Category: David

Cotswold views from the path leading up to Dover’s Hill. Looking back down to the small market town of Chipping Campden, and along the scarp slope to where Broadway Tower marks a well-known outlook point.

Quinces, an old-fashioned fruit nowadays most likely to be represented in shops by the Spanish accompniment to cheese, membrillo. These were growing on trees in the orchard at Anne Hathaway’s cottage near Stratford on Avon, some ripening on the bough, some already rotting.

Dover’s Hill is one of the high points on the scarp slope of the Cotswolds. After a mile walk uphill from the small market town of Chipping Campden, the view opens out across the Severn and Avon valleys, otherwise known as the Vale of Evesham. The hundred and eighty degree panorama is bracketed by Cotswold outliers, Bredon Hill to the south and Meon Hill to the north. The long ridge of the Malverns marks the other edge of the Vale.

For anyone unwilling or unable to walk the perhaps a mile or a little more from Chipping Campden, there is even a National Trust car park, a hundred yards or so from the highest point on the hill.

A small group of shovellers seem to have settled in for the winter on West Park lake. This drake was a little nearer than the rest of the group, shovelling water from just below the surface through its bill to extract food.

The iridescent feathers of its head changed colour from green to blue and black as it caught the mid-day sunlight at different angles.

Spiders’ webs on the iron fence of Bridgnorth’s Castle Walk, lit by the morning sun. I couldn’t spot the webs’ occupants.

Common inkcap mushrooms grow on buried dead wood or tree stumps, here in one of the front gardens on Richmond Road. The fruiting bodies can occur any time from spring to autumn.

Edible, but if you are thinking of trying them, make sure to avoid any alcohol for at least two or three days before and afterwards, or expect a series of unpleasant and possibly dangerous symptoms. Its effects are similar to the drug antabuse, used (less often than formerly) to give alcoholics an aversion to drinking.