Hibernating!

Old Man's Beard

 Happy New Year to all my loyal readers!

Although it has only been a month, Christmas seems to have happened ages ago! Jeni and I had a long, but uneventful journey from Somerset to Sheffield arriving in time for lunch on Christmas Eve. This year the whole family was together and we had the addition of my brother’s partner’s mother on Christmas Day, so we were quite a gathering. Much eating and drinking took place over the three days that we were there and we all returned home with a share of the leftovers! In fact, we were having such a good time that I don’t think anyone remembered to take any photos!

I was only back at home for a few days before I repacked the car and headed back to Cheltenham to spend New Year and most of January with my Mum. This arrangement seems to work well for both of us, providing company at an otherwise quiet time of the year: I don’t start gardening again until the beginning of March and, sometimes, bad weather curtails Mum’s social life (which is much better than mine!), plus it means that I can be on hand to take Mum to any appointments that she may have without her having to rely on public transport or taxis.

On days when the weather is bright, we can often be found trundling slowly around the neighbourhood for an ‘airing’ but with the very cold, icy conditions that we’ve had recently, we are more likely to be doing crosswords or reading and, in my case, knitting! I have knitted a few pairs of socks to replenish my depleted stocks and am now knitting a child’s jacket, as I sold a couple of those before Christmas, as well.

I always chide myself for being ‘lazy’ at this time of the year but, as a friend pointed out, it is how Nature’s cycle works – plants and animals slow down, sleep a lot and wait for the warmer Spring weather, so I am only getting closer to my ‘natural’ self! I rather like that idea, although my body does seem to stiffen up more alarmingly with each passing season of inactivity. This year, to try and combat my body seizing up entirely, I have brought my yoga mat with me and am trying to do a short Pilates work out at least every other day, plus working on my balance, too. My Pilates teacher would be very pleased with me and, hopefully, when I go back to classes in March I won’t feel as if I’ve never done it before!

Green Woodpecker

Ant Hunting!

One of the things that Mum and I enjoy doing is watching the birds on the feeders. I bought some sunflower hearts and a suet block to add to the existing fat balls and bird seed and we have been rewarded by visiting flocks of goldfinch and long-tailed tits. On one day we also had a visit from the jay and a green woodpecker who spent ages on the lawn probing for ants. I wondered what else they ate as I would have thought that ants were a bit scarce at this time of the year, but the RSPB website just says ‘ants, ants and more ants’, so I guess that’s all they eat. There is a very quick young black and white cat that visits the garden and hides in the shrubs before dashing out to chase the birds and I have found evidence of two ‘kills’ on the lawn, so I take great pleasure in leaping from my seat, flinging open the patio door and yelling ‘Clear off, you b****r!’ at it. It has now learned to check the patio door for movement before crossing the grass and disappearing, at speed, through a hole in the fence! Note to all the cat-lovers: I quite like cats, really, but I hate them catching birds.

The ford at Spring Bottom

The Pooh-stick bridge at Spring Bottom

Some days I have been out for longer walks, without Mum, and have pounded the lanes around the area. When I was growing up here the area could still be classed as a village, with its own Urban District Council and a degree of autonomy, but it is now very much a suburb of Cheltenham. It is actually a lot more well-to-do as than it used to be as the local school is high up in the league tables and the house prices have risen exponentially. Charlton Kings had very humble beginnings as it was mainly an agricultural settlement, but when Cheltenham started to take off as a fashionable Spa town it became the centre of the laundry industry for all of the big houses and hotels that sprang up. This industry is reflected in a couple of old street names: Lyefield Road and Sappercombe Lane and there is an area of open land that is still known as the Laundry Field. The whole area is criss-crossed with small lanes and footpaths that probably provided access for the washerwomen to the drying fields, and these still run behind the houses on the new estates which means that I can go for quite a distance without having to walk along roads. They can feel quite mysterious being only a few feet wide and usually enclosed between high fences, walls and hedges and are obviously used as pathways by the local foxes as I can often detect their scent hanging in the still air. I was interested to know what these types of pathways were called in other areas of the country as, in Somerset, they are often known as ‘drangs’ and, as children in Charlton Kings, we referred to them as ‘avers’. It turns out that there are quite a few regional variations from ‘ginnels’, ‘snickets’ and ‘entries’ in the North to ‘jittys’ and ‘jennels’ in Nottingham, and ‘twittens’ in Kent. However, they don’t seem to have stayed completely regional as we had a Twitchens Lane in the Somerset village that I used to live in, and my ex (Somerset born and bred) used to say of someone with bandy legs ‘he couldn’t stop a pig in an entry’. I would be interested to know if any of you call them something different again.

Drang, twitten or aver?

Old path with original metal railings

A couple of days ago I ended up walking much further than I’d anticipated. I had no clear idea of where I was heading but ended up walking up an old sunken trackway onto the hill above the village. Initially I thought I would walk down the other side and come out near my old childhood home, but I missed the footpath and ended up climbing another hill and coming out on the Gloucester to Andoversford road that runs along the edge of the Cotswold escarpment. From there I walked back to the junction with the Cheltenham to Cirencester road that crosses it at right angles and then back along a further footpath before dropping back down the hill and coming out on the main road a mile or so from Mum’s. The sun was going down, the temperature was plummeting and I was footsore and weary by the time I got back! The next day, with the aid of an Ordnance Survey map and a piece of thread (a method I was taught in Physical Geography at school -thank you Miss Edwards!) I worked out how far I’d actually walked and was disappointed to discover that it was only five miles, but it was all up and down hill, so was probably further really! It was worth the climb, though, as the view over Cheltenham was spectacular but a bit hazy towards the Malvern Hills.

Cheltenham from Wistley Hill

I am going home every couple of weeks to check on my little house and also attend appointments and catch up with Jeni, and when I went back last time it was after we'd had days of torrential rain. I was glad I went home in daylight as the amount of surface water was horrendous and at several points the water was pouring off the fields onto the roads and we were all having to be very courteous and allow people to negotiate the flood waters one car at a time, keeping to the crown of the road to prevent  being inundated. When I looked out of my dining room window I was surprised by how flooded the moors were - it was very easy to visualise Glastonbury as being the island it once was. I guess if sea levels rise as predicted, it may well be an island again!

Flooded moors!

I hope you are all managing to stay warm and cosy and, by the next time I write, perhaps the weather will be warmer and there will be some more Spring flowers out.

Early snowdrops in Mum's rockery