RSPB Ham Wall Nature Reserve

Seedheads, still waters, so many swans and an honesty box

Halcyon,

Rainbringer, Weather-teller

Sets the stream alight

Oh, Rainbow bird

Kingfisher, Kris Drever and Beth Porter

It seems last weekend I was trundling along in my happy way looking for the teeniest signs of autumn. Oh, hello oak leaf just turning around the edges. Perhaps I might have been casually slinging a jumper over my shoulders after dinner, not because it was wholly necessary but because it felt like the right thing to do.

Then without warning, around mid-week, I suddenly felt very cold. I woke in the middle of the night shivering and my leg cramped, as it does when the weather changes. I worried I was sickening for something. In the morning the car thermometer told me it was three degrees out on the Levels - the next morning it was two. Outside my window the grass glistened with the possibility of frost. I began to fret over my late sowings of kale and salad leaves. It was as if I had awoken in December, having slept through my favourite season.

Thankfully I need not have worried. The cold weather cleared the gloomy skies, and the golden light, one of my favourite things about this time of year, returned to fuel my soul. This week we are promised temperatures in the twenties again, it seems summer has not bid her final goodbyes just yet. On Sunday my husband and I decided it was a beautiful afternoon to take a walk from Glastonbury up to the Ham Wall Nature Reserve and back.

Ham Wall, part of the larger Avalon Marshes, is a tranquil rich wetland reserve just a few metres above sea level, managed by the RSPB. Here you will find reed beds, expanses of still water, woodlands, hedgerows, grasslands and magical views across the flatlands towards Glastonbury Tor. At the right times of year, you might be lucky enough to witness booming bitterns or water voles and otters flitting along the banks.

Heading out of town, we walked along Porchestall Drove, turning left along Middle Drove and made our way along the footpath that follows the Glastonbury Canal. Of course, due to its nature, this footpath is unusually straight. The hedgerow plants, mainly willow in this case, meet above your head. At the end is a light, like a portal to another world, eventually revealing a mini bridge where the path crosses the River Brue.

Just before the entrance to Ham Wall we spotted our first family of swans of the day. The cygnets, though not yet white like their parents, seemed bold and on the cusp of leaving home. Later we would spot swans on the wetlands and further along the canal – in fact I have never seen so many swans in one day. Later still we saw a group of four cygnets on their own, no parents in sight, swimming along so confidently. Look at us, they said. Look how we’ve nailed this growing up business.

The main track straight through the middle of Ham Wall was surprisingly quiet for a Sunday afternoon. A few families and couples were out walking and cycling, taking in the autumn sun. Mainly the path remained relatively untrodden, and the waters were still enough to reflect the muted tones of the drying grasslands. Some skeletal seedheads of hogweed and dock stood proud against the blue sky as others lost their battle with gravity. Dragonflies and damselflies frantically crossed our path back and forth, back and forth again, busy-busy, as if there was still so much for them to do before winter.

At the halfway point we treated ourselves to a drink in the Railway Inn at Meare; a small family run country pub, with open fires and big-bearded farmers in patched up trousers talking about the local meat auction. I imagine it would be the perfect place to spend an afternoon in winter sitting in the corner with a slow burning pint of local cider, a book and maybe just a touch of eavesdropping. This pub fills me with nostalgia for the early eighties, before words like Wetherspoons or Gastropub were part of our vocabulary. Children were not allowed in pubs then. You’d sit in the beer garden with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and an orange juice. If you were lucky, you’d be allowed to slip in to use the toilet before you left. It felt like a daunting task creeping through the pub like a mouse, as if the big-bearded farmer was going to shout at you if you made a noise. I’m pretty sure in those days there was a resident big-bearded farmer in every pub.

Later we made our way back home along the other side of the canal, crossing over the second bridge and back to the beginning of the Ham Wall footpath again. Near the entrance we spotted an honesty stall selling bags of organic homegrown vegetables for a pound. Since we have run out, we helped ourselves to an enviable bag of perfectly formed potatoes and slipped our pound in the honesty box with a satisfying clatter.

There is something about an honesty box that restores my faith in humankind. In a world of rolling news and social media, we too often see humans at their worst, bickering, fighting, bombing. Yet here are people growing vegetables and putting them on a table for others. Here are people are putting a pound in the box. It wouldn’t occur to us not to. And that’s one bag of tasty potatoes not bought from the supermarket, drenched in chemicals, scrubbed within an inch of its life and flown halfway across the world. If only we were made to go and sit by an honesty stall after every twenty minutes of bad news. I feel better in a world of honesty stalls, and I make no secret of how much I can’t get enough of newly dug potatoes.

Later, as Glastonbury Tor appeared through the Levels, leading us home, a whipcrack from the canal and we turned our heads just in time to see a flash of electric blue emerge from the bank and disappear behind a tree.

Thank you for coming, said the kingfisher. Come again soon.

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Soundtrack to This Post

Kingfisher, Kris Drever and Beth Porter from the wonderful Spell Songs