A walk to Red Lane and back. Most of the bright colours and white blossoms are gone – the cow parsley and its relatives are mostly brown. Plenty of wild rose in the hedgerow, and the grasses are starting to look quite decorative – summer is almost upon us.
Following in our own footsteps: we walked this way in November 2018 (see “By Coundmoor Brook“). It was an autumnal world on that day, with the sun nearing the horizon as we returned to the car. On this warm May (bank holiday – we passed four other people out walking!) afternoon, we’re in a very different world, where the wooded valley provides some welcome shade.
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It’s an old favourite – from Aston Munslow, up onto the Wenlock Edge, down the lane to Munslow and back across the fields. It’s a widely-varying scene as we walk, through sheep pastures and arable fields, quiet rough tracks, the wooded Edge – and a bit of bedrock on the little sunken lane taking us down to Munslow. The day improved – rather grey and flat at the start, clear skies and warm sunshine at the finish. Quiet too – just three other people in five miles. Perfect!
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23 May 2009: a warm spring evening at Cressage, Shropshire
23 May 2012: having fun in France – the Somme Bay railway, the cliff lift at Le Treport and the Somme at St Valery. Lots more photos on the blog – see “Sunshine“, and on Geoff’s Rail Diaries – “Rails around the Somme Bay”
Three days ago, we chose a route which would provide some shade – today, we’ll retrace our steps – in reverse – for a different perspective and some shelter from the strong westerly winds… Once again, it’s an enjoyable little outing.
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22 May 2005: a visit to Lilleshall Abbey, between Telford and Newport. We were the only people there.
I mentioned our 2012 French trip a couple of days ago (it was covered pretty fully on the blog at the time). On 22 May 2012, we visited the Cité Souterraine at Naours. For more on our visit to this amazing place, visit “The underground city” (the most visited page on the blog).
Later that day, as the sun went down, we walked beside the Somme, from our gîte at Saigneville, in a lovely quiet corner of Picardy.
“Unseasonably” so, according to the Met. Office. There’s certainly no shortage of fresh air on today’s short walk, but much of the potential subject matter for the camera is blowing about madly, so just three pictures today. Yes, the wild rose is coming out in profusion.
Not a walk in the park! It’s an easy wander around (outside?) the perimeter of this estate, apart from a short stretch along a main road, and other than the numerous drivers on that 1/3 mile, we saw no-one else. No shortage of squirrels in the woods, though, and almost continuous birdsong… Most enjoyable!
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That’s 2006 and 2007… Thirteen years ago, on this day, we visited the red kite feeding station at Gigrin Farm near Rhayader in mid-Wales – what a spectacle! (It would have been better, photographically, if the sun had shone…) These are native kites, the offspring of a very small number of survivors from the original population. Today, we regularly see birds from the Welsh population in Shropshire.
On 20 May 2006, we were very nearly in mid-Wales. We’d planned a walk over Hergest Ridge, from the Herefordshire border town of Kington. It would have led us to lunch just across the border. The forecast suggested there might be one or two showers. We were rained off! A heavy, fine, penetrating rain which, among other things, would have soon soaked into our cameras. The significance of this day is that one of the photos appeared on the very first page of this blog, just over a week later (see “The new blog“) Yes, we’ve been going 14 years.
A very short (2.3 miles) and pleasantly shady walk – it’s warm and sunny! – up the leafy track past Round Hill to the Shirlett plateau, and down again through the forested hillside. Is that rustling a blackbird? No, it’s a small deer, perhaps 2-3 metres away, fairly well hidden – so no photos – in undergrowth beyond the fence. It’s sensed our presence, and is gone – no hurry, but it’s soon out of sight. We return to the car along the quiet road through the Smithies. Everyone else (perhaps half-a-dozen) is riding a bicycle. Have we missed something?
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