Then there was another important event to attend and enjoy. Of course, in between there was always going to be lots of time to explore and enjoy, as you have seen and are seeing. The time is nigh for this other important event ...
A long time best friend (going way back now to our days at Woodlawn) Steve (aka Chook) is celebrating his 60th birthday on Saturday. We had the good fortune to share his 50th over a week at a fantastic Gite in the Dordogne region with a bunch of family and friends. Does not seem like that long ago actually! But here we are. Good news for me is I'm a little under a year behind :).
So, we are off to Bristol. We are driving down on Friday and staying for the week. Looking forward to catching up and repaying their kind visit to see us in Norwich the first week of our arrival (covered in a much earlier post about Great Yarmouth). Hopefully we will also catch up with several others we know during the week as well.
As part of our return journey we are spending a day at the RHS Malvern Garden Show with Ruth & Sean. So, so big week ahead for us that we are very much looking forward to.
Today, was another day to explore somewhere different and I headed inland, to the west and a couple of places near Thetford Forest. The first stop was a series of ponds called "pingos" that are craters left over from glacial movement many years ago. I was looking forward to having a look around and maybe spotting an otter ... alas, not the same good fortune as yesterday with the seals :(.
The walk started out just fine with the sun shining through the forest beside a small stream (to the right of the path in the photo below); very quiet and that "caused" me to walk quietly and to listen. Very quiet with even the birdsong not being very constant ... rather eerie compared to most of the walks I have been enjoying.
The pingos offered wonderfully reflective surfaces as the sunshine kept peeking through a darkening and threatening sky ... even the tired and bearded bullrushes looked pretty impressive!
Alas, that dark and threatening sky drifted over for about 30 minutes and while the precipitation turned out to be far less torrential than the colour was suggesting (thankfully!) it delivered small hail (the trees offered reasonable cover to complement my big winter coat ... such dumpings have not been unusual this past week ... ah, spring in Norfolk!
The things cleared and I moved on to Thetford (town) in time for some more sunshine before heading back. Thetford seemed to be a very picturesque town and it would be worth revisiting for a longer and more extensive explore ... home of the British Trust for Ornithology too! Here are a couple of shots to conclude this post and offer a combination of the nature (flora, fauna and history all wrapped up) on offer in Thetford ... if you look at the final two with the 3 Canadian geese carefully (double click to get a full screen view) see if you can pick the difference(s) between the two ... all in the timing (usually!) :)
I can see the differences but am puzzled as to what it was that surfaced and appears above the duck's head. I couldn't enlarge it enough to see!
ReplyDeleteOh, very good but keep thinking :) ... we will see if there are any other takers to the challenge :).
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWell it's not a platypus is it!!! Please put us out of our misery.
ReplyDelete