Briantspuddle

[puddleshark]

An overcast start to the day, and a fresher wind this morning, for which I was grateful. The last few days have been unseasonably warm and humid. Left the car in the little car park by Culpepper's Dish, and took the bridleway through the woods down to Briantspuddle village, where the wisteria is flowering on the cottages.





Now and then the sun managed to break through the cloud, illuminating the new beech leaves.













From Briantspuddle, ambled along the quiet lane to Throop. Wrens singing in the hedges. Cow parsley flowering along the verge. In the fields, the ponies wearing their fly rugs.

At Throop, over the little bridge, and onto the green bridleway that runs alongside the river.





Sat for a while beside the great oak, drank coffee and ate a biscuit, listening to the Reed Buntings' sudden clattering bursts of song, and the Blackcaps singing long and complicated arias. A yellow labrador appeared carrying a stick, and came up to say hello. Lo, where there is a biscuit, there shall also be a labrador.


Then wandered on along what is usually a muddy stream-side path, not always passable in May, only we've had one of the driest springs I can remember, and the paths are bone dry.


Onto the track back towards the Briantspuddle road.






Back along the lane to Briantspuddle.


Near the bridge, there's a little metal bench beside the river, where you can sit and watch the current moving the white flowers of the Water Crowfoot.

Not by coincidence, I found myself back in Briantspuddle at 10am on a Saturday, when tea and coffee and home-made cake are served at the village hall. They do put up a notice board in the lane, inviting visitors in, but it's mostly a social gathering for the villagers (and their dogs), everyone greeting each other by name, and catching up on the gossip. I sat in the little courtyard by the village hall, drinking tea and eating ginger cake, watching people climb the steps to the tiny village shop (housed in an old granary) to buy their newspapers, and watching villagers buying plants from another villager who had set up a little plant stall. ("Buy one honesty plant, and you'll never need to buy another!")

I resisted the temptation to look at plants. It would have been too far to carry them back to the car.

Comments

[mallorys_camera]

Lovely photos!

[puddleshark]

Thank you! 😊

[sartorias]

Wow, when your neighborhood does green, it doesn't mess around!

[puddleshark]

Yeah. One week, the woods are dark and wintry. The next week, BAM! S'all green.

[nikonf3]

Sometimes it all looks too pretty to be real. And you show it well.

[puddleshark]

Briantspuddle really is too pretty to be real. It's one of those 'model' villages built by a wealthy philanthropist in the 1920s, and every pain was taken to provide the villagers with large and beautiful cottages, quaintly thatched, with big gardens.

But for all its quaintness, it still has a very strong sense of community. It's not one of those attractive Dorset villages where all the houses have been sold for holiday homes.