IT TOOK HOW LONG? (08/03/10)

No Woodpeckers today. we did go out, I promise. They were miles away. We came back filled the seed feeder and had breakfast. The temperatures were well below freezing, so waited for the sun to show over the ridge before venturing out for the paper. We also needed milk, bread, potatoes and meat of some description. The paper shop is under a mile away and could be a comfortable twenty minute round trip. Three and a half hours and about seven miles of walking saw us back home.

I can’t explain why, having loaded a rucksack with provisions, I decided on a walk up Glenridding  and back home via the approaches to Helvelyn. I could have done the walk in reverse and saved lugging the messages for six miles. Oh! Man of little brain. The shopping had multiplied, as it tends to do, to include another bottle of Black Grouse, purely for conservation purposes and four tins of peach halves that happened to be on offer.

I’ve been to the estate office and booked us back in for a week starting the twenty second of this month. As, I hope, you have gathered this place is challenging me. Not hard I know, I’m challenged by pedestrian crossings!

Photographs were few and far between today.

Upper Glenridding. The old lead mine is above the trees on the far hill. It has been landscaped, leaving no interesting relics.

    Glenridding and Ullswater. It’s a pity I shoot and post. I can see that in June and July I’ll need images like this. So will the rest of the UK in all probability.

St. Sunday Crag from Lanty’s Tarn.

Blue Tit, there are three pairs visiting.

A Coal Tit…. I hope!

There are also a couple of Great Tits, one with the finest of plumage but all I get is a blur, very nervous he is.

     Kennel bridge in Grisedale just below here live a pair of Dippers. A good job we are coming back.

This next image I really like. Pure serendipity, I just happened to look back over Ullswater on the way for the paper.

  I may print this for myself and hang it with loads of pomp and ceremony on the….. Toilet door. Should I ever tire of it there will be no waste. There is however always the possibility it will put more on than it takes off!

I was hoping to head for Windemere tomorrow but it looks as if I’m going to have another couple of days in Keswick as the Windemere site doesn’t open till April.

These posts will be posted as usual so if you wish to read in chronological order you will have to start at the bottom and work up… I’m thinking…. Probably a bit late with this advice.

No matter. I hope you enjoy this bit of England…………..I do.