The valley of Charlton Bottom is in Somerset, or whatever the area South of the Bristol Avon is being called at the moment in official terms. There are essentially two Charlton valleys; the eastern one, following down from Queen Charlton, and the western one, which is the one marked on the map as Charlton Bottom. The picture in point of fact shows the east one, but as this one has no name...

Charlton Bottom is located on the Bristol side of the suburb of Keynsham, which is in turn located between Bristol and Bath (favouring Bristol). The valley is rather accessible from the south-east side of Bristol, so it was perhaps something of a surprise that on this particular November Sunday afternoon there were relatively few people about. Perhaps they'd all cleared off to Radstock.

Keynsham obligingly keeps its nose out of this photograph - though there is no real reason to exclude it, as it makes for a rather agreeable provincial suburb. Georgian architecture in the town centre - such as there is one - is combined with a mix of styles up the larger Chew Valley (on the Bath side of Keynsham). The Chew is a meandering and pretty little river, which heads southwards towards Pensford and then west across country to Chew Magna, Chew Stoke and the Chew Valley Lake (which is actually the fifth largest reservoir in the UK trying to sound attractive). Keynsham's other claim to fame is being the former home of a Cadbury chocolate factory, which Cadbury decided to close before their sell-out to Kraft Foods. This sell-out had the small benefit that Kraft got to take the flack for the actual closure soon afterwards.

Keynsham nowadays therefore is largely a domitory town for Bristol. It is particularly notable for being one of those places where the bypass (the A4) carves through the middle of it on a grade-separated dual-carriageway rather than, say, actually bypassing.