Overlooking Ruskin Mill fish farm

It has been a gorgeous and uplifting day from the moment the curtains were drawn to reveal red tinged puffy clouds in the east and a blue sky in the background. Then followed the reverse of the normal pattern of the weather, when the clouds swiftly evaporated to leave a clear blue sky which has been with us all day.

I offered to deliver some products for Helena at the Natural Health Centre she is affiliated with in Nailsworth, a nearby town up one of the other five valleys that flow to and meet at Stroud. I bought a new car battery on the way, which I have been concerned to get as the cold frosty mornings have been draining the old battery rather too much. After it was fitted I carried along the A46 Bath Road to Nailsworth following the line of the river and its attendant mills.

After my drop-off and a bit of shopping, I turned left instead of right, following the river further up the valley towards a small village called Horsley. It is classic Cotswold country with the river having incised a very deep valley within a short distance, where several old mills were sited to draw upon the abundant water power. The first large mill between the two settlements is Ruskin Mill, which is now a complex of buildings run by the Ruskin Mill Educational Trust, run on Rudolf Steiner principles. There is a record of a corn mill here in 1564, and a fulling mill in the 17th century, but the main facade is probably the result of rebuilding in the 1820s. The waterwheel is still working.

Ruskin Mill College bought a nearby fish farm that had fallen into receivership, and this has since been renovated to give direct educational opportunities to students. Trout has been farmed there for almost a century and a half; they now grow organic native brown trout here, using the natural spring water that used to power the looms at the mill. The primary purpose of the fish farm is to produce beneficial food for the students at Nailsworth and at the Trust's other colleges, and for dishes created in the Ruskin Mill coffee shop.

I parked up high further along the valley and walked back along the old turnpike road until I reached a footpath that took me down to the ponds of the fish farm. I took this picture just before I left the road showing part of the leet to the mill in the foreground, behind which in succession are drainsage channel, the stream and then various fish ponds between the valley sides, and a small conservatory at the bottom of the far bank. Coppiced woods, now abandoned, line the slopes below the line of the beech trees on the higher ground.

One of the people working there stopped to answer my question about how the pond systems work. Several of them were lying empty revealing massive cotswold stones lying crazy paving on top of the impervious clay all normally below water level. Each pond has about a thousand trout at a time when they are fully grown.

What a glorious day, and I'm so glad to have had a good walk in the warm sunshine and explored closely an area I hadn't seen properly before. I even came a cross a standing stone on a small knoll, as well as many springs, some with carved stone frames, others just leaking out of the ground.