St Agnes Well

I’ve been reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, and the contrast between the setting of the novel in the nineteenth-century countryside and the news from America this week was extreme. But somehow this little detour I went on after a walk fitted right into my reading.

I had been clearing up some rubbish from a lay-by near Cothelstone Manor, as I sometimes do when people’s thoughtless stupidity about the countryside annoys me, when I noticed an odd little building by the side of the road, so I went off across the fields to investigate.

Following a sign, I picked my way across some rather marshy grass and found this funny little stone building with an Alice in Wonderland-sized door.

Named after the wife of a nearby landowner in the sixteenth century, not after a saint at all, it’s an ancient well which is supposed to bring good fortune to those who wash their hands in its water.

It was restored about 15 years ago and apparently the stonemason who worked on it wanted to create a place for the water to collect while still allowing the well to remain locked up. That’s worked out rather nicely. After my rather muddy crisp packet gathering expedition it was quite instinctive to dip my hands in the cool, clear water pooled at the entrance.

It’s a nice little place that I must have driven past hundreds of times and I love the idea that the countryside is literally stuffed with these hidden treasures, if you only know where to look.

Postscript: On collecting rubbish from the Quantock Rangers.

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Bridgwater

I’ve always thought of Bridgwater as rather a dump. Useful for shopping but still a dump. There are few nice places to eat and even fewer decent shops, unless you count superstores – there are plenty of them. Last Thursday I went there to meet the Girl who was arriving by coach. A very delayed coach because it was Eastertime and the roads were busy. So I parked the car at Asda next to the coach station and did some shopping and found a new smoke alarm without trying. And managed to buy yet another lightbulb that didn’t fit the lamp it was meant for. Excellent.

When she texted that they were going to be even more delayed, I went for a bit of a walk and found that there are some bits of Bridgwater, that when photographed – if you Photoshop out the plastic bags blowing in the wind and crop judiciously – can look quite appealing.

But for the most part, I feel sorry for this erstwhile historic centre, market town and port, for having been cut up by roads that split its heart.

So that now we drive around the centre from one ugly retail park to another and miss the only architecture worth looking at and the town centre that has so much history nearby, but is now neglected and showing signs of dereliction.

 I’m probably being unfair in many ways. I know Bridgwater has a vibrant annual carnival and has one of the south west’s best motorcycle dealerships. I’m sure there are people who love living here and many parts that I haven’t seen. So, if this offends, I’m sorry, but it’s what I see when I come here.

 

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Logs, camps, and a cat

We had logs delivered in the morning. Three quarters of a lorryload, tipped as far as possible into the garage. They’ll be stashed in there until there’s a better day to move them by wheelbarrow, one load after another, to the woodshed round the other side of the house. Down the lane and up the bank and through two gates and up the slope and round the bend and over a step. It’s quite a mission, so it can wait until it’s not raining.

Feeling frowsty after lunch, we went for a walk on Ash Common. The day I first saw Spring Cottage, I looked at another cottage in Ash Priors, the village nearby. Thatched, Grade II listed and right by a little stream traversed by the front path, it was a bit overlooked by some newer houses, so it wasn’t for me. It’s nice to go back and see whether I still feel that way from time to time. And I do.

Right by – YOU ARE HERE – a map of the common, someone had dumped the body of a black and white cat in a torn bin liner. Poor, damp, muddied thing. We couldn’t think of the scenario that would lead someone to do such a thing with an adult cat. The Girl wanted to give it a proper burial. Feeling rather bleak after that discovery, we splashed down flooded paths, past newly coppiced oaks and hazel trees. Logs seemed to be the theme for the day.

Ash Common feels quite like the great London commons, with a road dissecting it and large open spaces edged by deciduous woodland. It seems an unusual space in this part of the country though, as it’s surrounded by other open countryside. It made me realise how little actual common land there sometimes is in rural areas, although there’s plenty of uphill and coastal space that’s open to all via the National Trust and local authorities, and lots of footpaths through farmland. Paradoxically, Ash Common, like most, turns out not to be common land at all, but privately owned.

With birdsong above us and admiring bright lichens, we found a shelter that someone had made out of branches. More than just children, we wondered? It seemed quite well constructed and must have taken some time to put together. Then, closer to the middle of the common, we came across some tethered horses grazing and a caravan – a proper caravan with a couple and two dogs obviously living in it. A bloke with dreads came out and stared back at me. I wonder what their story is.

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It’s that time of year again…

On Saturday, it was time for my annual trip to Cobbs Cross Farm in Goathurst to buy a Christmas tree.

