Page Text: Wild food in and around Bristol – castle park and Conham River park
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Wild food in and around Bristol – castle park and Conham River park
Bristol is an amazing city for wild food . Wherever you are in the city there is a foraging spot within walking distance and with a gorge, forest, hills, park land, rivers and scrub there are plenty of spots to pick from.
Foraging along the River Avon – my favourite spot in Bristol
Riverside cottages alongside the river Avon
One of my favourite walks in Bristol has always been along the river Avon the opposite side to Beese’s tea gardens – An area known as Conham River park. To get there take the footpath from the edge of Netham Common (where I once found marsh puffballs) and follow the river Avon in the direction of Keynsham. You’ll be rewarded with more than just wild food as this area is a fantastic oasis in the middle of the city. Urban developments open out to steep tree-lined banks, herons stalk the river edges and if you are lucky you might even see a kingfisher darting across the river.
The tree-lined banks are of course the perfect environment for wild garlic which is abundant right through the Avon valley. There are patches too of some of the invasive – Japanese Knotweed and Himalayan balsam – as yet, thankfully, neither have really settled in and taken over. There are a few wild apple trees dotted around if you know where to look. But it is the haul of oyster mushrooms there that really excited me back in 2006!
Alas, they grow on dead wood standing, the tree fell the following year, there was a very hard frost and I never saw them growing there again!
Foraging in castle park, Bristol
Bristol is full of wild food, if you know where to look. Every year castle park in the very centre of town is full of cherries, many of which will fall to the ground un-harvested. Although, one year I noticed an enterprising young man half way up a step ladder with a massive sack tied to his waist harvesting as many as he could carry!
There is also a massive fig tree growing from a wall on the waterside edge of the park. It rarely seems to grow figs of a decent enough size yet, I recently discovered that you can infuse fig leaves in a 20% abv alcohol or make a syrup out of them and then use as amazing ingredients in cocktails. Amazingly enough there the fig flavour comes from just the leaf.
But that really is just the obvious. Search across the park and you’ll find a host of the “old favourites” too. Dandelion, nettle, yarrow, plantain, white and red clover. I’ve even found Angelica and wormwood both growing in the herb beds around the bombed out St Peters Church.
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