Bella and the rainbow

So he's gone to Hong Kong and left me to do the blog for a couple of weeks...hope I can find enough to keep your interest as here in the UK it's wall to wall rain and floods! And the occasional rainbow.

 

Bella insisted on being featured so here are a few pics to keep her happy....

As canines are generally indifferent to a downpour, and this is particularly true of labradors, we set off with the camera and a brolly.  We walked down a street called Perfect View because it has fabulous views of the city (in the winter as in the summer the trees obscure everything apart from where there are gaps).  I took a few pics but it was so murky only a couple are worth looking at. The first one has the River Avon running across the middle but it doesn't show how it's burst its banks.

 

Despite the weather there are signs of Spring with these daffodils nearly in bloom!

Truncated Report of the Day

A promising start to the day, looking over to Little Solsbury

Sun over terrace roofs. 

Liked this fragment of wing mirror that caught the sky. Spent the morning starting to get ready to go to Hong Kong, after lunch went into UWE for dissertation supervision session and then back home to carry on slowly getting organised for going away to Hong Kong tomorrow - aaargh!

This day a year ago, Bella was on patrol! 

Box Stroll and the Chinese Theme Continues…

We went off to Box this morning and had a bit of a stroll about the Market Street area. Spotted this brewery in its old building.

Great shape to this clocktower. 

Good name for a short street. 

Loved the shape of this bay window. 

The old house… 

We speculated that this building looked like it had once been a pub - an opinion confirmed by a local who we talked to. 

My plans for the day were disrupted by a phone call at lunchtime. Now rather than covering teaching for UWE colleagues in this country - as I thought I'd be doing from tomorrow, I will be off to Hong Kong myself on Wednesday for a couple of weeks. Su will be doing the blog for at least some of that time.

Having made some quick covering arrangements of my own, I managed to get out for a walk with Bella. New arrangements for selling eggs at this house - they must have got fed up with the eggs, or the tin they were stored in being stolen.

Primroses! 

The skies brightened a little. 

Old man's beard in the hedgerow. 

A glow lit up the top of Little Solsbury 

This day a year ago, I had to get the fuel tank on the van drained of the petrol I had mistakenly put into my diesel tank - an expensive lapse of concentration!

Lost Loo Roll, Bus Works and Kong Hee Fat Choy

Out with Bella this morning, Easy Rider came over the brow of the hill just as I was photographing the TV relay mast on the skyline.

It was a bright - if cool - morning. 

I never expected to find an unused roll of toilet paper abandoned among these sprouting daffodil shoots. 

Work is proceeding on two out of the three bus stops tagged with "FP" - the roadworks are to bring electricity to them  so I guess that this might be to do with providing electronic bus information displays. The reason for the single bollard is less clear…

We set off once again for Dynasty in Bristol, picking up a friend on the way. 

It being Chinese New Year, the restaurant was visited by a pair of dragons accompanied by much banging of drum and clashing of cymbals.

The energetic and unruly dragons circulated around the restaurant for the next half an hour, "swallowing" some diners and giving sweets to children

Good luck to be with a dragon. 

We saw mainly the yellow dragon in our section of the restaurant - lots of dashing about and constant noise!

Look out, there's a dragon behind you! 

After that, we wandered round the Chinese supermarket downstairs where Su found this confusingly labelled delicacy (it's made from tofu, not fish…) 

Dropped into our friend's for a coffee on the way home - big skies where she lives. 

Back in time to take Bella out for a stroll under a crescent moon. 

This day a year ago, it was a glorious day and we went across to the Littleton on Severn. This was on our way out of Bath looking across in that direction. 

Blue Skies, Trees, Flowers and a Manhole Cover

A lovely bright morning with blue skies.

I liked this reflection of the sunlight from its wing mirror onto the bonnet of this old Morris Minor. 

The sunlight makes the bare trees look splendid. 

Little Solsbury in the sunshine. 

We paid a return visit to The Shed, this time to have breakfast and coffee and enjoy the ambience. We'll be back. 

A spotting of the grocer's apostrophe… 

All the carved wooden statues are still around but all behind a locked gate… 

This row of silver birches by the road looked magnificent in the sunshine. 

Then we took off via Bradford-on-Avon to Middle Stoke and had a walk up and down. Great name for a house. 

I loved this hexagonal manhole cover. 

Back home after driving through some heavy rain to find the sun shining through our stained glass window in the hallway. 

Out with Bella this afternoon into the sunshine, and spotting my first big clump of snowdrops this year. 

Quite a few of these markings on the road - time will tell what they're for, but I suspect more digging up of roads and pavements will be involved.

A whole hedge of these flowers has come out. 

I should have known that the weather wouldn't hold when I was out with Bella - the skies darkened, the wind whipped up to lash me with the rain it brought - joy! 

Pretty colours from pollution. 

This day a year ago, I also saw my first snowdrops of the year - maybe they have February 1st set on their biological clocks…