A SUNSHINE WALK TO GAUNTS EARTHCOTT.

Saturday May 3 2025. Part 1 of 3.

It sounds like some place in a Harry Potter book. It should be. I've been entranced by this place name since I was a little kid absorbed in the magic of maps. It hasn't moved location but it was far more remote back then and until a recent decade or so - to a non car owner/driver that is. And how hum,I didn't have a nice boyfriend to take me there,you can say that again. But with the growth of urban sprawl and bus routes altered over time to serve these places so other places like this magically named place get within a reasonable walk distance. Now you may be wondering why is this place called Gaunts Earthcott and what does this wizardy incantatory name mean. Well,I only learned a few months ago. A “Gaunt” is a Badger. It's an Anglo/Saxon +Olde Englishe word for a Badger. And of course the Earthcott is the Badger Sett. So there must have been a huge significant size Badger Sett at this place for it to gain that very name. I'm sure it is still badger country round here. We have gone TOO FAR the other way in our Sentimentalising of these creatures. They need rational control in order to keep our farmed land in harmony. They can trash the most beautiful garden. Watch one of lovely Bunny Guinnesses YouTubes in which she describes soon going off the night visitors and installing electric fences to keep them out. Or there go the carrots,the dahlias,the roses,the…in one of his many books the late Phil Drabble describes how any one of his evening badger visitors could at a whim rip the leather sofa cover off with one claw swipe. That's the thing about loving nature. They haven't read the bit about how they are at risk and vulnerable. Like most real ‘poor people' ignore the directive to be grateful for small mercies,lol

I got the Thornbury bus from Central Bristol and started at Hortham Lane off the A38 just past the motorway bridge over the M4 near the Almondsbury “Cloverleaf” interchange. It was easier to cross this busy road thanks to the roadwork obstructions. I set off down the lane

Hortham was never a village but is now I see a pleasant,very clean and tidy and rather upmarket suburban place. There used to be a big psychiatric hospital here many years ago but naturally it was sold off for development. Nowadays people with serious psychiatric issues get to sleep in a shop doorway and beg. It's called ‘Care In The Community',an ironic name as The Community DONT CARE. Im in some ways a member of The Community -when any paying out is involved - and I don't care. And the Community don't CARE about me but would like to burn me at the stake. That's how it is in reality. The alternatives are Emotional Blackmail or Weaponised Compassion. I discovered that this clean,smart,shiny place with a slight Stepford Wife ambience about it is now the HQ of both the Bristol area Jehovahs Witnesses at one end of the village and the local Brethren at the other. That explains the creepy vibes!

I carried on down the lane. I was now on Gaunts Earthcott lane but not yet at actual G.E,it was exhilarating to see some yellow fields,they're much less often seen now since the use of neonics was banned on spurious science “results”,all my eye and Betty Martin,now the Flea Beetle can decimate crops and make it not worth the farmers while to grow. And black grass destroys the viability of other crops. But DEFRA is now manned by 12 year olds who don't listen to actual farmers.