A swan experiment and the changing face of Townhill Park

26 January 2016

When we were shopping at the weekend Commando veered off into a shop I’ve never visited before, Pampured Pets in the village. Since the demise of our ancient and slightly peculiar cat, Pippin, and the sad and far too early loss of the cheeky Fluffy, we’ve had no need of pet shops. For a moment I wondered what he was up to. All was explained when he made for the rows of little hoppers filled with bird food. Last week I’d mentioned I really should get some proper swan food if I was going to keep feeding the swans. This was my chance.

We left the shop with a plastic bag filled with odd looking brown pellets that were supposed to be swan and duck food. As they cost less than £2 it didn’t really seem to matter whether the swans would like them or not. Today was the day I decided to find out. By way of an experiment I decided to take some of the pellets and some unwanted granary crusts to see which proved to be more popular. Obviously. CJ wasn’t going to miss out on this interesting exercise. He had his boots on before I’d even finished decanting the swan food into a sandwich bag.

We wandered down to the river, marvelling that the few cold days had disappeared as quickly as they came and we were back to double digit temperatures and grey skies again. The stong wind grabbed at our words, making conversation difficult and pushed us along towards the jetty. The black swans were nowhere to be seen but there were plenty of white swans for our experiment and a multitude of circling gulls.

The tide was high meaning the bridge to the jetty was flat, easy walking for once, but the jetty itself rocked in the turbulent water. I opened my mouth to comment on this and CJ, who suffers badly with sea sickness, gave me a look and said, “don’t even say it, if I think about it I shall be sick.” Walking down to the river we’d decided CJ would throw the bread on one side of the jetty and I would throw the swan food pellets on the other side and we’d see who attracted the most swans. Watched by hundred of eager eyes we got the bags out of our pockets.

Pretty soon I discovered throwing pellets was a whole different game to throwing bread. Being so much lighter, they flew about in the wind and the first handful ended up mostly on the jetty with me. I had to kick them into the water, while the swans looked at me as if I was an idiot. On the other side of the jetty, CJ was having more success with the bread but, as he’d learned his lesson about hand feeding swans and was throwing it, the gulls were swooping in and grabbing as much as they could before it even got to the water.

Pretty soon I worked out a technique for getting the pellets into the water by dropping them gently over the edge of the jetty. This meant some landed on the backs of the swans but they quickly caught on and snapped and gobbled at the water and each other, hoovering them up as fast as I could throw them. When I first saw them they seemed so small I thought the swans would miss them and they’d sink to the bottom of the river but they floated and not a single one went to waste. Better still, the gulls seemed to have trouble grabbing them so the swans got the lion’s share.

Looking across at CJ I could see he had more or less the same number of swans on his side of the jetty but he had many more gulls. Every piece of bread he threw attracted more and, as they got braver, they began to circle closer. Eventually he was surrounded by flapping, squabbling gulls, like a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Pretty soon the swan food and the bread was gone and the experiment was over. The results were inconclusive. As far as I could see there were as many swans crowded round CJ throwing bread as there were around me with the pellets. The one big difference was the gulls. They definitely seemed to struggle with the pellets and pretty soon gave up and went for the easier bread. It isn’t that I have anything against gulls, I quite like them, but it’s the swans I really came to feed so, for that alone, the pellets win. Mind you, if there was no bread on offer the gulls might have tried a little harder to grab those little brown pellets.

With the wind, the over friendly gulls and the choppy water, CJ was fairly glad to be leaving the jetty. It was rocking so much it really did feel like we were on a boat so he did well to stay as long as he did. In the short time we’d been there the tide had come in even further and we found we had a downhill journey back to dry land. Much more and it would be lapping over the bank.

With such a strong wind blowing up river neither of us were keen to turn around and walk back the way we’d come. It would have been a real battle. In the end we decided to walk on to the White Swan and from there up Gaters Hill. The hill is a tough one but we’d have the wind at our backs most of the way which would make up for it. The wind didn’t seem to deter the gulls. By the reedbeds the sky was filled with them.

Oddly, there wasn’t a single gull on the roof of Woodmill. The bare roof was such an unusual sight I had to stop to take a picture.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen it without a row on gulls,” I told CJ.
“Maybe they heard there was bread at the other end of the river,” he grinned.

