changes so fast, as clouds whip across the sky. I made a film of that in the summer, and I need to go back and try it again in winter light.

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