Bank holiday banker

I'm not a great fan of bank holidays - too many people with free time at the same time. It's always too busy where ever you go. We tend to stay at home and hide!

However, it was the boys' 11th birthday on Saturday, so we had to do something.

Their birthday treat was a visit to Legoland at Windsor, but we took them the previous Saturday to avoid the crowds, ho ho!

No pictures to speak of because we spent most of our time in queues for rides. Token photo below.



On their actual birthday, we took them (plus older sister) to High Lodge at Thetford Forest and, though it was quite busy, had a nice time. The children enjoyed the playgrounds (including 17-year-old big sis), we played cricket and football, then it was back home for a party tea (is there a better meal?) and more hours on the new Wii (Mariokart and tennis).




There was a new 'attraction' at Thetford Forest - a big wooden pyramid to with two tunnel slides.



The eldest daughter is off on her gap year travels at the moment, but she did remeber to send birthday cards from New Zealand. She's following in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg - Around The World in 80 Days or, in her case, 12 weeks. So far on her whistle stop tour, she's done New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fiji and New Zealand. In a couple of weeks, she's off to Oz.

Anyway, back to the more mundane . . . Sunday saw us make our usual visit to a garden centre - this week to pick up dog food and flea treatment for both the dogs. Pm, Mrs DW took me to Blacks in Cambridge to buy a new pair of walking boots for my birthday (9th) if anyone is planning to help me celebrate. I can't post a picture of said boots because they were whisked away and hidden (under the bed)!

Sunday was also interesting because the dog and I discovered two new residents in the village. Most of the farms around the village are arable - oilseed rape as far as the eye can see. But one local farmer has decided to branch out . . . into rare breed cattle. We bumped into him inspecting his two young White Park cows which had arrived just the day before.



He told me he was fed up with driving a tractor up and down spraying crops and, though he was meant to be retired, thought he'd like to help save this very rare breed. When he was growing up, his family had a dairy herd and though that was long ago, I think he still has a passion for cattle.

The two cows, which he hopes to start breeding from this year, came from the herd at Wimpole Hall. Apparently. there are only about 200 breeding females in world (there's a herd in Germany and another in the USA) and its quite a complicated process breeding them because you can't breed from the same line for four generations (to prevent in-breeding).

Finally, I had a perfect Bank Holiday Monday - two pleasant walks with the dog, during which we spotted a nice deer with antlers, and the rest of the day in the garden, planting, weeding and generally pottering.



Perhaps, bank holidays aren't all bad after all.

Dog tired . . .

Apologies in advance for an image-heavy entry - new route and new camera too much to resist

Yes, a very tired dog. This morning we ventured deeper into the fens than ever before and had our longest walk. The poor old hound was exhausted, but was a lovely walk and very interesting, too.

On the nature front, I heard my first cuckoo of the year. It seems very early. My memory says (and I think I've mentioned this in a previous blog) that it's usually the end of May before the cuckoo heralds its arrival. I suppose it's either global warming bring them here earlier or my memories are false.

There seem to me lots of yellowhammers about this year - the hedgerows out in the fen seem full of them. Also plenty of reed buntings and the dog and I stood and watched (and listened to) a greater spotted woodpecker for a while.

I had to consult the bird book when I got home to identify a pair of tits we saw - unfortunately, it wasn't able to help me get closer than either a marsh tit or a willow tit. Apparently, they're hard to tell apart, even for experts.

I stopped to take pictures of some cowslips and when I looked up, I could just make out a little face watching me intently through a bush. Of course, the camera was set up to take a close-up picture of a flower, so I struggled to quickly change the settings. I had the autofocus on, so my first effort resulted in a nice sharp image of the bush. I flicked the camera into manual focus and just managed to take one picture - not quite in focus - before the deer broke cover.

It's now Monday - computer crashed while uploading the cowslip picture (now, it's a critic!) and I just gave up for the evening.

Further on our walk, we came across part of the new path being built by the National Trust to connect Wicken Fen Nature Reserve to Cambridge. They've even built a posh new bridge across Swaffham Lode. They're also cleverly making the path twice as long as it needs to be by making it snake across the landscape.




