Thursday's walk with the Moira "Ambler Ramblers"

John organized this walk, and he and friend Ian had checked it out 2 weeks before on a windy and dry-underfoot-day ... the abundant mud we walked through today must have been due to the frequent and heavy showers in those two weeks!

Four of the regulars on these walks were away on holiday, so only 9 walkers had been expected.  One of them phoned yesterday and cancelled walking because of a bad back, two of them phoned this morning because long expected building workers suddenly became available this very morning, so just 6 of us gathered in the car park of the Ferrers' Arms were we were booked in for lunch after the walk.

 

One of our group suffers from Angina, and in the foggy morning with pollution in the air she soon felt bad and had to return to the car park to wait for us there.  So we were just five from here on.














Our walk took us past the rear entrance to Staunton Harold Garden Centre [a favourite haunt of mine!] where the fields opposite will soon be covered in daffodils, with the sun on these they would have been a glorious sight!  From there we walked on part of the Ivanhoe Trail and then through Alistair's Wood at Lount to return to the Ferrers' Arms, where some non-walkers of the group joined us and made 9 for lunch.

 

(No particular reason for this photo, I just loved the look of this little outbuilding with surrounding daffodils.)

(I loved this scene, too.  Annie, do you fancy painting this little group?)

    (We only saw one solitary male mallard duck on our walk, but we did see these geese at one farm).




Towards the end of the walk we could see something white on a hillside in the distance.  At first I thought it was a lost sheep, but on closer inspection it turned out to be some kind of model of a goat:

Just after taking this photo of the "goat" my camera needed the batteries replacing.  I was disappointed because I hadn't yet managed a close-up of the carpets of these wood anemones we'd seen everywhere, nor of the plentiful periwinkles.

Back home, therefore, I immediately inserted some new batteries, took 3 pictures of the ducks gathered near the frog pond .....

..... and then, most importantly, of our new house sign John had finally managed to put up.  It was one of our Christmas presents from friends Michael and Peaneh [she had done the artistic burning of the design and writing]:

  (The duck stickers are presents from another friend in Germany.)