It’s a sunny Sunday and after breakfast we headed off over the fields and far away. Luckily Sim is friendly with the farmer and we got permission to walk through the horses’ fields to the right-of-way. I’m not that happy walking in fields with actual horses in them. Sim calls them ‘ponies’, but these aren’t anything like the ‘My Little Pony’ my daughter had when she was wee. These are big brown monsters, much bigger than me, but I treated them like I treat anyone bigger than me – don’t make eye contact, pretend they’re not there and everything will be fine. I did, and it was. we reached the relative safety of the road. Relative safety because this is a narrow single track road, but the drivers seem to think it’s their own personal autobahn. In other words, they think there is no speed limit. That said, we survived the killer ponies and the madskull drivers and started on our walk proper. Like yesterday it was mainly between fields of wheat and also yellow rapeseed. I synched the camera with my iPhone to allow me to geotag the photos. I knew it would only work with the ’10 and not the ‘5, but that wouldn’t matter because at least I’d have a record of the walk that I could plot on a map when I got back home. Checked the first one and all seemed to be well. We walked for an hour or so. Probably more than an hour because although JIC and Scamp were charging on ahead, Sim and I were constantly stopping to get some photos.
When we got to the top of one of the hills, gentle hills. This is Engerland, not mountainous Scottishland remember. They don’t do real hills here. Anyway, when we got to the main road at the top of one of the hills, there was a debate as to whether we should return by the same route or do a round trip. The round trip would mean walking on the grass verge at the side of the road and, since we’d already seen the stock car racing that was being done on the narrow road, we didn’t fancy our chances on the main road, so it was back the way we’d come.
On the way back we got a really good view of the ‘Chicken Prison’ or battery hen farm. If you’ve seen one of these travesties you will know why Scamp won’t but the cheapest chicken, but rather the free range ones. At least they had a slightly better life. We also got to see how a lovely vista across the green fields is destroyed by a solar panel farm. Just to complete the trilogy, there was a wind farm behind us. I’m all for being ‘green’, but just how efficient are these blots on the landscape? Wind farm windmills are white (white = pure) and generally now they are painted green at the bottom (green = natural). It’s all colour psychology, or kidology might be a more accurate description. During the first two weeks in April in Scotland almost no wind energy was generated as the wind wasn’t strong enough. It is not a viable alternative to traditional methods of generating electricity. Enough of the rant.
Back home after passing the demon ponies again, we had ice lollies and Pimms for lunch, then watched JIC starting the barbecue that would provide our supper. What a supper. Chicken kebabs for Scamp. Pork burger and sausages for the carnivores.
Dumped my photos and oh, oh, it looked like only one photo had been geotagged! Bummer. Then when I got them all in there were 40 tagged photos. Only one session, but forty photos in the session. All was good. Just as a finale, a woodpecker arrived at the bird table. I’ve never managed to get a photo of one. This one was a bit twitchy. Every time I went near the window, it went and hid in the big tree at the side of the garden. However, I managed about four good shots from a sitting position on the couch!
Back home tomorrow. I’d love to have stayed longer, but all good things must come to an end. We had an excellent day and an excellent break. Three days with Hazy and N D’Ag and three days with Sim and JIC.