Sid in Nailsworth

I spent the morning sorting out assorted stuff for me to take to the tip.  Helena had her pile and I managed to fill the remainder of the car, including an old wooden door which had been waiting to be disposed of for far too long. Once I got started I managed to fill several garden bags with odd bits of green waste which had been annoying me for some time.  So I was pleased by the time I headed off for the five mile trip to the far side of Horsley.

The rain started falling as soon as I left Stroud, but it never got beyond a drizzle, so that unloading the car didn't get too messy.  There were lots of people at the tip although not the long queues which can occur at weekends.  On leaving the gates I was in a quandary as to whether to turn left or right, as one way would have meant I would go searching for a blip, the other would be likely to take me straight home.  I turned left for home.

The road heads down off the farming area near the top of the Cotswold hills escarpment to follow the line of the stream into Horsley, where the valley becomes much steeper as it heads down to Nailsworth.  The traffic was light and I headed out of Nailsworth along the A46 towards Stroud.  I noticed some trees had been cleared beside the river which had opened up the view of the old Railway Hotel building, which was sited close to Nailsworth Station, the former terminus of a Midland railway branch line.  The line was closed in the 1960s like most of the branch lines of Britain, and the land associated with the railway has been mostly built upon. But not in Nailsworth.

On the spur of the moment I turned the car around and drove back into the town and parked close to the Hotel in the car park of Egypt Mill, which was built over the river and beside which the station was constructed some time later.  The railway followed the winding river the few miles towards Stroud before it turned west into the Severn Vale to join the Midland main line.

The rain had just about stopped so I wandered about whilst trying to find a good view of the Hotel, which looks a rather fine building now, having been restored into holiday apartments.  I like these scenes where the river flows under mill buildings and has been at the centre of local industrial development.

I stood by the bridge trying to get an interesting picture with the bridge, the Hotel, the river and the background scene of the sloping hillsides covered by buildings.  A man walking with his dog passed by and said hello and then crossed the bridge before appearing in the background of one of my pictures of the Hotel.  I moved around onto the bridge and was looking down underneath it where I noticed that the Avening valley's stream joined the Nailsworth river.

The man with the dog walked back and asked what I was doing, and we engaged in conversation for about twenty minutes. He used to live in Avening, where he was born 90 years ago, the last of ten children as his mother died soon after his birth.  He said he had a very happy life and became a plumber and I gather he then became a property developer of some note.  He is awaiting planning permission tomorrow on his next development and currently lives in the buildings somewhere in the background of my picture.  I asked him his name and if he would let me take a picture for my Blip which rather amused him.  He said not many people talk to him anymore when goes for a walk, so I'm pleased we had our chat today.  His name is Sid.

I've added a picture of the Railway Hotel as an 'Extra Picture'.