A fortnight back I took a walk in the Wensum Valley—Taverham to Ringland and back to Taverham, via the flooded gravel-workings of Costessey Pits. Alas, as I got off the bus the heavens opened and, apart from a brief spell, it remained drizzly and overcast for the rest of the day.
This Monday past (28th November) I tried the walk again. This time I took a slightly different route (Taverham to Costessey via Ringland and Ringland Hills). Mostly the day was bright and dry, if a touch cold. There follows a selection of the photos I took. The full collection can be found on Google+ (Crispina Kemp, follow this link). Hope you enjoy . . .
As I approach the bridge at Ringland the autumnal morning sun, low in the sky, rakes this dew-spangled meadow, casting long shadows from those rill-tracing poplars
Cows graze this meadow beside the Wensum. The scene caught more than my eye; it has something of a ‘Constable’s pastoral’ about it.
Those same rill-tracing poplars at Ringland while the sun, now gaining in height, shines upon autumnal grasses
Heading now to Ringland Hills, the lane is richly lined by red-headed oaks
The contrariness of nature! This sprinkling of hazel-catkins, usually seen in spring, barely screens the red-headed autumnal oak in the hedgerow beyond it.
One of the reasons for including Ringland Hills in this walk is the abundance there of silver birches. The birch and the oak are usually the first colonisers of health land. Until the turn of the last century Ringland Hills was predominantly gorse covered heath. (The gorse remains to torment summer picnickers)
More birch . . . what more needs be said
Towering birches, each eager to grab their patch of light
As I said . . . the oak and the birch are the first colonisers
But the oak, even in autumn, casts a dark shad
Bracken in a break at Ringland hills. Did a young deer perhaps once hide out here?
The birch is host to several species of fungi. These, a form of bracket-fungi, are scaling the tree, ladder-like
Between Ringland Hills and Costessey the River Wensum flows close to the lane presenting excellent shots for the photographer at any time of year, but particularly now with the autumn colours reflected in its almost-still waters
So many photos, it was difficult to decide which to include here (for more see the link above). I chose this one because of its richness
With my obsession with trees I couldn’t ignore this specimen at Costessey Common (although by now the light was fading)
There are several flooded gravel-workings at Costessey Pits. Anglian Water manages the largest as a reservoir; it doubles as recreation. This one, however, is small, and private. Yet it can be accessed via Costessey Common. I love these reflections, almost blood-coloured.
The full collection can be found on Google+ (Crispina Kemp, follow this link).
Must remember to go take a look at the Google+ collection tomorrow. 🙂
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You’ll find several collections there. I’m in process of uploading the best of my photos. A record of the Nokia phone-camera to compare against the New Year’s new camera. I’m so impatient now, and yet the weather will be prohibitive of long walks for the next few months.
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I was wondering why Google+, which normally leaves me alone, was suddenly trying to get me to check in. YOU are the cause, madam! 😉
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Sorry. But let’s not forget, I have posts of yours dating back to 2013 littering my home page! 🙂
BTW, the smiley (quirky?) came through this time.
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MY posts do not litter! (Though they’ve been known to give off a foul fish-like odor after a while. This is because stray thoughts give off stray electrons when displayed on video screens.)
And just to keep matters confusing, the smiley did NOT come through the other way. 😦
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Ah-ha, I see a pattern forming here. I can receive smileys when generated on my blog, but not when coming from yours. You, on the other hand, cannot receive smileys from me. Seems it’s your blog-site that’s blocking them. But I could be wrong.
And I apologise the use of word ‘litter’. Would you prefer ‘clutter’? Actually, I do intend to read some of the older posts . . . when I get round to it. I used to have so many hours in a day, it was an effort to fill them. And then I got well. Now the hours disappear before I’ve done half of what I planned.
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Hmmm, then why . . . as I have a vanilla-flavored blog. (The fish-flavored version was unavailable in those days.)
Litter, clutter, mar, occupy, adorn, confuse . . . guess I’ll have to accept any of those terms. “Lay waste” is too extreme, while “enhance with taste and wisdom” is not only overboard but self-contradictory.
And if the lack of free time is because you have so much you actually do, then yay!
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Indeed, that is the cause of lack of time. More energy, more activity. Less time for thinking. Ouch.
How about ‘Your posts are gracing my Google+’? Am I now forgiven my undue uncouth allusion?
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Yes. I think holding out for “sanctifying” would be a mite arrogant of me. 🙂
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Before I met you I would have said so. Now .. . um.
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Interesting that Costessey has a Common. I have a hypothesis that Commons were set aside in the High Middle Ages. The legal term for a Common is “vasta”. The distinguishing characteristic of Common land, aside from its being shared, is that it pays no rent and no tax. Therefore short-sighted landlords and governments enclosed (privatised) them.
Until the enclosure acts of recent centuries, large areas of England were Common land.
Domesday’s “waste” lands are “vasta”. They paid no tax and no rent.
Rather than being vast swathes devastated by the dastardly Normans, the “waste” lands may have been, or at least included, large areas of land set aside as Commons.
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The ‘commons’ were originally land not suited to cultivation and therefore freely available for the grazing of peasants’ livestock and gathering of firewood and nature’s free harvest. Therefore commons tended to be on either heavy clay or acidic heath. However, as the plough improved, able now to till the heavy clays, so more of the commons were lost to cultivation (and to the lords’ domains). The commons again diminished after the Black Death when the heathlands were taken in for sheep runs. Throughout the high Middle Ages (from C14th on) agreements were formed between peasants and lords for the enclosure of commons. The process was gradual. Then came the so-called Agricultural Revolution of the C18th on, and soon after came the Parliamentary enclosures. The only commons left after that were those thoroughly unsuited to any form of farming.
Costessey Common once extended from the present-day Costessey Pits (abutting Taverham across the Wensum) through to what is now Costessey Mill (on the road to Drayton). Further, an arm of the common extended through to where the present-day Norwich Road (driven through by the Jerningham-Stafford family) crosses the river Tud. Quite an extensive common. All that is left is an area we kids knew as ‘The Cricket Field’, its grassy swathe now being rapidly eaten be encroaching oaks, birch and hazels. This is what happens when a common is neglected, with no further use by the parishioners.
And while I tend to agree on the nature of the Northern ‘wastes’, i.e. that they yielded no tax, it is a fact that King William did devastate the north (and parts of the Midlands). This is well recorded in contemporary chronicles.
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Apropos the Brian and Crimson comment thread, the emoticons from each of you show fine on my iPhone 6+.
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Yea, they usually show on my comments, too. This was the first time ever it did not. They have since shown up again.
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