It’s very nearby and I love buying trees from the growers. Not only do I know our tree hasn’t been shipped miles, but it will also last better because it hasn’t been standing around out of water for weeks in some DIY superstore.

There’s always a very jolly atmosphere with people coming and going in the yard. And more and more trees being brought in.

This year they had reindeer too. I’ve noticed that a number of places have been showing reindeer as an extra attraction, which makes me wonder where they spend the rest of the year.

The only pity was that, this year there wasn’t any mistletoe. Nothing to do with the awful weather but apparently things with their supplier didn’t work out. But one thing leads to another and, as a result, I discovered the English Mistletoe Shop which sells grow-your-own kits. So if you have three or four years’ patience or are still looking for a present for a keen gardener, Bob’s your uncle.

I like to imagine this is how your Uncle Bob might look. Have a good week!

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Out and about in Barford Park

Inspired by today’s crisp wintry weather, I made a little detour on the way to buying a Christmas tree through Barford Park, two miles away. It’s only small, as grand houses go, but very pretty and retains a few good old features.

The lane from Four Forks goes straight through the grounds and past the house, and I would have loved to have gone for a proper walk along the public footpath. But as it was, I just briefly wandered up and down the road and tried out the new camera a bit.

Around the back of the house, among other farm buildings, I spotted an outbuilding sitting in the traditional manner on straddle stones.

These were used historically to prevent vermin getting into grain stores and barns. You can see how the horizontally lying stones would make it difficult enough for them to give up and go elsewhere.

I rather wish Spring Cottage and its outbuildings were on straddle stones – the cats and I have dealt with four dead mice today, about which I have very mixed feelings. I don’t want to kill them unnecessarily but, when they come in from the cold, they chew up the lagging around the pipes in the loft to make nests, which once led to a burst pipe.

Just down the lane, there’s a lovely old gate that must have survived a century or more.

And the trees are just magnificent, silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

The front of the house has views over the park across a ha-ha to keep the animals out of the gardens, and the back of the house is surrounded by an extremely well fortified wall, which I can only hope hides a marvellous kitchen garden.

I’ve never felt envious of those who live in such places until today. Perhaps it’s something to do with its relatively smallish scale or perhaps it was just that it was such a lovely day at long last.

On the photographic front, I’m not that keen on the camera yet. Without a viewfinder, I’m finding I have to take so many more pictures just to get a few that are acceptable. However, I hope I’ll get better at this with more practice.

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Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…

Most British people of a certain age will remember a Chas and Dave song called Rabbit from the late 1970s/early 80s. I was reminded of it when I was looking through pictures I’d taken in other Novembers in Somerset.

I would love to know about the history behind the construction of this Georgian house whose doorway, with it’s beautiful fanlight, is literally covered with rabbits.

Situated in a quiet Langport side street but close to the main street at the end where merchants built their homes, it’s a relatively unassuming house but one could guess that whoever built it had some kind of business connected with rabbits. Rabbit was once, of course, a much greater source of meat than it is today, with historical records showing rabbit warrens being recorded as parts of properties with separate valuations. Rabbit skin would also have been a valuable source of warmth for winter clothing in the days before fleece and down clothing.

Coincidentally, I’ve just discovered this talk on Monday about Langport’s architecture seen through the eyes of Nikolaus Pevsner. Only wish I could go. But meanwhile I will just have to make do with British History Online in which I could get completely lost for hours at a time.

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Sitting on my fence

As so often, something small leads to something big. I thought I’d pick a few blackberries from the hedge at the back of the house. The result was spending most of the afternoon heaving at a dead blackthorn.

We’re very lucky around here. Being in an AONB – Area of Outstanding Beauty, England’s first – probably has something to do with it. The hedges are mostly in pretty good shape, compared to some parts of the UK, where they’ve been mostly replaced by wire fencing or removed completely as fields become larger and larger, with all the associated loss of wildlife and shelter.

Like many hedges, the one around this garden is made up of a mixture of different species, either in large sections or completely mixed: brambles or blackberry, honeysuckle (lonicera nitida also known as Poor Man’s Box), blackthorn, laurel, hazel, eleagnus, field maple and holly.

A hedge is a pretty substantial thing seen in cross section – this one must be almost 12 feet across – where they’re allowed to grow properly and not be cut for road safety or the convenience of moving gigantic farm machinery.

The reason this part of hedge is so clear in cross section is because a part of it has been removed – before my time – to allow views from the cottage across the hills down to Bridgwater Bay.

At the other end of the house, part of the hedge was at some time removed to allow for the building of the woodshed. Part of this, a bit of blackthorn, died last year and I’ve been waiting for the stump to rot enough for me to remove it and taking it out in bits whenever one of the trunks rotted enough to be pried loose.

