Scenes From A Summer Saunter

I was planning on going a little further afield, but it was a lovely morning and the temptation to "get out there and get going" was too great to resist. So I opened the back gate and just started walking....

.....past the roses in a cottage garden....past the village primary school standing so quietly and emptily through the summer holidays....past a hopeful "missing cat" notice (do lost cats ever read these things and return home?)

....alongside the little River Mel, sliding along under the green trees....Ducks, Blackbirds and a busy litle Grey Wagtail....

....over a meadow of grazing cattle, staring dully out from their beefy heads full of beefy brains....

now here's a curious thing: a field of wheat, but not like the wheat we grew when I was working on a farm. I remember reading somewhere that the earliest forms of wheat had this "bearded" sort of look. I think the proper name for these bristles is awns, though we always called the ones which grew on barley barley ails.

....beside a hedgerow thick with the beautiful berries of the Guelder Rose....we used to call these "cranberries", though they're not.....

....an overgrown footpath.....yes, it goes straight through there! Luckily there were no nettles and very few brambles....

Harvest Skies - wispy cirrus clouds that would have old Bert confidently predicting "Rain on the way", especially towards the end of harvest when we all wanted an evening off work....

....a patch of cranesbill, backlit by the blazing sunshine.....

....another unfamiliar crop to me. How things move on in the seemingly unchanging English countryside! I think this may be grown for birdseed and might be called "canary grass", though I've never seen a field of it before.....

......beside the River Shep, another of the tiny chalk streams which thread their way through our local patch.....

.....possibly the best sight in farming - a cleared field at harvest time.....

....not everyone was out for a walk; this fine old vintage car passed me in the village of Foxton.

Walker's Log:
    Start: My back door, Meldreth 06.50
    End: Foxton 11.25
    Distance walked:  10.5 miles (17 Km)
    Notable birds: Grey Wagtail, Yellowhammmer, Swallow, House Martin, Swift, Buzzard, Kestrel, Green Woodpecker 
    Mammals: Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits
    Wild flowers: lots of common ones, nothing unusual  
    Churches: Meldreth, Shepreth, Fowlmere, Foxton
    People with dogs: 1
    People enjoying a walk: 2 adults, 2 children
    Cyclists: 2, both under ten years of age.
    Horse riders: 0