Some time ago, I read how one of the major drainage ditches on the fen (the Commissioner's Drain, I believe) went under Swaffham Lode and I imagined a tunnel going deep underground.

In fact, the lode is at quite a high level, so the drain goes under it at about ground level. It was difficult to get a picture which illustrates this, so I took two - one of each side of the lode, from the top of the embankment.

Next time we travel that way, I'll try to get down to the level of the drain to see the entrance.

Further down the lode we came to the pumping station where it joins the River Cam. There's an old fashioned lock gate, but the work seems to be done by a modern steel rising gate. I thought the river level would be much higher that the lode, but in fact, the lode was higher.

From here, we turned towards Cambridge along the banks of the Cam - a peaceful spot to have a houseboat, though the 'taggers' still managed to leave their mark at the Bottisham Lode pumping station, which is really a long way from anywhere.

Finally, with the dog (and me) flagging, it was time to head for home. Just time to capture one of those big fen skies.

Flash, bang, wallop . . .

. . . what a picture, what a photograph. Or at least I hope so.

New camera this week - back to an SLR after a few years of a compact. I enjoyed the Nikon, it was very versatile but also a bit unwieldy if I wanted to take pictures on anything other than the 'auto' setting.

Anyway, a walk with the dog on Sunday was the first opportunity to use the new 'equipment'.

It was a pleasant walk along a newish route that I'd not photographed before, but the hound was being a bit awkward, making it a bit difficult to stop and look around.

We did find a pond we'd not spotted before - very picturesque but spoiled a bit by all the litter left behind by kids who obvioulsy used the place for drink parties etc.

This stretch of the walk takes me over a couple of bridges - a narrow footbridge and an old railway bridge, the line for which has long since been ripped up.

There was a pair of blackbrids going beserk in the garden on Sunday morning - giving the cat a right telling off. A bit of investigation uncovered this poor little thing hiding in the undergrowth . . .

Funilly enough, I was reading a piece last week about how fledgling blackbirds often get turfed out of the nest a bit early, but it was important to leave them alone because their parents continue to look after them.

Well, it survived Sunday and Monday, though I do worry that one of the many neighbourhood cats will make a little snack of him.

Sunday pm, we went into Cambridge to visit the Botanic Garden We'd just started taking a look around (a reluctance to pay the entry fee meant I hadn't been there for years) when the heavens opened. We sheltered in the coffee shop for a while, then the glasshouses, but we admitted defeat in the end and beat a wet and hasty retreat back to the car.

I did get the chance to take a few pictures, but not as many as I would have liked.

Time flies

Where does the time go?

It doesn't seem two minutes since we were having an Easter egg hunt in the snow . . . 45 eggs counted out, only 41 counted in! I did find one lying in the grass after the snow had melted but I'm not sure where the rest went.

Then the next weekend, we had the opposite weather and I found myself in Ely for a couple of hours while one of the boys had some cricket coaching. We used to live in Ely and really liked it there but moved away about 10 years ago.

It's changed quite a bit in that time - lots more houses, new park down by the river, new shops etc - but the cathedral is an ever present wonder. It never fails to lift and amaze me.

There's always something to photograph in Ely - like this impressive chimney stack and a nice surprise when a small steam lorry passed me by.

Sojourn (with small boy) on the Isle of Wight

Last week saw Dog Walker and son saying farewell to the rest of the family for a short trip to the Isle of Wight.

The outing was in lieu of a Year 6 school residential trip which the boy was unable to go on. And so it was meant to be a bit educational!?

It didn't start well - departure postponed from Monday to Tuesday due to big storm which meant some of the ferries were cancelled. I'm not a good sailor so it was just as well.

The storm was a bit of a godsend in that I was able to show firsthand how coastal erosion takes place (one of the subjects being studied by his classmates on the Norfolk coast). A double bonus is that one of my favourite things is walking by the sea in stormy weather.

Stormy at The Needles

He loved it at The Needles where we were blown across the car park and where the night before windspeeds of 95mph had been recorded. Round the corner, at Freshwater Bay, the waves were crashing on to the beach and around the chalk stacks.

