At the small Wood End Car Park at the edge of the woods, that form Marston Thrift, there are two entrances, and since on my earlier visit I had chosen the left one, on this occasion, I decided I would enter the more shaded of the two, the one on the right leaving the Car Park, where I had swelled the numbers by one hundred percent.
Although there was almost no sound within, from either birds or insects for the first ten minutes of my walk, eventually I did hear sounds of human activity, from a teenage couple on bikes from the parallel route, who had stopped by some branch-slung ropes with loops that were there for the purposes of swinging. I felt slightly saddened that my presence disrupted their innocent pleasures as obviously they had expected privacy, so they moved off.
Later I would encounter several dog-walkers, and a couple with whom I chatted to find out the location of some lakes purported to be somewhere nearby. Certainly everyone I met was friendly and would extend greetings, some willing to chat, some content to simply exchange pleasantries and wander on. I did hear a strange single bird calling in a burbled sound, but overall the woods were silent, which for a wood, I found odd. Later I did hear that there were supposedly a large number of butterflies to be found, but I only spotted two in all the time within the shade of the trees, and one outside in the open, of which I managed to get a shot; a Meadow Brown. Perhaps this long dry spell had taken its toll, for I was expecting more signs of life than I encountered.
One really helpful family were able to point me in the direction of two ponds, but the lady said that the water levels were very much lower than she had known from past visits, so perhaps this accounts for the low level of wildlife I had been experiencing; certainly strangely for a Englishman I am actually wanting the onset of some rain to refresh the scorched grass I encounter in my travels around this vicinity.
I also spotted a tiny rainbow fragment in the clouds, but certainly despite a fair amount of cloud cover from time to time, no sign of rain. Can anyone spot the Penguin?
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