April greenery

[puddleshark]

The sun and the north wind are starting to dry out the high ground, though the valley bottoms are still waterlogged.

But April is here, and the grass is lush, and the trees are going madly green, and it's farting and fly-bucking season for horses, and attempting-impossible-walks season for humans. So I went walking along the Piddle Valley.

Left the car in the little car park at Culpepper's Dish, next to a small encampment of New Age travellers' vans, and set off through the woods towards Briantspuddle.




In the village of Briantspuddle, the thatched Arts & Crafts cottages basking in sunshine. In gardens, English Bluebells and Honesty in flower. In paddocks, the ponies with their rugs off and their fly-masks on.

Along the verges of the quiet lane to Throop, the April greenery is taking over: Stinging Nettles, Goosegrass, Cow Parsley, Garlic Mustard, Common Hogweed. Another week or two, and the Cow Parsley and the Red Campion will be in flower.


Orange-tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines).


At Throop, the River Piddle still running very high, the water cloudy.



Stopped by the river, at the foot of an ancient oak, to drink coffee, watch the birds: Reed Buntings and Yellow Wagtails along the riverside, a Treecreeper climbing the trunk of the oak, Chiffchaffs flitting among the new oak leaves.


Spot the Chiffchaff.


Spot the Treecreeper.

From Throop, I had planned to follow the lovely green streamside footpath back towards Briantspuddle...


...but it turns out, after this wet spring we've had, the stream and the footpath have become one.

Turned back and retraced my steps along the lane, arriving back in Briantspuddle at 10am, which (by coincidence rather than cunning plan) happens to be when they start selling teas and homemade cakes in the village hall on Saturday mornings. (I don't think I planned this route with cake in mind. Well, not consciously. But my subconscious may well have remembered the coffee cake from my last visit...)

Cake of choice this time: Marmalade cake. Very nice, too.


Briantspuddle bridge.

I keep hoping that, if I stand there long enough, I will catch a glimpse of a Kingfisher. But today I had to make do with Long-tailed Tits:


Back up through the woods. It is the season of pale new leaves on the beeches, ferns unfurling, bluebells.











Back at the car park, exchanged a cheerful 'Good morning' with the New Age travellers who were now awake. Two women at a picnic table, one seated, and one crouching comfortably on the bench. A dreadlocked young man standing nearby with baby in a carrier strapped to his front. And last but not least a Jack Russell terrier.

Comments

[heleninwales]

I haven't seen any New Age travellers for a long time. I think here that they've been ousted from their ecological niche by the aggressive incoming species known as the Van Life Campervanners.

[puddleshark]

If we have Van Life Campervanners here, they must be staying on sites with facilities, rather than parked up in disused quarries and tiny car parks in the middle of the woods. I occasionally come across New Age travellers, parked up overnight before they head off to wherever it is New Age travellers go.

We also have a growing population of people living in vans, unable to afford Dorset rents, but they tend to stay parked up on industrial estates near where they work.