Getting from Bridgnorth’s Low Town to High Town by way of the Cartway is a stiff walk. But the Cliff Railway is currently closed while a cliff wall is being repaired. The various sets of steps are even more strenuous, so the Cartway it was.
As the top came into sight, an excuse for a brief pause. One of the houses, with a clematis trained to form an arch over the front door, at the peak of its flowering season.
It’s only occasionally I notice moorhens up in trees. This is the second one I’ve spotted up a tree in West Park, in many years of visits. The previous one was five years ago, at the same time of year. It was also on pretty much the same branch of the same tree.
White petals against a blue spring sky. These flowers were on a pear tree overhanging the pavement on Tettenhall Road.
A cob making a short hop move in a hurry. It never actually took off completely. Instead, it went from sitting in the water towards the middle of West Park lake, to sitting in the water nearer the shore, some twenty or thirty yards away. Half way through take-off it switched to decelerating for landing.
There was no obvious reason for the move, or for why it couldn’t just have swum across. It wasn’t doing anything in particular beforehand, and it wasn’t doing anything in particular once it landed. No swans around at either end, and no geese, ducks or coots in its immediate vicinity. No people who it might hope were going to feed the birds, either.
Castle Terrace, Bridgnorth: one section of the high wall separating the walk from High Town is covered by large clumps of aubretia from one of the houses behind the Thomas Telford church.
The direction faced by the wall means it gets direct sunlight every morning, showing off the aubretia flowers to best advantage when they come out every spring.
There’s crowds of geese on the Severn at Bridgnorth, mostly hanging round near the old bridge waiting for the next people who will come along to feed them. The majority have all-white feathers: feral farmyard birds. Some are greylags, with grey, brown, cream and white. Some are of mixed parentage, with patches of feathers corresponding to both.
This was one such, on its tod, swimming against the current to keep a fixed position just off the tip of the Bylet.