flying blind into the future and drawing the map as we go
Sitting out on the towpath with some folk from Australia, who keep bees near Melbourne and took a keen interest in the size and variety of the bumble bees that were busy along the hedge, I recalled this episode from Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne; here, in Letter 38 to Daines Barrington, he considers echos and examines the effect of sound on bees, by shouting at them “One should have…
Conkwell Woods are on the side of the Avon valley below Bradford on Avon. The Kennet and Avon Canal runs through them, between the Dundas and Avoncliff Aqueducts. They're supposed to be the most haunted woods in the country, and you'd believe it if you moored up there on a misty winter's night, when your torch shows you unblinking eyes looking back at you. Never mind if it's only a fox thinking…
I did this picture to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust. (you can get a copy from my Etsy shop, here ). It shows notable places along the canal, and the current fleet operated by the KACT; also, various historic boats and incidents. So, there's Sir John Knill on working boat Columba The canoe carrying the petition to keep the canal open, heading to Westminster in…
Here's my new Somerset map. You can get a copy of it here. There's lots of stuff on the map, so I've compiled a concordance to explain its presence on the map. Here it is: Ada Lovelace -mathematician, created the first computer algorithm in her work on Babbage’s Difference Engine (see also 2DGoggles ). Spent her summers at Ashley Combe, near Porlock Adge Cutler -born in Clevedon, grew up in…
I put a Swytch electric conversion kit on my bike last summer. It's very useful, though the claimed range is substantially greater than the 22 miles I actually managed on test (a ride from Bradnford on Avon to Bath and back). I was worried that two things would prove problematic for an electric bike on the towpath; mud everywhere, and getting adequate power from my solar panels to keep the battery…
Happy St Brigid's Day! Here she is with some oystercatchers, known in Gaelic and Irish as 'Brigid's servants' - Gille-Brìde, or Giolla Brighde, depending on which side of the water you're on. They saved her life once, by concealing her in seaweed when she was being pursued by blokes with evil intent. We don't get oystercatchers on the canal, though we do see the occasional sandpiper and egret. But…
Moored up at Diggers, between Bradford on Avon and Bath, in the Avon valley. The boat next door is Kestrel, an old working butty. At dawn, the song thrushes are singing their winter song, and cormorants fly along the valley from their roost upriver. A pheasant is BOCKing from the woods, and a deer barks now and then. Every day I've been down to the post office to send off orders, even in the…
The 2026 calendar has arrived! I've gone back to focussing on the wildlife along the canal this time. There's old friends like the badgers in the woods around Bradford on Avon; and now the beavers that have arrived in the area, livening up life on the river. The calendars cost £10, and you can get them from my Etsy shop, or Devizes Books, or Noah's Pantry in the marina in Bradford on Avon. And…
I've been busy (at least, what I call busy) getting the pictures together for next year's calendar; and at last I'd got enough, which is to say, twelve. So I got to work formatting them, and had just about finished when I got a call from the printers (Minuteman Press in Bristol , excellent folk). They'd got my Christmas cards ready. Turned out nicely (by the way, you can find them in my Etsy shop…
I'm not drawing the pictures for next year's calendar in any particular order, and the latest one is for December, as you can perhaps tell. I thought it would be fun to do a winter version of my earlier picture, 'La vraie liberte c'est le vagabondage'. And I was right; I had great fun doing it. Thinking of a suitable title for it is proving hard; keeping the french theme, I thought of 'toi, prends…
The town bridge in Newbury, built over the River Kennet, pre-dates the building of the lock that was the first to be built on the link between the Kennet and the Avon. So there is no towpath under the bridge; and horsedrawn boats going upstream would have to pull in before the bridge, the horse led round the path to the other side, then the towline drifted down to the waiting boat using this…
On Thursday, we went up to the North Yorks Moors for a bimble around the Rosedale valley, where some Andy Goldsworthy works have been installed in old buildings in a six mile circuit. Sunlight and rainclouds were chasing each other across the hills, and thunder rumbled to north and south; and we were hit by sudden squalls of hail and rain, but managed to sit most of them out in the buildings on…