On the other side of the road we found a small gathering of ducks.
“I wish I’d kept a few of those pellets now,” I said. “It would have been interesting to see if the ducks liked them as much as the swans.”
A little further along there were a couple of swans.
“I think there are a few crumbs left in the bread bag,” CJ fished it out of his pocket and rummaged around in it. Sure enough there were and he threw them at the swans. Unexpectedly, they totally ignored them.
“How ungrateful,” he said.
“They’re probably not hungry. Swans aren’t greedy like gulls. If they’re not hungry they won’t eat. I think these two might be the orphaned cygnets from a couple of years ago. There was always a pair of swans on this part of the river and they had three cygnets that year. While they were fairly young, still with fluffy feathers, the adults disappeared. Someone said they’d been killed but I’m not sure how. I thought the three cygnets would surely die but they didn’t. People fed them and they ended up hanging out by the White Swan where people threw their bread when they were having lunch in the garden. If they are the same ones I wonder where the third went?”
“Perhaps it found a mate at the other end of the river.”
“It would be nice to think so.”

As we approached Mansbridge, it began to rain. The forecast had said it might but I’d hoped we’d get home before it did. With the gusty wind and now the rain it wasn’t pleasant but we pressed on. There was little else we could do except turn around and, almost at the half way point with the wind behind us, that didn’t seem much of a plan. Then I spotted the flooded path. It didn’t look deep and I had my boots on but CJ was wearing trainers. For a moment or two it looked like we’d have to turn back anyway.

Close up it wasn’t as bad as I thought, more of a big puddle than a real flood.
“This is nothing really,” I told CJ. “The year the pub was flooded all winter, the river burst its banks and you couldn’t tell where it began and the path ended.”
“I’m pretty sure I can get across but I’m keeping away from the edge,” he said.
He was right and we both made it over with dry feet and carried on to the White Swan.

Earlier I’d told CJ about my muddy adventure on the Common looking for the boundary stone. Now we were approaching one that I’d already found and, as CJ seemed quite interested in them, I suggested a little detour to have a look at it.
“When I found it I couldn’t believe I’d not seen it before. I must have walked past it so many times but I supposed I must have been looking at the river rather than the path.”
As soon as we rounded the bend I spotted it but CJ, who didn’t really know what he was looking for, was still squinting around saying “where?” and I had to lead him to it.
“There’s another one along Cutbush Lane,” I told him. “It’s in the grounds of the Gregg School. I’ve seen it through the fence but I’ve never been able to take a picture.”

The rain was getting harder as we climbed Gaters Hill. By the time we reached the top we were wet and fed up. The Swan Garden Centre is at the top of the hill so we decided to go in and have a coffee. Maybe the rain would ease up. Besides, a coffee is always welcome on a walk.

If anything it was raining harder when we left the garden centre. We walked along Cutbush Lane in silence, with our heads down against the wind and wetness. When we reached the Gregg School I did stop to show CJ the boundary stone through the fence.
“They have open days every so often,” I told CJ. “I’ve always been working in the past but I’m determined to go to the next one. The gardens are supposed to be lovely.”

The next stop was about two thirds of the way up the steep part of Cutbush Lane. There’s a tree there that always amazes me. In the floods so much soil was eroded around its roots it seems to be hanging in mid air. In fact you can see right under it and there’s a cave like hole big enough to sit in if you wanted. Every time I come this way I expect to find it fallen but somehow it manages to cling on.

Not long after this we came out where Townhill Way bisects the lane. The flats all along this stretch of road are due to be demolished and most of them had been fenced off. Right on the corner, there was one outside the fence that was empty and boarded up so we stopped for a little look.
“I wonder what they’re going to build here?” I mused.
“Probably more flats. They can’t be worse than these ones though.”
“I expect the people who lived in them have happy memories. When I was younger I had a friend who lived here and they were nice inside.”
The empty building looked sad and unloved with the windows and doors sealed off by sheets of wire mesh. Curiously, the door entry system was still lit up but I suppose, with no one inside to let people in, it was secure enough.

Nearby we could see some of the cordoned off flats through the wire fence. Originally this was mostly farm land, part of the Townhill House Estate, now the Gregg School, where the boundary stone is.  In 1948, much of the estate was sold to Southampton Council and the post war need for housing saw the birth of this housing estate in 1959. It was advertised as an attractive estate with a comfortable country look. You wouldn’t know to see it now. The saddest sight was a small children’s playground shut behind the fence. Hopefully the plans for the new buildings will include somewhere for the children to play and maybe a few pieces of street art to give the local residents something to be proud of.

It looks like these flats will be nothing but a memory soon and the face of the city will have changed once again. It will be interesting to watch it.