Today I got rid of its last couple of trunks, after an afternoon of stripping and cutting away the ivy, brambles and roses. It looks annoyingly slender and light here in the wheelbarrow but it certainly wasn’t easy to shift.

Done now, though.

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Tired and emotional

The Boy departed and family from Canada arrived on the same day. Overlapping at the airport for an hour or so, we ate lunch together surrounded by surreally tasteful tables and baggage trolleys before going from arrivals in one terminal to departures in another. I hugged my boy tightly and a silent voice within me said, “don’t go,” and “spread your wings,” in the same breath.

Then I slept in unaccustomed beds in familiar houses, dreams interrupted by jetlaggy stumblings and the sudden, jolting reminder that things have changed. While I played tour guide, we walked urban pavements and country fields, stood under trees sheltering from bursts of rain, took off our waterproofs as the sun came out and put them back on as the clouds rolled back over, only to repeat it all quarter of an hour later.

We admired London transformed by Olympic-inspired activity and watched house martens dive into eave-housed nests and brushed spiders off our shoulders. The roadside sale of a hen house in the next hamlet and some snub-nosed lolling puppies in this one beckoned towards a different life. We ate in pubs on the south bank and in West Bagborough and Porlock Weir, as well as tea rooms in Dunster. We looked at empty, polish-scented churches of various degrees of ancientness, marvelling at parchment from the thirteenth century signed by Edward I in one and a knight’s tomb from the fifteenth century defaced by graffiti in the seventeenth, in another.

I baked scones and we ate them with clotted cream and blackberry jam made in my first year here. And I drove and drove and drove. Little things, like the tiny carrots I grew that we dug up and ate for supper, made me want to cry. Then I lit a fire and some candles, and the already autumn-smelling night drew in while we read.

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Silver lining

After such a miserably wet day, yesterday evening turned out quite nice, so when I saw deer up in the field, I grabbed the camera and my keys and dashed out to photograph them.

I’m so glad I did.

The light was gorgeous and it completely made me remember what a glorious place this is.

And why I am here.

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Water, water, every where

I’d like to post something positive about this summer but the weather still shows no sign of improvement after weeks and weeks of rain.

I had very little inclination to make it down to Spring Cottage yesterday, given the wild weather forecast. But I worry when I know there could be problems I need to sort out. Plus, I need my fix of green, horse and a wider horizon.

The lane had flooded and I was reminded how precient it had been to check the Environment Agency’s flood risk map before I moved here. At almost the highest point around here, your ears pop with the change in altitude as you come up the lane to the cottage. Despite the extra effort required on walks and rides hereabouts, I’d rather not be down below in the little hamlet where most people round here live. It turned out that we’d had our own type of flood at the cottage though, with the ongoing saga of the leaking chimney.

Strong winds blowing from the south east meant that rain is still being driven in from somewhere. It’s even been getting in through the windows.

However, to look on the bright side, I have health and enough to eat, including these beautiful pale blue duck eggs that I bought at the farm near Nether Stowey (my Coleridge link – this is all much cleverer than it appears…) this morning. So I’m going put a bucket under the leaking chimney, light a fire to dry it out, curl up with my book and feel positive after all.

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You think it’s quiet living in the country?

Living down the road from a really big dairy farming operation can mean a huge amount of traffic, when crops are brought in for storage once every few weeks over the summer. There’s also a lesser amount of daily traffic generated by tanker collections of milk, which is picked up twice daily to be made into cheese at Cricketer Farm.

When I first looked at Google maps for an aerial view of the cottage almost four years ago, the surrounding fields were still being used as pasture. Now for part of the year, grass is grown for sileage and the rest of the time, the summer months, it’s maize for feedstock. Bye bye view from downstairs windows.

This great big machine could barely get past the narrower parts of the lane.

The cows and a smaller number of calves reared for veal are kept in semi-open sheds and the feed is brought to them in the form of sileage (grass that’s grown for feed and then stored). This is quite a recent change that represent an economy for the farmers, whose huge herd would otherwise spend much of their time being herded in and out, with lots of frustrating queueing because there are so many of them. Camels passing through the eye of a needle come to mind. But with the giant supermarkets controlling the price of milk and lowering this all the time, working as economical a farm as possible is crucial to the survival of many dairy farmers. So I have every sympathy with them. We all depend on their milk supply.

The picture above is the view from my back garden with the massive field muncher going past on the other side of what is a pretty tall hedge.

