BRISTLE: GLOUCESTERSHIRE or somerset?

May 3rd 2020, updated March 25th 2023

We love maps.

Old maps, new maps, big maps, small maps, maps of roads, maps of trains, maps of crops, maps of rain, maps of here, maps of there, we love maps of everywhere. It's the nerdy geographer in us.

Maps tell stories, stories about the places they depict but also about the people doing the depicting. The organisation that now produces beautiful maps, the Ordnance Survey, started life with less benign objectives. It's first project, as its name suggests, was a military endeavour to map Scotland in order to help supress the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. It then moved on to map the southern shores of England when Napoleon threatened to invade. Ireland was next, mapped to provide the British colonial government with a basis on which to levy taxes. The emergence of cycling and motoring and other outdoor pursuits in the 19th century led to the publication of O.S. maps for leisure purposes - and in so doing become of potential interest to cider-makers, showing both the starting point of cider (orchards) as well as an end point (pubs). And O.S. maps continue to evolve; 6 new symbols were added recently, telling tales about the present that would be incomprehensible to earlier generations.

Some of the stories maps tell can be important. China, rather absurdly, claims sovereignty over huge tracts of ocean because it once created a map with 11 dashes (subsequently reduced to 9 and so referred to as the 9 Dash Line) encircling most of the South China Sea. Another absurdity is Mercator’s projection, until recently the most common map of the globe, which shows Greenland as the same size of Africa when Africa is in fact 14 times larger. Less absurdly, the Scottish government has recently passed a law requiring the Shetland Islands to be shown in their correct geographic location - half way to the Arctic, not in a box off the coast of Sutherland and Caithness. And not absurd at all, the citizens of New Zealand are fed up with their country being left off maps altogether.

Closer to home and rather less controversially the question has arisen whether Bristol is or was part of Gloucestershire or Somerset. Bristol is now, of course, its own city (a unitary authority, in the dry language of bureaucracy) but as recently as 1373 the bits of Bristol that really matter - the city centre, City Hall, the cathedral, both universities, Cabot Circus, Temple Meads, the zoo, the Downs, The Watershed, Gloucester Road, the Volley and Port of Call pubs, more or less everything important (apart from Ashton Gate and the Riverside Garden Centre) - would have been part of Gloucestershire if Edward III hadn't granted Bristol status as its own county. There is a reason why Bristol is home to the Gloucestershire County Cricket Club and why Somerset play in Taunton.

Why does this matter? It doesn't. But too many happy, youthful, summer days in the 1980s were spent drinking Somerset cider (Taunton Natch) in Bristol thinking it was part of Gloucestershire for us to change our minds now. And why mention this now? In collaboration with Riverside Garden Centre (in the Somerset part of Bristol, just), we make cider made with apples from Bristol and The Ciderbox (one of our favourite establishments in Bristol) once included it within its Magic of Somerset collection. SOMERSET???

Actually, secretly we're quite chuffed. Somerset is a BIG cider county, second only to Herefordshire in this country, and the fame of Somerset cider extends much further and deeper than Gloucestershire's. Quality is as important as quantity and we’re happy for our ciders to be sold alongside the best from Somerset and we take it as a compliment. But it won't stop us from advocating the merits of Gloucestershire cider or of being proud of our Gloucestershire provenance. And from time to time, this cider from Bristol - called “Bristle” - is available at The Ciderbox, 5 Silverthorne Lane, Bristol BS2 0QD … a part of the city that 650 years ago was in GLOUCESTERSHIRE!

THE ORDNANCE SURVEY’S NEW SYMBOLS

These new symbols tell their own, early 21st century tale and would have been unthinkable just a few years ago … and unimaginable a century ago. Electric car-charging points and Solar farms tell of a growing awareness of climate change and our response to it. Art Galleries, Skateboarding parks and Kite-surfing locations reflect our growing prosperity (pre-Brexit and pre-Covid-19, at least) and the increasingly different ways in which we spend time and money at play. And a new, updated symbol for Public Conveniences possibly reflects their austerity related demise in the past few years; they are now so rare their existence demands a broadcast of its own rather than the modest “PC” that has been perfectly adequate for the past 100+ years. Either that, or a growing inability or unwillingness to read maps properly … ?

a family gathering: the orchard olympics

September 10th, 2021

We're going to branch out. It's all very well to make cider and perry from unsprayed fruit from gardens in Gloucestershire and from local traditional orchards, much of it hand-picked by the gnarled old digits typing this missive, but we’re going to diversify. We're going into the entertainment industry.

There are a few occasions when we enjoy being in orchards on our own. There's a wholesome simplicity to picking fruit and when stooped beneath an ancient perry pear tree, as we were earlier this week, there's even a sense that we’re just the latest person in a thread dating back 200 - 300 years to have picked pears from this very same tree. That said, it's always a pleasure to be joined by others and earlier this week Caspar and Ben joined the fray. They always add to the fruit gathering experience, often in unexpected ways.

