To be honest – apart from the tourist guides – this is not a typical moment in Georgian Bath; or at least not during daylight hours. Half a mile East and you might imagine you’re in Oxford street, London; the same distance to the north and south would see you at the end of the Cotswolds or across the river, deep fingers of countryside and Georgiana separated by large estates of social housing. This particular place, Royal Crescent – and no-one can deny its grace and beauty – is normally crowded with tourists.
We live in a similarly divided cultural world. Beggars and Big Issue sellers rub shoulders with tourists whilst we locals practice arcane navigations to cross the tides of tourists and traverse the city. We hardly know who we are. Anyone who comes here probably has a better idea of their true identity, whether it be Roman legionnaire or Regency Buck; Hello magazine bride-to-be or Emma Woodhouse practicing lip pursing in case they meet someone they fancy. We have as much cultural stability as a seaside resort in August. On Friday afternoons the pavements tremble to the sounds of wheelie suitcases – we call it the Barcelona rumble, and on Sunday afternoons they depart. Mondays are quieter. Speed limits are for the little people who change the sheets, flip burgers on minimum wage and pick up the litter. Yet we locals only have to walk a few hundred yards and pick the right time to find peace. You could throw a stick from Royal Crescent as far as three allotment sites, and walk in ten minutes down Cow Lane – whose sign has been stolen by a Jane Austen trophy hunter – to Victoria park and the Botanical Gardens. And whilst the Kennet and Avon canal towpath is busy for the first mile eastwards from the bus station, walking west along the riverside walk, apart from commuting cyclists and runners. you’ll have abundant time and space to check out the local weeds: well at least I do, and many of them turn out to be gratifyingly rare!
One of the unique joys of Bath is the fact that you can stand almost anywhere and see the countryside up on the surrounding hills. Notwithstanding the worst efforts of the riverside property developers, once you climb upwards by about 75 feet you can look across the grim tenements of the future into North Somerset, Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. From the riverside the developments look more like bonded warehouses; uniformly dull and bleak and battered by their own architectural whirlwinds.
So let’s turn our attention to the parts of the city centre where the wild has infiltrated, We have otters and even beavers in the river now. Herons, sparrowhawks, peregrines, tawny owls, swifts, swallows, housemartins and the whole gamut of garden birds – although you might have to walk a way to find sparrows and starlings which are scarce. In early summer you can see dace sparkling in the river, and in some of the tributary streams there are signal crayfish which have displaced the locals. On our allotment we have even filmed deer, but more commonly it’s squirrels, badgers, foxes, cats and rats; lots of rats.
Mostly we don’t see the night visitors but we have a trail cam running continuously and we also find lots of characteristic signs of their presence. Last night we got an incredibly lucky shot of one of our resident foxes emerging from behind the polytunnel with a large rat in its mouth. We’ve had three traps set in the same run for two weeks now and never got a sniff of a rat, but the fox knows where they are and can crouch silently until a warm takeaway supper comes along. We have read about foxes predating on rats but this hard evidence was really exciting. Other than the fox, the only other taker for the peanut butter bait was a badger who shook and bashed one of the heavy duty box traps until it sprang shut without yielding the peanut. This almost redeems the foxes from their countryside capers – raiding our chickens when we lived on Severnside.
Aside from mammals, we have dragonflies, damselflies, ivy bees, hoverflies, wasps, spiders, beetles and butterflies all sharing the plot with us and this year we’ll be trapping moths to add to our knowledge of the night shift. You’d never believe the diversity of our wildlife if your only experience of Bath was gained from a weekend shopping expedition on Milsom Street. Our allotment is in the middle of the city and yet we probably have more wild diversity than a chemical drenched arable field in the countryside. You just have to learn to be very quiet and watch.
Here’s a video link of fox v rat- it’s too big to attach here but I hope you enjoy it. Nature red in tooth and claw!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Kudr5fY5JMB89RXz7