The footpath that goes through the farm is not a route I take very often as I tend to walk away from habitation rather than through it. But when you walk past the cowsheds, the cows are all rather sweetly listening to Radio 2 played rather quietly over loudspeakers. Apparently it calms them.

I’m not so sure what I think about this. I think I’d rather the cows moved about, but what do I know? I fully acknowledge that I’m just a transplanted townie.

And as for the traffic, it’s just the luck of the draw. If I lived on the other side of the farm, I would get half as much traffic. On the other hand, if I lived on the other side of the farm, my views wouldn’t be as nice. You win some, you lose some. That’s the way I look at it.

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Real retro: my local

After a long, tiring day of strimming the banks at the back of the house, weeding, lugging around sacks of soil and manure, and putting up a reed-screen contraption thing to disguise the oil tank, I head off to the pub in the evening. I’ve stupidly forgotten to buy any food, even though I’ve been close to a supermarket earlier in the day. Sometimes life just feels too short for a huge shop and long queues.

I walk up the lane, taking real pleasure in one of the first good evenings in couple of weeks. I notice that a tree has come down up the road in the gales; its branches still stranded in limbo on top of the hedge on one side of the lane but its trunk now vanished, leaving a big, naked gap in the hedge on the other.

Swallows swoop, cows moo and lambs bleat. Somewhere, in the distance, quite far away, a dog barks. If you listen hard on a country evening, there’s always a dog barking somewhere.

One of the real blessings of living here is having a pub that does food within walking distance. It’s remarkable because there’s not much else within walking distance, unless you count fields and hedges. Well, there’s a letterbox, just past the farm, but it doesn’t do food.

I time it to arrive at the pub on the dot of seven – no ‘longer opening hours’ in this neck of the woods and I’m starving. I’ve been there waiting on the doorstep for them to open up before now.

Surprisingly, the pub is already heaving with people. Somerset time doesn’t always correspond to real time. Dave, the landlord, and Sue, who helps behind the bar but lives at the farm, are looking hot and bothered trying to keep up with the orders. The checked shirt and merino pullover crew are out in force. “There’ll be a bit of a wait,” says Dave. So I tuck myself into one of the few remaining seats – a chair by the fireside – with a pint of beer, The Guardian and my iPhone (they have free wifi intermittently when Dave forgets to turn off the router).

I sometimes struggle to explain the pub’s appeal but today I finally realise what it is. It’s that it’s an almost completely unreconstructed pub from the 1970s, all red patterned carpet, brown painted wood, horse brasses and ballads like Please release me always – always, without fail – playing softly in the background. No sawdust on floorboards and deafening conversation echoing around the place here. You get the drift?

Some of the customers haven’t changed either. Quite literally in the case of one of the elderly women sitting nearby, who is wearing an orange and brown flowered dress that she must have purchased over 30 years ago.

On quieter nights, when the customers all start chatting across the bar to each other, I’ve heard regulars say they’ve been coming here for 30 years and that neither the staff nor the menu has changed. It may not be very exciting but it’s good and reliable: scampi and chips, fish pie, cauliflower cheese, sausage and mash, steak and chips and so on. A bit of salad comes on the side of each of the oval plates, that can only be described as ‘garnish’. You aren’t expected to eat it because ‘five-a-day‘ hasn’t been invented yet. But, because I’m not quite a part of this time warp, I always do.

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Summertime?

Driving down the M4 today, in Wiltshire, I had the sudden feeling of passing through an invisible curtain, leaving behind a cold, grey Spring day and passing into Summer.

When we arrived, the cats went straight out and lay down to enjoy the warmth. I pottered about looking at what had changed in the garden in the last week.

I’m thinking about converting those disused cold frames into raised beds for vegetables. I didn’t think this would work but I discovered today that they have drainage pipes built into the backs of them, so I think it might. I’m a bit daunted by the idea of ordering almost a tonne of topsoil.

Last year’s herb planting is looking fine, although I probably shouldn’t have let them flower but they’re so pretty. The strawberries are all in flower too.

The peonies are out and I must prop this one up before it bites the dust.

Now it’s nine o’clock at night but as the farmers are hell bent on working all the daylight hours, three, no, sorry, four tractors have just gone past. The birds are singing their last notes as the light fades. I’m tired but looking forward to tomorrow.

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Gain and pain: a typical country weekend

At long last, the weather was fine and springlike this weekend, after about five weeks of grey skies and rain.

Saturday

I dropped by Nether Stowey car boot sale this morning – the first of the season – which was rather lame. A very poor turnout of sellers; about half as many as usual. I should think most people were so delighted to have some good weather for the first time in weeks, that they had other activities on their minds. I must keep going though as I’ve had such good things from there in the past: a huge fireguard, a tin bath, a great set of Hedgerow china for a song, and this Lloyd Loom linen basket/stool.

