Mon. 10 Dec 2000. 8.45am.
It's very windy on the exposed slopes of Waterley Bottom hill; warmer and sheltered in the quarry but blustering through the bare trees. The sky is filling up with scudding rainclouds running East and gulls are wheeling in the wild air. The teasels on the flat ground are the ordinary variety, not Fuller's teasel with hooks.
A tortoiseshell cat is sitting in the Test Compound, but the Centre is shut up and barred. Does it live there? Perhaps there is a watchman. Someone has been using the quarry as a cycle track. A helicopter passes over, very close, the pilot having to compensate a lot in the stiff wind.
A man and his terrier going round the path the other way said hello. There is lots of planting going on in the wood.
I'm now looking from the far bank across towards North Nibley and the sky is lowering. A young man with a slobbering bull-mastiff passes me as the wind rushes by, veering North and the birch trees bend away.
Now another man and his dog enters the quarry. It seems to be a favourite spot for dog walkers.
A magpie flies down in front of me.
Waterley Bottom is living up to its name. A sleepy hollow land, the narrow lanes awash with streamlets, the tarmac pitted with erosion from the endless downpours since September. A land of green fern and mud, the few homesteads clinging to the hillsides, the creeks and coombes rolling into the woodland, wet and remote.
The rain has started, heavy and forlorn puddling the windscreen as I sit here in the car having emerged from the Bottom to the Old London road near the top of Adey's Lane. Other folk have ventured out, mostly to walk their dogs. and they will be caught out by the heavy downpour which wets the old earth still more, washing the land to the sea.
It feels sad, a depressing end to the millennium year - or maybe it's just the way that I feel.
Mon.18th June 2001.
A warm, muggy day, sometimes threatening rain, but the forecast is for better and hotter weather. Out again at Breakheart Quarry after not being able to walk any footpaths or reserves since March on account of the Foot and Mouth crisis; but the countryside opened up again East of the M5 on Saturday.
The place looks just the same. How egocentric we are! I half-expected it to be neglected without me and other human presence, but nature takes its course without Man.
The quarry is awash with flowers, and I tasted some wild strawberries (which are in abundance) for the first time this year.
My ground sculptures are still there beside the path, a circle and an arrow made in stones like cairns.
There is a Southeast breeze wafting the sapling branches, warm and gentle. No one else is here, not much birdsong ( it is 5.10 pm) and all is serene and tranquil.
I'm now sitting on the rock where my son Jack found the prehistoric fish tooth last year. All around me I keep getting glimpses of deep red buttons - the wild strawberries clinging to life on the stony limestone scree. The Viper's Bugloss is nearly over, but the teasel is preparing to blossom.
I moved on past the Test Centre, abandoned now and growing derelict. The BNFL is due to give the quarry to the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and pull out, so hopefully this rare bit of limestone pavement will be kept and managed properly.
A chiffchaff and willow warbler are giving their evening choruses and I can hear a magpie chasing a jay.. There seems to be much more egg-and-bacon around than I remember. The colony of Lady's Mantle is spreading well.
A blackbird is singing tunefully to another a quarter of a mile away, but this small world remains calm.
Someone told me that there are several feral cats in the quarry. Perhaps the one I saw last year was one of them.
A heron flaps slowly home towards the river Severn, like a pteranodon. A raven gruffly calls and a jet plane disturbs the tranquillity. The raven grogs again and a few high swifts wheel over the wood.
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