Hello Matilda Quartus, goodbye Vodafone

Every couple of years, when the contract expires, I succumb to temptation and sign up for a new smartphone.  Like its three predecessors, the latest one is called Matilda.  I blogged about the others here in 2017.

My Sony E5 has served me well; so well in fact that I now never take a conventional camera with me on walks. But over the past two years phone technology has marched on, so when the time came to search for a new one, I had a list of things to aim for.

• Screen size 5½-6 inches. That extra ½ inch or so really does improve readability with my ageing eyes.
• EE network. I've remained loyal to Vodafone for the best part of 8 years but reception isn't great in my corner of Lydney. I've done my research and EE is definitely the best around here.
• A good camera. The Sony was a great improvement on the Samsung that went before it, but even my partner S's low-cost LG phone now out-performs it in challenging light conditions.
• At least 32GB internal storage. The E5's 16GB has proved to be too small, limiting the number of memory-hungry apps I could install and limiting performance. 

I've never felt the need to buy premium smartphones, contenting myself with models that were considered top of the range a year or two ago.  However, the one I chose this time is a little different – a recently released upgrade of an older model.  It's a Huawei P Smart 2019. It has a 5¾ inch screen, 32GB of internal memory and, thanks to being bought from the Gloucester EE shop, is on the right network. A pleasant surprise was that I got 10% off the normal price of £18/month as S's phone is also with EE.

My first task was learning how to say Huawei. Hoo-wee?  Hah-wee? The guy in the EE shop pronounced it 'Hoo-wah-wee' and I believed him.  But now I know better; it's 'Wah-way' and (according to Wikipedia) means 'splendid act' or 'China is able'.  Really, I never had this problem with Samsung or Sony!

It's early days but I'm pretty confident that the camera will out-perform the Sony's. It has a feature called 'AI' (Artificial Intelligence), which I'm still learning how to use.  Basically, the camera recognises what's it's shooting and adjusts itself accordingly. So, for instance, when I took these photos in the Brecon Beacons yesterday, the camera recognised 'blue sky' and appears to have increased the saturation.

Without AI

With AI

AI will also recognise close-up subjects, such as a person or flower, and blur the background so as to make the subject stand out. I haven't tried that one yet but here's a publicity shot to illustrate it:

Finally, the really good news is that I now have reliable network reception in my home. So, at long last, I can stop using the land-line phones to make calls, cancel the 'Any Time Calls Boost' with Talk Talk and save myself £10/month. That more than compensates for the extra cost of Matilda Quartus over her predecessor.

Mathern, Black Rock and Sudbrook

Here's a nice, easy 5¾ mile out-and-back walk, with a few places of historical interest on the way.

The walk starts in Mathern, just outside Chepstow. The church here is dedicated to St Tewdrig, a Celtic saint that I had never heard of before. A nearby notice board informed me that he was a King of Gwent who turned his back on kingship to live as a hermit at Tintern. However, his fellow countrymen called him back to fight one last battle against the Saxons, which he won but in which he was mortally wounded. Where he died, they built a church and buried his body near the altar.

This imposing wooden sculpture was placed outside the churchyard in 2011, so now Tewdrig peers up the road towards Chepstow, dissuading any remaining marauding Saxons from disturbing the peace.  Perhaps recognising fellow Celts, he looked kindly upon us as we walked around his churchyard and down to a rather muddy field. There has been a lot of rain recently.

This deep inlet of St Pierre Pill illustrates clearly the enormous tidal range on the River Severn – the second largest in the world. It's low tide and a long way down to those yachts.  Yes, that's the old Severn Bridge (M48) in the background. Far prettier, I think, than it's more modern counterpart downriver.

This is Black Rock. A ferry once ran from here to the Bristol side of the river and in 1863 a pier was constructed so that rail passengers could make the crossing, avoiding the long journey via Gloucester. It didn't last long, though, as the Great Western's Severn Tunnel opened in 1886.

The course of the old railway line is easy to see on the  OS 1:25000 map.