Waves at Freshwater Bay

We also visited the Dinosaur Isle museum, at Sandown. It's quite interactive and designed for kids (I think) so he quite enjoyed that - he didn't even complain when I made him complete one of the worksheets.

There was a lovely lady in the reception/gift shop who seemed quite pleased that she'd been inundated with new stock in readiness for the coming season. I think the winter months are a bit lonely for her - she said there were days when her only customer were museum curatorial staff buying sweets and snacks.

The son blew £10 of his £15 allowance for the trip on a Horrible Science book on dinosaurs. I blew £14.40 on my undisclosed allowance on something I've coveted for most of my adult life - a geological map of the Isle of Wight (what a sad old git!). I remember studying one at an exhibition (Local Look, at Brook WI, by the Isle of Wight Natural History Society) when I was 12 or 13 and I've wanted one ever since. I can't really explain why - I'm not sure I can even read it properly!

The boy had also hoped that we might be able to play crazy golf while we were on the Island - a favourite holiday pasttime. He wouldn't believe that they wouldn't be open so we went down on to Shanklin seafront - a desolate place in winter - and he soon believed me!

Desolate at Shanklin

Desperate to continue the 'educational' theme, the next day we took Grandad to Portsmouth to the Historic Royal Naval Dockyard. The guided tour of HMS Victory was quite fun - the guide (an ex-Navy man I presume) made it interesting, though you got the feeling that his 'script' was very well rehearsed.

HMS Victory

Raising the wreck of the Mary Rose was obviously a great feat, but I'm afraid viewing a few old timbers through a thick mist is not that exciting. The museum (nearby but hopefully, due to Lottery funding soon to be in the same building) was better and was quite child friendly. This was just as well as we shared our time there with a class of youngsters with learning difficulties. They were quite delightful, but the teacher in charge of them was completely dipsy and, to be honest, not really in control of herself!

The weather quickly got worse at this point so we had to forego the boat trip around the dockyard and tucked into sausage in chips instead. This was followed by a wander around HMS Warrior, which is a beautifully restored early iron warship - the most advanced of its time (1860s).

The it was back through the rain to the ferry terminal and the Island.

Another highlight of the day was taking Grandad on public transport, namely the Island's railway, which runs from Shanklin to the end of Ryde Pier. The railway itself is quite historic, in its way - the rolling stock being made up of 1950s London Underground carriages.

Grandad was outraged that the ride was so bumpy and was almost apoplectic at the language used by some of the school children who shared our compartment.

Spring has sprung . . . not

The bright spell we had before this current stormy weather tempted me and the dog out of our armchair/basket and into the countryside.

We had a couple of walks which were chilly (with frost) but nice because of the bright sun.

One such walk, we discovered an old threshing machine decomposing in the corner of a field. It made me think about the days when dozens of men would be working the fields around the village, when there were up to a dozen pubs (none now), shops (just a small post office today) and a real sense of community (definitely none now!).

I was brought right back into the 21st century by an equally decrepit piece of machinery lying in a nearby hedge. Dumping your unwanted items in the countryside seems to be the way you get rid of them nowadays. I wonder how long it'll take this motorbike to rot away completely - probably never will.

Our noses were assaulted when we came across a farmer spreading muck on his field - poor dog, her sense of smell is thousands of times more sensitive than mine. In fact, the smell wasn't too bad as we approached as we were upwind but it got worse as we went around the field. Also, the next day, the wind changed towards the village and the place stank for a week!

I don't think it has been a particularly bad winter, but the rabbits have obviously been hungry, devouring the bark on these young trees . . .

Finally, we found some more frosty teasels - one of my favourite photographic subjects.

Book of the week?

I wonder how many people had this useful little tome in their stocking at Christmas?

It was on sale at a local garden centre at a bargain £2.99 - reduced from £6.99. Do you think they might have had trouble shifting it at the original price?

Bicarbonate of soda is, apparently, a very versatile natural substance - but who on earth could find enough to say about it to fill a book?

I didn't look to see who wrote it - apologies if it was you.