October 2013
After some lovely late summer sunshine, autumn seems to have arrived quite suddenly. Leaves are changing colour and falling and the bracken is starting to colour the fells with a rusty bronze hue. The swallows and house martins have gone and we are beginning to see, and hear, Vs of geese high in the skies. There was great excitement last week when an osprey decided to rest up for a few days on his journey south on top of a tree in the wood behind Foulsyke! The local birds were not impressed! The osprey was thought to have travelled either from Scotland or Scandinavia: I expect it’s now half way down Europe!
There have been other unusual sightings in the valley as well. A few weeks ago, a City Link delivery van ground to a halt on the Mosser Road. The track is declared at both ends to be unfit for cars but there are some satnavs that insist on taking motorists up/down it and most come to grief. The City Link van remained for about four weeks: I’m still not sure how it was eventually rescued!
The big event in September was the Lake District leg of the Tour of Britain Cycle Race. My family arrived in force plus bikes! We were going to take part in the Jennings Rivers Ride on the Sunday but sadly it was postponed because the weather forecast was so appalling! It did eventually stop raining sufficiently in the afternoon to walk down to the bothy at Loweswater.
The weather was a bit better the following day for the Tour but still pretty wet and cold. Nevertheless, Ian, Ann and Paul with little Ella in a trailer, cycled (yes, cycled!) to the top of Honister to see the race! The rest of us walked through Lanthwaite Woods to the road by Crummock where we had a good view of the whole procession as it snaked along the lakeside. We kept ourselves amused, and warm, by jumping up and down to see how many motorbike riders we could get to wave at us – most obliged!
In between all the excitement of the weekend, Paul put the final links together for the Cottages wifi! It had been quite a challenge but it is now up and running and all three Cottages have good broadband access. Thank you Paul, for all the mind bending thought and hard work you put into it!
I think many of you may visit my neighbours, Roger and Ann Hiley’s Loweswatercam website. They produce a beautiful photographic calendar each year with both local pictures and also some from their walks on the fells. They are very nice to have or to give as presents and you can see samples of the calendar on their website. A £1 from each sale goes to Mountain Rescue.
(The photographs of the butterfly on the buddleia in my garden and the rowan were taken by Russell Nye.)
