Owl carving at Neu-Lindsey nature reserve

I drove Woodpeckers (whose blip describes the day in her usual entertaining manner) to visit her friend G., who is still struggling after recently falling and breaking her wrist. She lives in Theescombe, high on the hillside of the Nailsworth valley close to Woodchester, and its vineyards. To reach her house requires climbing the hill and then taking a single track road running along the hillside, with views west across the hills towards Coaley Peak.

I turned around to drive back to Stroud to do some shopping and only a few hundred yards from G.'s house I spotted this gap through the trees, and decided to stop to take a look out at this vista which I'd not seen before.

It was only then that I noticed the sign indicating it was a small nature reserve with some steps leading down the hillside to it. The sign says it is 'the home of the great green bush cricket', an insect I've previously never heard. I walked down the steps and admired the wonderful view with the old convent on the opposite hillside. I would have blipped that scene but on returning up the steps I noticed the carving on two poles on either side of the entrance steps down. 

I couldn't get both poles into the frame as the width of the road stopped me getting far enough back (I only had my little camera with its fixed lens). But I think it should figure in my blip journal as a record of my new local discovery. I've tried to allow the background to be asa sharp as possible to give at least an indication of the landscape where this is set. The ridge in the far distance is approximately, where the edge of the Cotswold escarpment runs along the eastern side of the Severn valley or Vale. Much further beyond the River Severn lies the Forest of Dean and south Wales.