George is Back!

Ty and I walked down to the town this afternoon, starting at the top of Fore Street and buying a thermos flask and some vegetables, paying some money into the bank, buying a stamp for a letter to France, calling in the Co-op for milk and yoghurt, then carrying on down to the river to walk home along the shore to the creek then up the Coombe and home. A nice walk, one of Ty's favourites, but only possible at lowish tide.

On the way we pass the Union at Waterside, and I was very pleased to see that George the Goose is back with the swans. He first arrived just before Christmas and very quickly established himself as boss of the waterside gang, but he has been on the missing list for a couple of months. I'm not sure how long exactly because I haven't been down there very much while I was wounded, and when I enquired the bar staff hadn't noticed...

Anyway, this afternoon he's back. Looking a bit thin, but otherwise just as bossy as ever. One assumes he's been looking for love, but equally one assumes he hasn't found it, otherwise I don't think he'd have bothered coming back to swan city.

Summer Walking

Sitting here looking out at grey leaden skies it seems more a dream than a memory, but yesterday was a day worthy of the name 'summer'. It was hot, sunny, calm and blue, almost too hot for walking, but walking is what we did.

A walk had already been arranged from Looe to Talland and back along the coastpath, with a snack at the Smugglers' Rest in the middle, and we'd have done it even if it had been raining, but the beautiful weather was a bonus. It was the first long walk I'd been on since before I broke my wrist - not that I couldn't walk, just that I couldn't drive to the meeting places - so it was even more gratifying.

The coastpath in that area is very steep; it isn't very far as the crow flies, but there's more up and down than along, so it's quite a hard walk. We met several groups of holidaymakers who had been tempted by the fine weather to perhaps take on more than they were fit for. Some wearing flipflops, some with babies in buggies struggling up and down steps, some showing signs of incipient sunburn, etc. Way below us there were lots of pleasure boats either sailing very slowly or motoring along looking for a cove for a picnic. A most enjoyable bonus day.

In the evening we were booked in for a barbecue at Wearde. This was also most enjoyable; good food, good wine and very good company on the terrace overlooking the river. Until the inevitable happened and the rain came down. Not that it deterred the few hardy souls amongst us who managed to find a seat under the hawthorn tree.

Changes, changes

Every day things change out there in the woods. But most of the changes are so small that they go unreported. Perhaps that's a bad thing - I should make proper notes and compare seasons and write it all down in a diary, but I would rather wonder at it all than analyse it.

This morning the sun is shining and the sky is blue. If it weren't for the ash which has split about four feet off the ground, spreading its branches in all directions and creating a very big hole in the canopy, and the mud underfoot, it would be difficult to credit the contrast between today's weather and the day before yesterday. The bees are back buzzing round the ivy on the shore - I never realised there were that many different bee species - and the hazel at the top of the steps leading to the woods has tiny little unripe catkins all over its branches, mixed in with the unripe but rapidly colouring fruit.

Here's Ivy

Down at the creek there's a bit of garden wall covered with ivy which faces due South, and is always the first to flower. This gloriously sunny morning it has opened up, discreetly as always. For a human it's virtually impossible to tell by sight or smell whether the flowers are open or not and I'd have passed by without noticing, but the whole plant was alive with bees, hundreds of them, some with their pollen sacs so yellow and swollen they could hardly fly, but still eagerly collecting more. Ivy is the single most attractive flower to bees and butterflies I know, and it does it all with tiny pale green florets. Maybe the fact that there's not a lot of competition and they are all keen to stock up for the cold times ahead is enough, maybe ivy seen from a bee's point of view is brighter than it appears to us.

Back to the Wet Stuff...

...in both senses. It's raining again - the TV experts tell me that this August has been the cloudiest, if not actually the wettest, since records began in 1929, and I could well believe it. And now September has started with rain and a gale of wind, just for good measure.

I decided a little while ago that I would make September 1st my target for getting back into the gym, or at least the swimming pool, and I duly turned up for an aquacise class at lunchtime. Unfortunately, the instructor didn't, but I had a swim anyway for half an hour or so. I didn't go round in circles, either; in fact the wrist seems to work better in the water than out. I'd have gone to Pilates tonight as well if it hadn't been raining so hard - the one thing I just don't feel ready for is driving, and I just wasn't quite motivated enough to walk there...