"Look what I've found!"

For our bank holiday grand day out, we decided to go to the seaside, to Clevedon on the North Somerset coast. It's one of our special places, and I won't have any truck with anyone who says the Bristol channel is 'not the proper seaside'. Who cares if the water is muddy? The restored pier was voted 'pier of the year' in 2012. (Who thinks up these titles?)

I can honestly say that the pier has my name on it. Yes, as a supporter of its restoration I have my own little brass coffin-plaque on it. Finding it is always fun. Row 73a, 17 if you're interested. While there on the pier, we saw some people with tins of Brasso polishing up their plaques, presumably the names of their dear-departed. I must say, it never occurred to me to bring a bottle of Brasso...

We also witnessed a distressing scene in which a couple of lads who were fishing from the pier caught a huge skate; landed it in a net; weighed it, photographed it, stuffed it into a rusty shopping basket on a long rope, and tried to release it. Being very large, it could not escape the basket, so they had to haul it up, transfer it back to the landing net, and let it go again. Eventually it was washed out of the net, back into the sea. The fish was still breathing, but clearly exhausted. My thinking is that when fish rule the world, it'll be our turn to be caught, examined and thrown back. Spare us the shopping basket, though!

After our beach 'posh picnic' which included half my graze box and a few tasty morsels bought along the way, we took our pier outing. We then headed off to the other side of the bay. I wanted to explore a stretch of coastal path called the Poets walk, after Tennyson. Wasn't he also on the Isle of Wight? I set off on the circular walk backwards, going clockwise instead of anticlockwise, so couldn't find any of the landmarks! This was annoying, but eventually at the church in the middle I oriented myself and was able to find everything mentioned in the little guide, apart from a fancy house built by a sugar baron of the slave-trading era. (Clevedon is near Bristol, whose fortunes were largely built on the slave trade).


I was particularly struck by the 'marine lake', a sort of swimming lake adjacent to the sea, but minus the mud! I think CleanSteve is going to blip it. He didn't come on the walk with me, but when we met up again, I encouraged him and the car to go back to St Andrew's church, where the glebe land adjoining the churchyard has been set aside to make a community wildlife area. It's an old quarry, it seems, but around the edges woodchip paths have been laid, and rustic benches placed. Bluebells, pink campion and nettles grow in abundance. At the end of the site lie the poet's path and views across the 'sea' to Wales. There are some hens in an enclosed area, and it appears that many nut trees have been planted, though they are as yet but saplings. We saw a wild rabbit, who showed no fear of us. I will place a couple of pictures in my blipfolio, not that they are wonderful shots, but because the place touched me, and made me long for such a wildlife haven in my town. It wouldn't take much to let nature reclaim the bottom half of our garden, but without the trees and the sea, it would not be the same. I think I prefer semi-wooded areas to open spaces. On reflection, this was always the case with me.

The journey back was achieved in an hour: no holdups on the M5! On the way down, roadworks and accidents were grim, but we escaped the motorway at Portishead. So we came back roughly the same way, in rather less time. What a brilliant bank holiday it has been:

sunshine, Somerset, sea air;
picnics, pebbles, poets and piers;
walking, wandering and wondering.


Days like this are worth the wait. Without the winter, and the economic gloom of the past five years, who knows....?

I am linking this to my Tobermory backblip of centuries ago, because there's something and nothing similar about the walks I undertook then and now.