A fresh fall of conkers

I went to Frampton Mansell, a hillside hamlet about four miles up the Golden Valley from our house, to do a recce.  There is another steam train visiting the Golden Valley line tomorrow, coming on a circular route from Birmingham via Stroud, Swindon and Oxford. One of the attractions for steam enthusiasts is the steep climb along the wooded valley finishing with the 1 in 60 incline of Sapperton Bank which ends when the train plunges into a long tunnel.

I think this may be one of the last of these steam excursions this year so I thought I would try to catch a distinctive view of it.  I wet to look for a vantage point which had been used in a 1985 film showing the engine crossing a high stone viaduct just below Frampton Mansell. But I fear the the tree and woodlands have now obscured that viewpoint. I shall return in the morning and hope for the best from the site I've chosen.

On the way home I stopped by the church in the village, as I thought I might try to blip the old stone troughs set beneath a stone wall where the springs run out of the ground beneath the churchyard. I imagine these were for watering horses and other animals as you often find similar troughs hereabouts at the spring line. But the troughs were in a very untended state, with vegetation growing over the ends and the stone floor where the animals would approach to drink. I have seen some old photos online which show them in very good repair. I may try to blip them in winter when the grasses, nettles and ferns have died back.

But I did find a large horse chestnut on the side of the road above the churchyard where freshly fallen conkers lay in abundance. I picked a enough to fill my large pockets and have brought them home.  A few years ago Helena found a tip that having a few conkers lying around the corners of the house kept spiders at bay. We have done this for at least three years and I am sure that it does work. We are now being invaded by the usual range of spiders coming indoors for the winter and so the arrival of the conkers is very timely. 

In the last few days I've been thinking about my love of playing with conkers, when I was a child aged about eight and older. I had a conker alley of chestnuts in a special wood I walked through on my way to school. The smell and textures of the mass of dry leaves and the search for conkers to use in competitions at school was a special event. Seeing the white face on this conker still partly in its case takes me all the way back there and brings a big smile to my face.

From Wiki:
Conkers is a traditional children's game in Britain and Ireland played using the seeds of horse chestnut trees—the name 'conker' is also applied to the seed and to the tree itself. The game is played by two players, each with a conker threaded onto a piece of string: they take turns striking each other's conker until one breaks.
Origins[edit]
The first mention of the game is in Robert Southey's memoirs published in 1821. He describes a similar game, but played with snail shells or hazelnuts. It was only from the 1850s that using horse chestnuts was regularly referred to in certain regions. The game grew in popularity in the 20th century, and spread beyond England.
The first recorded game of Conkers using horse chestnuts was on the Isle of Wight in 1848.
There is uncertainty about the origins of the name; it may come from the dialect word conker, meaning "knock out" (perhaps related to French conque meaning a conch, as the game was originally played using snail shells and small bits of string.) The name may also be influenced by the verb conquer, as earlier games involving shells and hazelnuts has also been called conquerors. Another possibility is that it is onomatopoeia, representing the sound made by a horse chestnut as it hits another hard object, such as a skull (another children's "game", also called conkers, consists of simply throwing the seeds at one another over a fence or wall). Conkers are also known regionally as obblyonkers, cheggies* or cheesers. Although a "cheeser" is a conker with one or more flat sides, this comes about due to it sharing its pod with other conkers (twins or triplets). Also Cheggers was used in Lancaster, England in the 1920s. In D. H. Lawrence's book Sons and Lovers, the game is referred to as cobblers by William Morel.