Wednesday 11 September 2013

Kingfisher catchup

Having finally moved ( very slowly ) back into a 3g. Area and getting blogged up to date we started the day in cool and drizzly conditions. As we passed an abandoned world war 2 aerodrome I swore I could hear a Spitfire above, but hidden by low cloud. Was it my old Battle of Britain memories coming back to haunt me? I'll never know. We stopped at a lovely village named Wheaton Aston for food supplies, only to find fresh fruit and vegetables to be in short supply at both village shops, but then discovered the village pub, the Coach and Horses, has a sideline selling fruit and veg from a stall in the car park. A local farm sold free-range eggs so all was not lost, although we then spent forever in a queue for the next lock, but made many new friends at the same time. We had lunch in Brewood whilst Lynne received some knitting advice from another boat crew.
Over the past few days we have almost doubled our kingfisher spotting, having now seen 5 since our boating adventures began. I am unsure if this is due to low numbers or the extreme difficulty in seeing them. The deep culverts on the Shroppie seem to suit them. Lots of herons too, all of them grumpy.They  stand on the bank whilst we approach  and take-off at the last moment, fly a couple of hundred yards ahead and the whole process gets repeated endlessly. As they are very large birds taking off and landing must waste lots of energy, so why they cannot fly to the rear of the boat and gain a longer rest
is beyond me. No wonder they are so grumpy.However, they are slim, so I can thoroughly recommend a fish diet plus exercise for anyone wishing to have a trim figure. It never stopped raining all day and we eventually moored somewhere on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal (  Staff and Worcs ) dripping wet but satisfied with our days exploits. The Staff and Worcs starts at Wolverhampton ( a sort of suburb of Birmingham, but none the worse for that ) and connects with the Trent and Mersey north of Burton ) . The first mile or so is very,very narrow through solid sandstone, with "passing places" every once in a while. Luckily we met nothing on the way. This has been a very good day again, healthwise. Problems, what problems?

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