Out and About

It's getting near to the end of my holiday period now and the time has just flown. Germany was lovely, I visited Cologne, Bonn and Aachen and met up with old friends which was a joy.

Wildlife news on the marina is that the attentive mother who had the late brood of ducklings continues to look after her brood despite losing two to predators. One of these is our local heron and I watched a tremendous battle of wills on the towpath a few days ago as she faced him off:

Her little ducklings seemed quite oblivious to the danger they were in:

 

Amazingly she managed to chase him off despite him being much bigger and she looks quite rightly

very proud of herself:                                                                                                                              

News on the Marina is that quite a number of people have left, or will be leaving soon, for a variety of reasons, ranging from the increased expense of residential status, to being too old and infirm to carry on. This latter reason applies to our lovely neighbours who have reluctantly decided to throw in the towel as they are just not fit enough to take the boat out any more. We will miss them a great deal as they are lovely people, generous, open and sincere, but we will keep in touch with them. We have offered to take their boat up to the sea basin this week where it can be lifted out of the water and loaded onto a lorry to be taken to the Midlands to be sold. They can't bear to see it coming out of the water, because it would be so emotional for them, and we fully understand that sentiment.

All the new people seem to be fitting in well and we have just tidied up the communal area of the marina and bought a new Chiminea and Barbecue, so we will be having a party on the bank holiday weekend and hopefully that will enable us to get to know the new people better.

We took the opportunity of some fine weather to have a few days out on the water this last week and managed to explore as far north as you can go.

We travelled over the huge Lune Aquaduct for the first time:



There was a spectacular view of the city castle from half way across:
















The views across Morecambe bay and the Lake District were lovely:

We saw a wide variety of wildlife .....


Here are some fledgling Martins just 'branching out':

 

 

 

On our first morning two swans came to visit at the duck hatch.

 

 



 On giving them some bread, they invited the rest of the family for breakfast!

We saw lots of youngsters out with mum, including this moorhen .....









......... and these geese

 

 

This teenager looks a bit gangly!





                                                                            




At last I got my picture of a Kingfisher. He was sitting on this post as we approached in the boat, so I managed to get this picture, but it was from quite far away.







This was the early morning view out of our window after a night on the tow path. The morning light was beautiful:

We had to travel under the motorway here:

 

 

but otherwise it was a peaceful and enjoyable jaunt out.

More news soon.......

Al :)