Entertainingly subtitled: ‘a Lusty product’.

I’ve finally done it up with some oil cloth from Norfolk Textiles (I’m obsessed with oilcloth) and some braid from V.V. Rouleaux and it now looks like this. I scrubbed it thoroughly but didn’t repaint it, as I wanted to keep its slightly worn appearance. But I find I neither like it particularly nor have any use for it, so I’ll probably give it away.

When I got back, I set to strimming the roadside banks, which is the perfect situation to encounter neighbours. (Round here anyone who lives within a half-mile radius is considered a neighbour as there’s no-one immediate.) I met two women passing today for the first time: one who lives in a house called Witches Barn (not sure about apostrophe) and the other, on horseback with two dogs running free (so brave, or perhaps, foolish), who is newer here than I am, which makes me feel better.

Having chatted with them, I thought, it really is a bit like The Archers, with local people being up in arms about a new anaerobic digester and various planning applications. “Where’s it all going to go?” One of them wanted to know. Where indeed? Into a big lagoon of slurry, possibly at the farm down the lane. Oh joy. It smells bad enough from time to time, as it is.

Then I lay about on the grass in the sun, listening to the birds and the tractor in the field next door, and weeded for hours and hours. Now I ache from bending and kneeling, as well as from wielding the strimmer.

Sunday

This morning I went riding: sunshine, swallows flying up high, the ground finally drying out after weeks of rain, sparrow fledglings chattering noisily in the bushes, carpets of bluebells in the woodland for as far as the eye could see, the countryside really starting to brighten as the trees thicken with leaves and rape fields come into flower. And, when we got to Cothelstone Hill, the sheer pleasure of a rare, clear, 360 degree view from the Seven Sisters. Fabulous.

It was all great until Marmalade – a rather inappropriately named black and white mare – got thoroughly fed up with me while we were trying to close a gate (easier said than done on horseback) and suddenly took off at speed straight into a tree branch that caught me on the head, back of the neck and shoulder. You’re taught to bend forward when encountering an overhanging object; if I hadn’t instinctively done that, I would have been thwacked straight in the face. Thank goodness for riding hats too, although the impact rammed mine down so hard that one my eyebrows feels bruised. Anyway, I’ll live.

I find myself thinking that this place is has marvellously healing powers for the weary mind and soul, if not the body.

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Joining in

Casting my mind back to this time last year, the UK was gripped with royal wedding fever and a heatwave. Today dawned grey, miserable and windy, with a fog so thick, early on, that I couldn’t clearly make out the other side of the lane. Today, I was marshalling at Manor Farm’s Fun Ride, which raised over £1,000 for the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance.

I walked over the fields to the farm gritting my teeth and clad in so many layers of clothes and waterproofs that I could barely move, to help set up things for the event in a field so muddy, that tractors had to tow the vehicles in and out. People weren’t put off by the poor weather though, as riders are hardy souls, and about 50 people and horses turned up.

The event was for riders and their own horses, so none of Sue’s regulars rode but almost all joined in to help out in one way or another, like bringing cakes, bread and quiches for the cake sale, or putting up gazebos.

Unlike when you’re actually on horseback, when the best you can do is shout at each other over your shoulder, this was a chance to get to know a few riders who live locally. This kind of joining in is really important to me, as it’s hard enough to feel part of the community, when you’re not here all the time.

Once the ride had started, we were driven to our marshalling positions in the middle of nowhere, to point the riders in the right direction. Cue a further three hours standing in the cold. The fog dissipated mid-morning by converting itself into rain and then a dampness that forced itself right into my bones.

The expected ranks of horse-loving girls were padded out by all sorts today, from the very well-heeled – three generations of a family who turned up with an enormous four-horse transporter full of thoroughbreds, and people who talked about hunting, to a cheeky, young, overall-clad Irish jockey on a flirty little pony, who had broken three vertebrae at Wincanton recently and wasn’t back to racing yet. There was also an incredibly arthritic old chap, who had already ridden three miles to get to the start. He told us to just take his money – and by the way, he wouldn’t be finishing at the finish, as he would just go on home and he didn’t need a entry number, thank you.

The old chap’s gnarled hands and bony old ride put me in mind of the other-worldly horse and rider in Goethe’s poem Der Erlkönig. I think my mind must still be full of last night’s Radio Four drama, whose quite frightening ending (aided by award-winning sound design) happened just as my headlights were being bounced back at me by swirling fog as I drove over the Quantocks to the cottage. I’m locking my doors firmly tonight.

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