Moored up above Heathy Close lock, at Wootton Rivers, east of Pewsey, we watched a flycatcher dashing out from its perch in a tall ash tree, to grab insects out of the air, then return to its perch, easily identifiable by its upright posture and startlingly big eyes, like the dogs in The Tinderbox. The first time I saw one (flycatcher, not supernatural dog) was on a still and misty autumn morning…
Midsummer in the Vale of Pewsey. With Avebury just over the hill, and Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge just to the south, there's lots of folk in the neighbourhood to do observance to the season, be it hanging out in the stones at sunrise, partying all night to excessively loud rave music while coked up to the eyeballs (fortunately, nowhere near me), or just enjoying being in whatever moment happens…
Here's the Elswick Hopper I got last week. Lovely bike, but the front forks had been pushed back by a collision at some point, so, though it's rideable, it bothered me, and I wanted that extra stability you get when there's lots of rake on the front forks; an old Omafiets I once had would ride perfectly happily no-hands.. I had to remove the front wheel and mudguard, and chainguard, and the rear…
June in the Vale of Pewsey. Here's the sun rising over the Alton Barnes white horse.We're moored near All Cannings, and it's one of those rare places where you can hear the dawn chorus uninterrupted by traffic noise. In this clip you can hear the blackbird and wren, and a few other birds too... The whitethroats are calling all along the canal... ...as are the reed warblers, and, increasingly, the…
A while ago, Hamish Evans of the We Are Avon campaigning group asked if I'd be up for drawing a map of the Avon. I'm always up for drawing a map, of course; but it took ages for me to get down to it. In the meantime, Hamish has walked the entire length of the river, and you can read about this walk here on the Bath Newseum page . This Avon (there are several, of course) is a lovely river, and I've…
Frosty mornings and sunny days, this last week. Eve is on the move eastwards, on our slow journey to the Long Pound for summer. Just now, I'm moored up near Semington, between Trowbridge and Devizes. A good place for watching deer, and the occasional barn owl. And a really good place for getting punctures. I managed to get two in the one tyre, the other day, in the two hundred yard stretch between…
More torrential rain; and the Bristol Avon responds quickly to rainfall, and was soon in flood. Here's the riverside path into Bradford on Avon, by the tithe barn and the packhorse bridge. I was transporting the last of my old domestic batteries to the car, to take them to the salvage yardto be weighed in. "What the hell," I thought, and cycled into the flood. It webnt well enough until about half…
Here's a picture for Imbolc and St Brigid's Day. The words are a quote from Kyntaw Geir, an englyn describing a pilgrim about to set off on a journey: Offspring of the Ruler, victorious Redeemer, and Peter head of every nation, Saint Bridget, bless my journey. ...and in the background is Mwnt, a small settlement to the north of Aberteifi with a beach in the bay, the tall hill that gives the place…
Cruising down to Bath a fortnight back, I saw some of the damage caused by the recent storms; lots of trees had been blown down. A couple had fallen right across the canal, preventing navigation, and had been dealt with fairly quickly by boaters and contractors. But there was still this ash tree, partially blocking the towpath at Murhill Wharf. It was still there the other day, when I was heading…
It was another icy morning. But the sun came out, and so, when I cycled across to the Post Office in Larkhall, I decided on the spur of the moment to go up to Charlcombe to see the church. The lane ascending the combe quickly became rural, and too steep for cycling, so I pushed the bike most of the way, making my final approach along a footpath through the woods. Primroses, snowdrops and cuckoo…
...it gets very peaceful. Boats aren't moving, and the ducks congregate in swim-holes, keeping them open with their splashings around. I had to defrost my bike before cycling down into Bath, so I decanted the hot ash from the stove into a bucket, then put it under an old overcoat on the handlebars. And the gears and brakes presently started working again. I was getting a bit worried, because I was…
The new calendar is here! This year I've gone back to people on the canal; so there's incidents from daily life and history, like the workboats - here's John Knill in 1950, delivering a cargo to Newbury; and Ishtar, keeping boaters supplied with coal last winter; and the CRT paddle boat, dashing off to clear vegetation in the Long Pound. And a couple of cross-section pictures, which are always a…
Another picture for the calendar. This is a cross-section of a narrowboat, chugging along the Vale of Pewsey with Woodborough Hill in the background. That's a Russell Newbery engine, sort of, beacuse it's a bit more picturesque than my Beta Tug engine. And the boatperson's cabin is rather more ideal than my own cluttered and squalid one. Art, see. I think that makes nine pics I've got now. And as…