Sun Shots

Another lovely day today, but I felt a bit useless because 1) I fell asleep while watching "The Force Awakens" on my sofa for two hours and 2) I cooked too much for my tea.

I did have a couple of nice walks to the park, going a different way each time, and enjoyed a cup of tea each time. Small pleasures! I really don't know why people drink coffee, it has no refreshing qualities whatsoever.

In the afternoon the sun burnt all the clouds out of the sky, and my second walk was into bright sunshine. Some good views to be had, the river glittered and the horses stood haloed in their shelterless field.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 15.10.17

Autumn Colours in a Nutshell

Or rather in the local gardens to me. Spotted it fluttering down from the cotoneasters, and hoped it would settle long enough for me to get a pic.

It did, but not for any longer, and that was after having to do some daft gyrations to avoid casting my shadow across it as I approached from 15 metres away in a low sun casting a shadow like a striding giant.

I was getting some strange looks I can tell you. Unavoidable when you are a nature spotter sometimes. It's beena glorious day, so I didn't care.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 14.10.17

Shots of the Lowering Sun

Our work buildings are not terribly pretty places, but I'm rather proud of the campus that surrounds them. There are a variety of nature habitats; grassland, trees, waterside, and cultivated garden areas.

When the sun is fed up of being over the yard arm and is making his way to bed, it sets over the south western end of the campus, and creates beautiful light over the grounds.

If you are lucky, this is the time that barn owls hunt.

I am trying to make the rest of workplace realise how special it could be. It is getting there, but slowly.

Si

A Touch of Classy Interior

So, around on my travels recently - not today, I have been landlocked at work until the rain began at hometime - I came across a nice old car, a Singer Hunter, with a nice figurehead and glorious wooden interior, full of interesting looking knobs and switches.

It was sat outside the old Triple 3 garage, which when I was a child I thought meant that you could only have 3 cars in it at once so it wouldn't be much good for making money.

Perhaps they felt the same, because sometimes you can buy potted plants there in case you want to bring a green touch to your freshly MOT'd Toyota Yaris.

Diversification is where it's at!

Great car too.

nter

A Flower for my 45th

So yes I'm another year older, certainly no wiser about anything, but a lot lazier. I've done nothing today other than have a couple of gentle walks around town seeing if there was anything I wanted to buy myself.

There wasn't so much as a sausage. Actually, if I'd seen a nice sausage I might have bought one, but there wasn't even that.

When you want to buy yourself something, you never actually do.

Any good ideas for £20 worth of something for an outdoorsy type to buy himself other than a new waterproof running jacket. I also have love to shop vouchers, Argos has a camping mat, but the sleeping bags have terrible reviews.

Either that or I'll just buy myself a large bottle of rum.

Really, have done nothing today, it hasn't been special, and it won't be until midnight either!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 09.10.17

Fishing on the Goose Lake

Bit of a lumbering sort of run today, on a day that turned out to be surprisingly warm but not terribly interesting apart from the large numbers of honeybees with full saddlebags on the ivy.

There's a few queen buff tail bumbles low down looking for hibernation nests too. Single white butterfly. No echelons of noisy pink footed geese like the one I saw the other day.

The geese around in town today were of the canada variety, big honky beasts that make running rather tricky as they decorate every inch of footpath with nasty green and brown droppings, as if someone has sat on an avocado.

I hate those as well.

Lots of fishermen on the blue lake today, casting their lines out between the flotillas of waterfowl. THe fishermen here are angry as there are proposals to use the lake for teaching sailing and canoeing. Go for it, say I. So do the fish I suspect.

Overhead a green banana flew - the motor-paraglider who some people accuse of being some sort of aerial voyeur.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 08.10.17

At Last the Eco Pods

So, after an aborted start to my run due to nothing pleasant, I completely changed my direction of run today and headed NOrth to the edge of the town, past the marina and on the godforsaken path through cowpat fields towards the concrete bridge.

I had last run along here during my marathon a couple of years ago, I think. It was horrible then, far muddier than it was today, but as I crossed the bridge it became less plesasant, for the air suddenly filled with the organic back of the throat odour from the sugar factory chimneys - Sulphur Dioxide based if I remember right - before the funker smells of farmyard and sugar factory joined in to create a bit of a miasma.

After crossing the bridge I could see the scrapyard swine hadn't blocked the path here, so I was able to walk along the river - welcome chemical smell of weir whipped water - and along to the fishing Eco Pods I had wanted to look at before.

For "Eco Pods" read "Unglamorous Undecorated Sheds".

I had thought they would be more glamorous and chi-chi somehow. They really weren't but I don't suppose the hardened anglers don't mind as they dangle their bleeping posh rods over the Trent.

It's not a glamorous setting, this post industrial part of town, but the gardens of the North lock cottage were being tended to as I went under the bypass bridge. How the owner drives here I've no idea.

The river runs North. Beyond is where my longer run met up with the Trent Valley Way. on the way back, a man sailed his boat under the bridge without taking his mast down. Oh dear.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 07.10.17