Things discovered on a little local trundle

Bravely ignoring the enormous cloud of volcanic dust blotting out the warmth of the early summer sun, I sallied forth from Knipe Towers for a little afternoon perambulation.

And these are the things I discovered:

A nice handwritten notice on an unpublicised nature reserve on the hill between Crook and the Deerness valley.

I’m not sure if there’s anything special about the reserve. Its a wood and the only grazing appears to be the local deer, although there was evidence of other wildlife around. Its a nice, quiet, secluded spot, ideal for snoozing in to the background of willow warblers, chiff-chaffs and robins. (There seems to be a lot of robins about at the moment…)

One side of the reserve is a small stream which emanates from this culvert.

One day, I’ll crawl through here…. The culvert carries the stream under a large embankment on the Deerness Valley line. It must have been built around 1858.

After this there was a bit of a jungly thrash through some spiky gorse, brambles, raspberries and wild roses and then into lambing fields for this type of thing:

and this:

Ah, bless! – Cute and delicious at the same time. What could be better?

Home for a nice hot cup of tea and an afternoon nap. Its a hard life. I really don’t know how I cope.

6 miles and 800 feet by the way. It were cold. To be honest, I didn’t notice any volcanic dust, that were just to build up some tension.