Just a quick rundown of what has been going on these past few days…

Last Wednesday Lynda & I finished work early, rushed home, packed the car and headed off to Andover for a long weekend. We were visiting Lynda’s aunt and uncle.

On Thursday, we joined the Andover U3A Group for a walk around Upper Chute in Wiltshire. The walk took us just over 2 hours and covered a mix of open countryside, hedgerows and mixed woodland. The walk was very nice with plenty of things to look at along the way, especially the various fungi that we found! The end of the walk was even better - we had a rather nice lunch (with a pint and a whisky!) in The Cross Keys Inn, the starting point of the walk!

The Cross Keys Inn

More walk photos here!

On the Friday, we spent the morning bird watching at Langford Lakes nature reserve, again in Wiltshire. This was the first time I had visited this reserve and I was quite impressed. It’s not a huge place but, if it was local to home, would make a very good “local patch” site. In two hours, we saw 36 species including Kingfisher, Little Egret, Buzzard, Ruddy Duck and a single female Wigeon. A visit in spring could easily see the number of species doubled I would imagine.

Langford Lakes

After the morning's birding it was off to another pub for lunch again! This time is was The Rainbow on the Lake at nearby Steeple Langford. This was one of those pubs that I could have stayed in for the rest of the day! Plenty of original features mixed with a very pleasant restaurant area that overlooked the River Wylye and the surrounding countryside. The food was very good too!

Saturday and Sunday were “chill out” days before we had to, sadly, head back home on Sunday afternoon.

This week has been the usual so far… work, work and work! The weather kept me from using the bike to get to work on Monday, yesterday we FINALLY visited the gym again (must start and get back into the habit of going now!) and today I used the mountain bike for the work trip. I just about managed to get home before the rain started again!

So, that’s the past week or so! Next big thing is the British Heart Foundation walk on Sunday!