Before getting on the road I will use this spot to mention a few odds and sods which I think I have forgotten from elsewhere (I'll check this when doing thee post-trip review):
- I have always thought that roundabouts were much more efficient than traffic lights at getting a steady flow of traffic. Apparently the volume of traffic in the UK is now such that roundabouts can't handle it, so there are traffic lights leading into roundabouts and consequently (and alarmingly to begin with) in the roads within roundabouts;
- Birding - at least at the twitchy end of it - is driven by pagers. We were present when a major rarity was announced and a pager went off like a fire siren.
- It being Summer there is plenty of exposed flesh, some of it pleasant but much of it occupying too few people for the area of skin involved. With the blokes (mainly, some women were also offenders in this regard as well) tattooing was very evident. I have thus concluded that the UK is heading for a tattoo parlour led economic recovery!
- That being the case there might be even more boats littering the shores of the country. Frances commented at one point how affluent the country must be for there to be so many cruisers lurking around. My response was that 1% of 60 million is 600k people so the tip of the economic iceberg is quite big. Since then I have reassessed the number of floating gin palaces and concluded that a high proportion of the affluent must decide to buy a boat. So we have the means and motive for the crime and I am sure that there are many boat floggers around anxious to provide the opportunity.
We finished packing and said farewell to Susan and Tony, our hosts at the Barn, and headed off at 9as intended. The drive through Bristol and on to the M5 was fine, as would be expected since none of the signs mentioned B**h. Our first point of call was Slimbridge, the reserves created by Sir Peter Scott. We both had some doubts about the place since their website made it seem like a bit of a zoo. However my book on where to find birds in the UK rated it very highly. In fact we thought it was really excellent since the zoo bits were well done, and separated from the 'real' hides.
We were seeing quite a few of the shorebirds we'd seen in Norfolk and no lifers or such like. Then at the last hide we went to (the Zeis hide) the folk next to us seemed to be going on about a bird they were looking at. Somehow this was not the usual rabbit by non-birders. After a little while the female of the couple said to me that they had a White-tailed Plover in their scope: she went on to say it was the 10th UK record of the species. So we looked and a very handsome bird it was too: a major lifer. (The linked image is from Dungeness - see below.)
It was way too far off for a photo, although had been located by someone in the visitor centre using a video camera – presumably with a monster zoom, since it is not a huge bird and it was (according to Google Earth) 530m away. We did notice some folk had got much closer and as we walked back to the visitor centre we counted 10 people walking in with large and expensive optical gear. One guy, burdened in this way but heading out, overtook us going very quickly: as Frances commented he should probably have been at work. An indication of the excitement caused by this bird is the way the opening hours of the reserve were extended! Checking the Slimbridge site on 14 July showed that the bird vanished by 7am on the 11th of July and was then relocated at Dungeness (about 270kms East in a straight line) later that day.
The next stop was Gloucester, for the final Cathedral of the trip. Again the traffic was well dealt with (apart from one set of road works where I ended up going down a 1-way street against the traffic) and we wandered off to the Cathedral, pausing very briefly to note the alleged setting of Beatrix Potter's story 0f the Tailor of Gloucester.
This Cathedral was rather old, at least by the entrance where it was clearly of Norman design. Heading East it became much higher and pointier. Apparently the official monument to the Glorious Glosters is at the wharfs, but the Church did have the cross carved by their CO when a prisoner of the Koreans after the battle of the Imjin River. the organ looked old and was very nicely painted while some of the stained glass was very modern, citing Tom Denny as the artist. The requests for prayer were on public display and were quite touching. I felt that the request “Lord look after Ali and Babe, our pusscats” was pushing the limit a tad.
We were both taken with their cloister and the quadrangle within it. I heard a familiarish birdcall but couldn't spot the squawker. However when I asked a pair of Stewards they did confess that there were Peregrines on the tower. My guess is that they have just reared a whinger!
Off to the M5 which happened very nicely for a few kilometres. Then we got to some congestion which gradually got worse as we went around Brum. This probably reached its nadir at a junction (possibly of the M5 and M6, at this point we had given up trying to work out just which motorway we on, let alone which part of one) full of road works, but we kept soldiering on. The queues and congestion kept appearing and vanishing for no apparent reason. It was strange as everything would slow to walking pace (or stop) for about a mile then open right up again. Eventually, we passed a large mobile crane going very slowly up a hill and I could make "sense" of things:
- The road was subject to quite heavy, so any impediment to smooth flow caused a blockage;
- As the crane went slowly uphill it effectively caused a 3 lane road to become a 2 lane road;
- Once the crane go to the top of the hill it sped up removing the blockage;
- and so on.
No comments:
Post a Comment