the Kennet and Avon Winter Floating Fayre at Bradford on Avon

The winter fayre is fast approaching; it will take place on the weekend of 25th and 26th November, on the upper and lower wharves and the West Barn at Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire.

It's always a lively occasion, with excellent things for sale and things to do and eat.

And I'll have my new calendars there, as well as the usual maps, cards, and poetry.

the Kennet and Avon Canal Wildlife Calendar 2024

Rooks at Horton Bridge (with fieldfares and a muntjac)

 

Fresh from the printers, here's my new calendar. Contains twelve whole months, with a wide variety of wildlife, including the beavers that have taken up residence on the Avon!

Here's what the layout looks like

And if you can't find me on my boat (I'll be at the floating Fayre in Bradford on Avon on the last weekend of November, otherwise somewhere in the wilds of Wiltshire) you can get one from Devizes Books, or my Etsy shop here

a grass snake at Claverton

Doing the last few pictures for next year's calendar, I'm hopping to and from around the months that are left to do, rather than drawing things in the one I'm in right now, which is October, at the moment.

So here's one for April, the cruellest month according to TS Eliot. It's the pumping station at Claverton, where a water wheel operates a pump to push water up the hill into the canal. The water is pumped electrically these days, but the old system has been restored, and works sometimes for open days.

From my mooring on the Semington aqueduct, I look across the broad floodplain of the Avon and watch the autumn progress. The field of maize harvested, the rooks wheeling over the trees and dropping to pace the stubble. The deer slipping oin and out of the big field where the cattle have no escape from the frosts that have begun, and sit there looking resigned and stoical in the morning mist.

a sun dog, in there somewhere

the Pear Tree Churches

I wanted to look at the church of St Mary the Virgin in Limpley Stoke, in the valley of the Avon between Bath and Bradford on Avon, and as I was driving by the other day, I stopped.

There's a pear tree in the north west corner of the churchyard, and I remembered someone telling me about the Pear Tree Churches around here. So it was nice to see an actual tree, with pears on.

The story goes that King Aethelred gave the Manor of Bradford to the Abbey of Shaftesbury, perhaps as expiation for his involvement in the murder of his half-brother in Corfe Castle. And the Abbess had pear trees planted on the boundary of the manor, and then chapels built to go  with the pear trees.

As stories go, it's hard to track down any record of this story beyond local anecdote, but as anecdotes go it's a nice one. And in the town of Bradford, below the chapel of St Mary Tory, is the Ladywell, formerly the town's water supply; and it's been decorated with seven pear blossoms, to indicate the seven churches within the estate; Atworth, Bradford, Holt, Limpley Stoke, South Wraxall, Winsley and Wingfield.

Anyway, here I was in the presence of the pear tree at the church of St Mary the Virgin, in Limpley Stoke, formerly dedicated to St Edith (and a pilgrim trail begins here and goes 40 miles to Wilton in Salisbury). Not the original pear tree, which would have been about a thousand years old by now. But still, unimpeachably peary.

Going in, you immediately see the original saxon door to the church, from back when it was smaller, now beached in the middle of the nave.

A memorial slab on the floor of the nave was so worn that it was hard to make out what it was; if you squint a little, you may see a manatee there.

Outside, I nibbled blackberries, while a dog walker told me that this was originally a Knights Templar place and the coffin lids in the churchyard dated from then. Not sure how reliable that gen was, tbh.

The walker followed his dog down the field and out of sight. I picked two pears and put them in my pocket to take home.

wasps and cider

I've got enough new pictures to put together another set of postcards, which cost £5 and can be found here in my Etsy shop.

I'm slowly heading westward, my favourite direction. In a week's time I should be in Bath, for the Floating Fair. But this morning I'm out in the wide open Avon valley, near Melksham, and the mornings are chilly and misty, and rather nice to wander out in.

Here's a wasp, sharing my cider.

hawking after swifts

I was thinking about Hobbies, the other day. The birds of prey, you understand, not the table football. I saw one last year, as we approached Day's Lock on the Thames, and it was breathtaking in its swoopiness as it chased swifts around the trees.

 

Are there, I wondered, any round here, at Sells Green? I've heard reports of them, but not from very reliable witnesses. But sometimes nature comes up with the goods most obligingly; two friends moored up here were rather excited to spot one, hawking around the reed beds here.

 

So that was a good reason to add one to a picture, and here it is, though I've drawn it as I remembered it on the Thames, because despite my standing around with the binoculars, hoping for a sighting, it hasn't reappeared, or at least not while I was watching.

 

And I've added my friends on their boat, too.

Glow worms on a Wiltshire canal

Before I moved onto the canal, I'd only ever seen two glow worms; once in deepest Herefordshire, as we walked home to our tents after an evening at the pub, during a stint as strawberry picker in my teens; and once in a Devon lane near Modbury, thirty years ago, again returning from a pub.

Along the Kennet and Avon canal, though, there's loads, and sometimes the towpath resembles a flare path, confusing the RAF transport planes who are constantly flitting about overhead on their way to and from Salisbury Plain, so that you may find a Hercules unexpectedly parked outside your boat at odd hours of the night.

The Canal and River Trust have made some effort to respond to local wildlife needs by adjusting the mowing schedule, and places with known glow worm populations are marked by posts, so that the contractors can avoid them. But it doesn't always work, and now and then the old fashioned scorched earth policy is enacted. Though in general, this year, the towpath has been left to run wild, which is very nice for the environment, but annoys people who like to have a manicured lawn to step out onto from their boats. Guess they'd better get used to it, though; money is tight, and it's cheaper to not mow than to mow.

This painting is another for the calendar, and is set at Widewater, near Wilcot, where the canal briefly becomes a lake, because the landowner wouldn't let the canal through her land unless they made it picturesque, and paid her £500 too.