The Severn road bridges from Haresfield Beacon

On the spur of the moment I drove up the back road to Haresfield and decided to walk along the ridge to the Beacon high up on the Cotswold escarpment. It is an ancient site of a hill fort and has still visible earthworks which are tended by the National Trust. The Cotswold Way, a newly devised pathway using old tracks, passes along the ridge and then drops steeply down to the valley bottom crossing over the River Frome and the canal before ascending up on to the escarpment again, en route for Bath. 

It was very overcast and rain was falling from distant scudding clouds. I took this picture of the Severn road bridges, which carry the M4 motorway across the River Severn and into Wales. They are about twenty-five miles away. The first bridge was built in the 1960s, and the second was completed in 1996, built to take the extra heavy traffic that has arisen.

I don't often convert to black and white but thought it would suit this rather dark image, where the landscape's colours were quite muted under grey skies.

Taken from a Wiki page:
Shortly after the opening of the Severn Bridge, Welsh poet Harri Webb wrote an 'Ode on the Severn Bridge':

Two lands at last connected
Across the waters wide,
And all the tolls collected
On the English side.