Sep 5, 2011, 02:08
I know this will make no sense in a way but I imagined what it'd be like if I was showing you round my adopted area. Obviously, we all mentally "filter" and treat what we think we know about each other's locale: I often wonder if I misrepresent both how my life and my surroundings are, wondering(albeit briefly) if I've unpurposefully cozened you into believing I live in some kind of country idyll, and by extension that all life is wonderful.
Before I drift off the point then: despite forecasts, it remained a mild and sunny day yesterday, so I nipped out in the jolly old Rav 3 miles away to Selsley Hill, one of the many limestone hills that rise out of the River Severn plain. I took a quick snap, thinking to just point out to some of the features visible. I'm facing sort of west/northwest.
![[Image: 2661_geography.jpg]](http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/images/upload/2661_geography.jpg)
Key:
1. Selsley: these limestone hills are browsed by the local cattle in summer, and the place has many unique meadow flowers and orchids. Around now there are the blues of various scabious and harebells. The "footpaths" you see are made by generations of sheep! The hill is populated by kite-fliers on days like this...there are also several springs here which deliver natural water as it passes along the bedding planes all the way from Wales, so Castle Zig's drinking water is supplied from here by me making a foraging trip once a month.
2. Doverow Hill: the unmistakeable curved whaleback hill, capped by beech and oak woods, behind which is my house.
3. Standish Woods: lovely beechwoods and festooned with bluebells in the spring, a short walk from there to Haresfield Beacon.
4.You can just see the snaking might of the River Severn here as it passes Gloucester....close to the clearly-audible M5 motorway too.
5. On the far left in the Forest of Dean on the other side of the Severn= May Hill.
6. These are the Malvern Hills on the horizon, right up in Worcestershire.
7. And on a fine day like this was, these are the Black Mountains far off in Wales.
Before I drift off the point then: despite forecasts, it remained a mild and sunny day yesterday, so I nipped out in the jolly old Rav 3 miles away to Selsley Hill, one of the many limestone hills that rise out of the River Severn plain. I took a quick snap, thinking to just point out to some of the features visible. I'm facing sort of west/northwest.
Key:
1. Selsley: these limestone hills are browsed by the local cattle in summer, and the place has many unique meadow flowers and orchids. Around now there are the blues of various scabious and harebells. The "footpaths" you see are made by generations of sheep! The hill is populated by kite-fliers on days like this...there are also several springs here which deliver natural water as it passes along the bedding planes all the way from Wales, so Castle Zig's drinking water is supplied from here by me making a foraging trip once a month.
2. Doverow Hill: the unmistakeable curved whaleback hill, capped by beech and oak woods, behind which is my house.
3. Standish Woods: lovely beechwoods and festooned with bluebells in the spring, a short walk from there to Haresfield Beacon.
4.You can just see the snaking might of the River Severn here as it passes Gloucester....close to the clearly-audible M5 motorway too.
5. On the far left in the Forest of Dean on the other side of the Severn= May Hill.
6. These are the Malvern Hills on the horizon, right up in Worcestershire.
7. And on a fine day like this was, these are the Black Mountains far off in Wales.
