The Long and the Short of it

Well! It’s Wednesday, I’ve been to the chiropodist and I’m sufficiently relaxed to reflect on the Thornbury Step into Spring Walking Festival that took place over the Weekend.

As advised, we started small, unlike the Bristol Walk Fest that is today appealing for walk leaders for their event, which is taking place over the whole of May! We had a long, a medium and a short walk for each of the three days. The long walks were poorly attended, while four of the shorter walks sold out.

Not what I expected. However, I led the long walks – so these are the ones I know the most about.

There were five stalwarts waiting at the bus stop to accompany me to Bradley Stoke, and there was an unexpected sixth already upstairs in the bus. The rain held off as we made our way through Savage’s Wood, across Primrose Bridge and along Patchway Common to the A38. Then through the tunnel to Hempton Lane and the Aztec West estate, with its ponds and Canada Geese, which appeared to have clipped wings to keep them on site. So far we were dry shod, but we ventured into the wet when we entered into the Tumps, Common Land provided as compensation for the loss of Charlton village and its common, which was sacrificed to provide a runway for the ill-fated Brabazon airliner in 1949. The Tumps are hillocks created by the creation of the mainline railway track to Wales that runs underneath to the Severn Tunnel. We were going to go through Cattybrook Brick Works, which were set up to make bricks to line the tunnel, but that route was filthy after the rain so we took the high path to Almondsbury. From whence we descended to Acorn Co-Forest and on to lunch at the Swan in Tockington. Very satisfactory as the rain came down as we were eating. The return to Thornbury was dry and without incident – but we did visit the Quaker burial ground on the way past.

The Saturday walk was a substitute for the Dursley walk that was advertised. It was too soggy over the top of Falfield and there were too many rotten stiles so I swapped in The Royal Oak route from Charfield. This worked really well as the Royal Oak was open in its brand new guise as the Oak House Cafe – so we stopped there for coffee as they had kept us a table. The route has a redundant grade I listed church, quarries, woods, an ancient oak, snowdrops and the tale of Thomas Till the poacher killed by a spring gun. The three signed up walkers were joined by Danny and Jo Bonnet and their dog Neville, named after a character from Harry Potter at the last minute. Dogs are no normally allowed, but Neville had a proven track record and the numbers needed boosting. As it happens, it turned out that Danny and Luke shared many interests to talk about!

I was particularly disappointed by the turn out for the Sunday Terminalis boundary walk, because it was the idea of Beating the Bounds and the spring rituals associated with Jupiter Terminalis that had made me insist on this date for the festival. Nevertheless, I think Mike Harris of Thornbury and Tracey Murray from Oxfordshire, who took part in all three walks, Carol Portas of Portishead, who did the first and last and David Sach had a good time. They seemed to appreciate my ceremonies involving grain, honey and wine offered to the birds and showed ingenuity when a section of woodland that had been dry(ish) on Saturday turned out to be flooded on Sunday. We were rewarded by the sun when we arrived at Camp Hill for a picnic lunch with an optional nip of Sloe Gin to warm our cockles.