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Monday morning mottled
cloud reflection on the river
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On Thursday, the river was
at red all day so we had to stay put but did get a couple of good walks
in. The water meadows in Bidford are
very popular with dog walkers so Buddy got lots of exercise running around with
different dogs all day.
In the evening Karen
caught a train to Edinburgh to have a couple of days with Jo and on Friday I
drove down to Reading to see most of my children. I dropped Buddy off at Lauren’s and then went
to pick Jake up from his office in Weybridge and we went for lunch. Jake’s office is in Brooklands, the old banked
race track, at Weybridge which now houses a big technology and retail park as
well as the Brooklands museum. British
Aerospace had a factory there for many years and I worked there in the 90s. I hadn’t been back since so couldn’t believe
the changes over 25 years.
Jake had taken half a day
so we went back to Reading and took Sophie and Yanos to the museum of rural
life which is attached to the university.
These sort of museums always fascinate me and this particular one has an
amazing collection of farm carts from different counties around England. I find it incredible that these artefacts have survived.
Later on Polly, Isaac and
Steve joined us all at lauren and Lewis's for dinner and we had a great evening of games (and drinking), staying up to
the early hours as we tend to when we all get together.
There weren’t any decent
pictures of the weekend save for one with Steve, Sophie and Lauren when we
walked into Reading on Saturday to get Lauren kitted up with walking
boots. Karen, Steve, Lauren and I (and
Buddy of course) are having a weekend in Snowdonia in three weeks as part of
our training for our next three peaks challenge in 2018.
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With Steve, Sophie and
Lauren
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In the afternoon, I drove
to Leamington to pick Karen up from her train and we spent the rest of the day
pottering around the boat and Bidford.
We were going to move the
boat four miles to Haverington on Sunday – this was the next spot where there
are moorings. I had a final check on the
mooring and parking situation via Google Earth and OS maps and suddenly
realised that the only way to get back to the car (without walking along the Stratford-Evesham
main road) was to cross the river via a ford. I had thought the crossing was a bridge! It may have been doable a week or so ago but
the levels are still up so it wouldn’t have been possible. We stayed put so I could then move the boat
on Monday and Karen could just come home to the new spot after work.
We had a pleasant walk in
the afternoon taking in some Worcestershire villages and, as we often do, found
a crop that we didn’t recognise. Well,
we recognised it but couldn’t remember what it was. It was very sweet smelling like perfume.
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Can’t remember what this
plantis
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We had another river
access issue on our way back on Sunday afternoon. We had walked to Cleeve Prior and then on
down to the river intending to follow a path back to Bidford along the river
bank. We got part way along the river
and were then met with a sign that the path had been disbanded via some sort of
public order. So we had to retrace our
steps but were entertained by a young dunnock for a while.
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Young Dunnock
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Here’s hoping that the
next blog entry is from somewhere different as we have now been at Bidford on
Avon for a week.
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