If this was a large corporation, Management would require us to keep track of vital business performance metrics, to measure how well we perform our pear picking duties. The Finance Department would opt for a simple but brutal measure of kilograms per person per hour. The Operations Department, however, will recognise that it takes broadly the same amount of time and effort to pick a perry pear, a few grams in weight, as it does to pick a whopping great Howgate Wonder, some weighing in at well over a kilogram, and will want to ensure that those assigned to perry pear picking duties aren't disadvantaged when compared to those assigned to Howgate Wonder picking duties. The HR department will insist that a simple measurement per person is inappropriate; for example, it potentially discriminates against one handed people. Account will also have to be taken to the height of the tree, the length of grass beneath the tree, the extent to which stinging nettles grow beneath the tree. The weather may also need to be considered. A project team will need be set up to determine how best to resolve this tricky conundrum. The project team will need to be overseen by a Steering Group of Senior Management, who will draw up Terms of Reference and define the scope of the project, as well as to ensure the project team aren't able to complete the project unmolested, as that would bring in to question the whole purpose of Senior Management. The end result of this endeavour will be something like …

Meanwhile, in an orchard in Gloucestershire, Ben and Caspar proved once again that the main objective of being in an orchard in the autumn is not to pick pears, it’s to create and participate in the Orchard Olympics.

The ability to throw properly and stylishly is an important life skill so considerable weight is placed upon the ability to hit the trunk of a tree from a distance of about 15 metres, at an appropriate velocity and height to ensure a run-out of Steve Smith, Virat Kohli or whoever else is tormenting England's bowlers that summer. Success or failure in this element of the Olympics is generally easy to measure; success is a splat on the tree trunk, failure is the absence of a splat, although glancing blows can engender some debate. Olympic rules stipulate that ripe, wholesome fruit should NOT be used - such fruit is destined for the cider barn - but because it's so much easier to use fruit picked and sorted by one’s father and conveniently assembled in crates, this rule is generally ignored.

In addition to speed and accuracy, the ability to hurl an object a fair distance is also a key life skill. Until recently, The Old Man was the equivalent of Kenyans in the 3,000 metre steeplechase and reigned supreme, but like the Kenyans he has now been dethroned. One suspects the Kenyans will return, but the same is unlikely to be true for The Old Man. The baton has been passed from one generation to the next.

When The Old Man reigned supreme, the lack of DRS pear tracking technology in Gloucestershire’s orchards was of little concern, but now it has become a competitive event, the absence of DRS has meant it has been impossible for competitors to agree whether a pear has sailed over the distant tree without touching leaf, twig or branch or, if seemingly having done so, whether its path was actually over the tree or merely over the shoulder of the tree. No medal was awarded in this event this year.

An ability to catch is also a critical life skill, best measured by hurling pears as hard and fast as possible at competitors, about 10 metres distant, and counting how many catchable pears are caught. This event also assesses agility, it sometime being necessary to avoid incoming pears in order to preserve life and limb.

Having emptied a few crates of ripe and wholesome pears with these Throwing and Catching competitions, some attention is then paid to refilling the crates - Orchard Olympic style. Senior Management generally hopes that as many pears fall to the tarpaulins laid out below the tree in as short a period as possible, so they can then be sorted quickly and efficiently into crates, loaded into the trailer and then despatched to the barn. However, a regular feature of all Orchard Olympics is an attempt to ensure that no pears hit the tarpaulin at all, the object of the exercise being to catch each pear in a blue box as it is dislodged from the tree by the panking pole, one by one. This event is a true and testing challenge of co-ordination and teamwork and no one, surely, could find fault with the endeavour and commitment of the competitors in demonstrating these important values?

Each year, a new event is added to the Olympic schedule. Last year a stiff westerly wind was blowing, so the competitors initiated a wind-surfing competition, to see if it was possible to use tarpaulins, combined with the westerly wind, to hoist themselves into the air. When that proved to be impossible, considerable effort was expended to recreate the fabled Hawaiian Pipeline surfing wave, with two tarpaulins held in a particular way and then released as the competitor entered the Pipeline.

It was not possible to hold either of these events this year, there being only an irregular zephyr, so a Strength and Endurance event was introduced as substitute; for how long can a competitor hold a panking pole perfectly upright, holding it with one hand at arm’s length? Simple enough, one would have thought, but complicated by the fact that the 2 panking poles are of different weight and length, that the presence of otherwise of even a puff of wind affects the outcome, as do under-foot conditions, so a fair and equitable rota has to be strictly implemented to ensure every competitor has equal opportunity to demonstrate Strength and Endurance with both poles A and B, standing in locations P and Q, in both windy (X) and still (Y) atmospheric conditions, with the results correctly and accurately recorded and tabulated, remembering, or course, that some attempts “don’t count”.

APX APY AQX AQY BPX BPY BQX BQY

Next year we shall be offering these Orchard Entertainment Services to other cider-makers and however you measure your fruit-picking efficiency we can guarantee that your metrics will nose-dive. We can also guarantee that the pleasure of being in an orchard will increase exponentially. We wish they were around for more of the harvest.