a rambling Saturday

Saturday
A lovely day, a bit of a sleep in late breakfast and then we went off for a ramble in the country. The geography teacher at school gave me a map of the Somerset region made by the ordinance department and it has all the public paths on it and all the places of Local Interest.

We went to Flax Bourton, a lovely village. Parked the card and set off to find the path. This meant crossing through a couple of large fields and past some rows of leaks and then over a barbed wire fence and we were on the real public footpath.
A nice wide path well looked after, and then a burnt out car....and very deep muddy track marks I think our car would have bellied out very quickly.
Then past a Ministry of Defence depot ( later found to be an underground oil storage facility. they have a pipeline that goes underground from here to airfields, apparently the countryside has lots of these put in during the war to make them less visible and bomb proof. ( see P blog I am sure he will have more detail, it is more a boy thing)

Then into the village proper, past a lovely autumn wall and round the different lanes etc. We seemed to amuse the local when I took a photo of P going through a gate that was not connected to any fences.




We then headed to Portishead for some plums from the greengrocer and a drive to the coast. Stopped at the Royal for a coffee and an excellent view of the Severn bridge and Wales.
We went for a walk an came to the Portishead marina where the houses were quite new and one looked like a lighthouse. The marina which had a lock system, we were lucky to catch it in action with 4 pleasure craft going through, lots of water changing place.





On the way home we stopped at Ashton Court and were just on time for the launching of 3 balloons, they are huge when you are standing under the inflating balloon and it towers over the top. After a lot of hot air all 3 were up and away and we headed home.

Was wonderful to see them go from flat to huge and towering over us then a huge blast of hot air and away over the trees. To get three was a bonus.

Sunday
We went to watch the NZ team in action at the World Indoor Cricket competition which is in Bristol this time. They were playing Aussi and only lost by 5 runs.
Then watched the under 19 aussi V south Africa very fast game.
Back to town to watch the Allblacks V Scotland but every pub had Man united playing Chelsea a couple of pubs had the rugby on but no sound only the football commentary. So after much muttering by himself we ended up at home and managed a laptop connection.
Bells are ringing must be time to put tea on.
Where do the seagulls go in winter.???... they have disappeared all together from here, it is sooooo quiet without them.

Poor C has a sports injury a broken finger from playing Corridor Netball at the hostel, I wonder if that is an olympic sport.