The Prince of Wales Bridge (M4), viewed from Black Rock

A short stroll from Black Rock brought us to Sudbrook – our destination for this walk. The Prince of Wales Bridge towers above the rooftops of the village and the vehicle noise is relentless. I suppose that the locals have learned to ignore it, but I can't imagine that they welcomed the arrival of the M4, back in 1996.

There are remains of an Iron Age fort at Sudbrook but most of its earthworks were lost to the river in the 14th and 15th centuries when the River Severn grew larger, thanks to climate change. Holy Trinity Church fared little better and today most of its churchyard has also been swallowed up.

Rather than exploring the fort, I returned to Sudbrook village for a closer look at a huge building that dominates the place.

This is the Severn Tunnel pumping station. Until the 1960s it housed six Cornish beam engines, which must have been a splendid sight. Coal to fire them was brought in on a railway that, according to my map, was laid directly above the tunnel.  I wonder whether the long-suffering residents of this street can hear the rumble of trains beneath their houses, to add to the roar from the M4?

After exploring historic industrial sites I often look up the old Ordinance Survey maps. I've circled the pumping station on this 1900 6 inch map, but notice that there used to be a second pumping station further up the railway line. It's not mentioned on any of the websites that I looked at today, which leaves me wondering why it was built. Did it, I wonder, house the original pumps before the tunnel was flooded during construction in 1879?

Across the water - The Tyndale Monument

Well sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water...

Standing on the quayside at Lydney Harbour I can see the old Berkeley Nuclear Power Station on the right and in the middle of the flat hill to the left, just visible in this shot, the Tyndale Monument.  Here's a closer look...

That's Berkeley church tower in the foreground and North Nibley's nestling in the hillside.  And as I look across the water, I think to myself, "What fun it would be to come on over, climb up the Tyndale Monument and look back towards Lydney." Last Monday, that's what I did.

My walk started in Wotton-under-Edge, which is about 8 miles from Lydney Harbour as the crow flies, but 31 by road. Such are the joys of living on the Severn Estuary.  I climbed through the woodlands of Wotton Hill, which must look lovely when the Spring flowers are blooming. On this sunny winter's day I contented myself by counting squirrels – 16 in all.

At the top of the hill are the Brackenbury Ditches – the remains of an Iron Age hill fort. Wanting to know more, I looked up the place on the Historic England website and learned that it's a Slight Univallate Hillfort. "Slight univallate hillforts," declares the website, "are enclosures of various shapes, situated on or close to hilltops and defined by a single line of earthworks, the scale of which is relatively small." See, I grow a little wiser every day!

From Brackenbury Ditches it's only a short walk to the Tyndale Monument. The 111ft high tower was built in 1866 in honour of William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English, incurred the wrath of the Church and was strangled to death, then burned. His dying words were "Lord, open the King of England's eyes" and within four years his prayer was answered with publication of The Great Bible. But at what a cost!

History records that Tyndale was born in Stinchcombe, near Dursley, though historian Joyce Moss reckons that he was a Lydney boy. Well, whichever is true, his monument overlooks his birthplace.

It's a long way to the top of the tower...

... but the views from there are magnificent. This is the view looking back across The Severn towards Lydney.

Unfortunately (silly me) I didn't bring my camera with a zoom lens but here's a hazy enlargement, centred on Lydney Harbour, with Berkeley Power Station on the left.

The next time that I go out by myself and I look across the water, I can now say "I've been there!"

4½ miles

After the snow

Two days after the latest snow fall the Forest of Dean retains a beauty all of its own. This is Woorgreens Lake, near Speech House.

Leaving Woorgreens Nature Reserve and the last of the dog walkers behind me, the forest took on a eerie silence, broken only by the crunch, crunch, crunch of my boots in the snow.

The winter sun was bright and warming but shady tracks were still snow-covered – though in places they had turned quite icy, as I discovered to my cost.  Ouch! But it was good to get out in the cold, still air and clock up another 10,000 steps.

4.2 miles