Crook Peak
Crook Peak is an outcrop of the Mendip Hills, towards their western end, rising high above the Somerset Levels south of Bristol.
Yesterday, Moonface took a day off from sorting out her mother's affairs to walk with me over there, a six-mile circular walk from the village of Cross: up, along, over and down again. It was a wonderful day for a walk, with clear blue skies, few clouds and a slight breeze. The paths, which can often be sticky with chalky mud, were dry and resilient. As it was mid-week, there were few other people around and those were mainly retired people and dog-walkers. We saw perhaps half-a-dozen couples all afternoon.
It cheered us, to get into the open air and to feel sunlight upon our faces. The views from the ridges leading to Crook Peak are spectacular (I'm only sorry that I didn't take the camera) and panoramic, with vistas of the Severn estuary both north & south. We could see the coast and hills of Wales clearly laid out, individual large buildings clearly visible, then to the south we could see Devon and Glastonbury Tor beyond the flat Levels. The scars on the landscape are the encroaching boxes of Worle, that bland extension of commuter Weston, and the M5 roaring beneath us.
But ignoring the hum of that distant traffic, we had the wind in our hair (her hair, anyway. There's not much of mine) and the sun upon us. As we sat to eat our sandwiches, a kestrel hovered around to hunt. It quartered the ground before us for a good ten minutes: swooping and gliding, hovering quite close to us, so that we could pick out the patterns on its pale buff breast. There were swallows still around, twittering as they flew hunting for insects. It must have been a good September for them, as usually they have headed south by this time of year.
Crook Peak is a good place from which to contemplate the world; its past and future.
The Somerset levels were once marshes, from which some of England's most ancient traces of man have been excavated. Now they are drained fields. The vile ribbon of the M5 did not exist forty years ago, so the whole area would have been relatively peaceful and green. The blot of Worle would similarly have been fields. And what of the future? The plans to build a Severn Barrage for power generation will mean that the Mendips will be extended into a wall across the sea, with more roads and traffic. Or will rising sea levels mean that the Levels are flooded again?
Who knows?
:)
Yesterday, Moonface took a day off from sorting out her mother's affairs to walk with me over there, a six-mile circular walk from the village of Cross: up, along, over and down again. It was a wonderful day for a walk, with clear blue skies, few clouds and a slight breeze. The paths, which can often be sticky with chalky mud, were dry and resilient. As it was mid-week, there were few other people around and those were mainly retired people and dog-walkers. We saw perhaps half-a-dozen couples all afternoon.
It cheered us, to get into the open air and to feel sunlight upon our faces. The views from the ridges leading to Crook Peak are spectacular (I'm only sorry that I didn't take the camera) and panoramic, with vistas of the Severn estuary both north & south. We could see the coast and hills of Wales clearly laid out, individual large buildings clearly visible, then to the south we could see Devon and Glastonbury Tor beyond the flat Levels. The scars on the landscape are the encroaching boxes of Worle, that bland extension of commuter Weston, and the M5 roaring beneath us.
But ignoring the hum of that distant traffic, we had the wind in our hair (her hair, anyway. There's not much of mine) and the sun upon us. As we sat to eat our sandwiches, a kestrel hovered around to hunt. It quartered the ground before us for a good ten minutes: swooping and gliding, hovering quite close to us, so that we could pick out the patterns on its pale buff breast. There were swallows still around, twittering as they flew hunting for insects. It must have been a good September for them, as usually they have headed south by this time of year.
Crook Peak is a good place from which to contemplate the world; its past and future.
The Somerset levels were once marshes, from which some of England's most ancient traces of man have been excavated. Now they are drained fields. The vile ribbon of the M5 did not exist forty years ago, so the whole area would have been relatively peaceful and green. The blot of Worle would similarly have been fields. And what of the future? The plans to build a Severn Barrage for power generation will mean that the Mendips will be extended into a wall across the sea, with more roads and traffic. Or will rising sea levels mean that the Levels are flooded again?
Who knows?
:)
Labels: walking
posted by Moses at
10:51 am
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