Odd conversations with random friendly strangers

I was waiting at Yatton station while husband went to get a parking ticket. Yatton is a large village in North Somerset, and there have been people living there since the Iron Age (not the same people, obviously!), and the Romans were here for a while too. There are plenty of theories about the origin of the name, but I don’t think anyone is completely certain. It also has a most unusual looking parish church:

St Mary’s Church, in central Yatton, built around 1400, is often called the “Cathedral of the Moors” since it is so large compared to the village. The tower has three stages with diagonal weathered buttresses with crocketed pinnacles. There is a south-east hexagonal stair turret rising above the parapet with panelled sides to the top, and an open cusped parapet.
(Wikipedia)
(PS crocket, in architecture, a small, independent, sharply projecting medieval ornament, usually occurring in rows, and decorated with foliage.)

We weren’t at the station to catch or meet a train, we were just parking there to go for a walk along the Strawberry Line.  This was once a railway line taking the fabulous Cheddar strawberries onwards to connect with lines to London and Birmingham. Now it is a linear path which is pleasant and not too difficult for walkers, runners and cyclists.

So, husband went in search of a way to pay for a parking ticket, and I was standing looking at a lovely display of wild bluebells and white bells which were rampant up a bank beside the line. An elderly chap wearing a luminous orange jacket and carrying garden implements was about to work on it and I got into conversation with him.

It’s amazing what you can learn from odd conversations with random friendly strangers! I found out a way to keep slugs at bay, which doesn’t kill them but just puts them off eating precious plants – bake egg shells in a slow oven, crush them with a rolling pin and scatter them round the plant. Use old tea bags to make a concoction to fertilise your slug-free plants, ditto nettle juice – but we decided that making nettles into soup was a far better idea. He recommended “The Gardeners’ Almanac” – a book full of hints and tips and eco-friendly advice, which I could get on Amazon, he told me, for about £12. We talked about bluebells and a lovely shrub he called the Persian rose, and many other things, all while I was waiting for the parking ticket to be paid!

It just shows how much you can learn by engaging in conversation with friendly strangers!

PS husband has now ordered the book!

My featured image is looking from the Strawberry Line across the meadows to Yatton. If you squint, you can just make out the peculiarly shaped tower of the church, the Church of St Mary,