Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.
Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.
Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!
Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.
Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/
It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.
Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.
10th February 2023 and the snowdrops are out in Leafy Lane. Interesting though, as we move eastwards on this walk (to Biddestone, Chequers and back to Corsham) the state of snowdrop opening changes (interesting for nerds maybe).
Another shot of Leafy Lane snowdrops outside the Coach House (formerly Zagroda in the time of the Podkalinskis)
The compulsory shot of the By Brook Valley (and Folly Farm)
The snowdrops continue in Lower Rudloe Lane heading towards No Notion
Someone's (Hartham Estate) making quite a mess of Collett's Bottom Wood
Catkins by the track heading up to Tyning Belt and Weavern Lane
And woodruff by that same track
Our priorities appear to be askew. You can chop down scores of trees at will yet a curl of poop may cost you £1,000 (and the plastic will despoil the environment for decades to come)
I thought about taking the Tyning Belt across to Hartham Park and its cafe but decided against
In Weavern Lane, the snowdrops are still way off opening. It could be that it's colder over here without the heat from vehicle exhausts?
Weavern Lane and the view down the Bybrook Valley to Bathampton Down (left) and Bannerdown (right). This lane is one of my favourites in spring and summer for its tranquillity (apart from ****** emergency vehicle sirens) and wildlife.
Catkins and snowdrops (this bunch is in flower, maybe because of its sheltered position)
Two years on... But do you know why Weavern Lane was closed? Well, this lane with hardly any traffic (perhaps one vehicle per hour) was completely resurfaced. Is this a case of one law for the rich (landowners) and another for us (serfs)?
Old man's beard, an ivy-clad tree and Biddestone comes into view beyond
The view east to the Marlborough Downs from Weavern Lane
I mentioned wildlife earlier; it's strange that birds to be found here are never seen in Rudloe or its environs. In summer, these hedges are (or were) thronged with yellowhammers. I have never seen a yellowhammer around Rudloe.
Snowdrops thinking about flowering in St Nicholas's churchyard, Biddestone
Biddestone Arms is scheduled for demolition (pity, as I stopped off at the other pub, the White Horse, for a swift half but gave up the ghost with a gaggle of customers around the bar and one old dear serving)
This is an odd enclosure jutting into a field opposite Biddestone Manor. Enclosed on three sides by dry stone wall, gated and full of sticks. Ideas?
Presumably Biddestone Manor horses in a field twixt Chippenham Lane and Corsham Lane
Heading towards Chequers and it looks like we still have some legacy water from the January rains
The winter landscape on the road to Chequers
Why do people do this? It would be so much easier for all concerned to simply put it on the pavement outside your house and call Wiltshire Council to complain that someone has dumped a washing machine.
Middlehill Cottage (which looks pretty run-down) lies behind the Scots pine
Chequers Farm (which is up for sale) at the foot of Chequers Hill
Taking Back Control... BOC (British Oxygen) 'BOC is the largest provider of industrial, medical and special gases in the UK and Ireland' ... and it's owned by the Linde Group, a German multinational chemical company
Pudding Brook runs through this culvert and eventually flows into the Avon at Chippenham
Winter crop in a field (Methuen's!) twixt Chequers and Sainsbury's
Now, after buying bread at Stowell Farm shop, we enter the busier Corsham-Allington lane and naturally (!) encounter evidence of man's presence
In the following gallery, we see further detritus in the Corsham-Allington lane, much of it discarded by McDonald's McMorons
Catkins at Withy Bed on the Methuen Estate (much of whose lands we have been passing though on this walk)
Now here's a sight you don't often see - someone using a public payphone
Following the disappointment of the White Horse, I finally had my 'half' at the Flemish Weaver. Can't make my mind up about this place - corrugated iron, poor paint job, errant bookshelves, quite tatty in general. But there were log fires!
Back at Rudloe to find the benefit of hedges - there was a cacophony of song from a raucous flock of birds in this hedgerow
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