At Trompynton, Nat Fer Fro Canterbrigge....

Everyone is telling me that Autumn is here. It's got a little bit cooler and some rain is threatened to arrive soon. Experts inform us that the Autumn colour should be spectacular this year. Even the local weather forecast is saying that trees have started to change. Really?

I went for a little wander at Byron's Pool local nature reserve but, although I found some brown and yellow leaves lying around (as you can at any time of year), it seems we'll have to wait a little longer for the full show.

No matter - green can be quite attractive too. So I went for a stroll with my camera and my memories anyway. This little strip of woodland alongside the River Cam in Trumpington, near Cambridge, was where I used to ride my bike as a youth, where we punted up the river a couple of years later, where I used to walk with my father on Sunday mornings and where I've often come with either binoculars or camera during the last forty-odd years.

On old maps this area is called Old Mills, presumably to differentiate it from the "modern" water-mill at Grantchester which has been unused since 1929 and was built several centuries before that. There were also two other mills in the past but no one's quite sure where they were! It's generally thought that Old Mills was the site of the mill mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

At Trompynton, nat fer fro Canterbrigge, (Cambridge)
Ther goth a brook and over that a brigge,
Up-on the whyche brook ther tant a melle; (Mill)

And this is verray soth as I yow telle.

All that remains today from that mill are some rather silted up fish ponds.

Over the years I must have photographed nearly every tree stump in this little wood, some of them must have grown considerably over the decades I've been visiting, while others have fallen and rotted away, thanks to the efforts of the wonderful fungi.

I zapped up the colour on one of these photos once and was astounded at the range of colours hidden in the greys and muddy browns. I'll do another in time for my next post, just to show you what I mean. 

And there are so many shades within the greens too, more I think than digital technology can reproduce accurately.

In case anyone was wondering, Byron's Pool gets its name from the fact that Lord Byron - old George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron himself, he of the Romantic poetry and excessive and reckless lifestyle - used to swim here while a student at Cambridge. Virginia Woolf is also said to have skinny-dipped in these same limpid waters.

Just as I was thinking about leaving a flash of azure zipped downstream - a Kingfisher. I watched its hasty departure then was aware of movement just below the bank where I was standing. A grass snake, known in olden times as a water snake, was making its way purposefully to the other bank.

Take care.