I drove up from London to Anglesea en route to the ferry to Dublin. I stopped at Menai Bridge having seen a walk in the AA book of UK walks (#99). Experience on this ferry journey gave me ETA probabilities ranging between 830 (p90) and 1100 (p10) and it was more like 945 when I got to Menai. Lengthy M6 road works and heavy M56 traffic meant I had about an hour to spare before ferry boarding closed at 1120. So it was going to have to be a short walk on a mild, bright morning, the day after storm Doris lashed these parts.
The very first thing I saw was a red squirrel - quite a coincidence having heard a radio story this morning about their likely extinction in the UK within 40 years due to a combination of imported pestilence and grey immigration. Then a skein of migrating geese passed overhead at Church Island and shortly afterwards, I found myself under the arches of Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge looking at Shellduck feeding on the ebbing tide.
I walked up to fields full of apparently pregnant sheep after passing rhododendron blooms scattered by the storm. I came across a clump of wind beheaded daffodils and watched two magpies gathering twigs. It's been that mild that nature has declared Spring.
Another coincidence as I crossed the border into Wales, I heard Burton reading Hopkins, an excellent Welsh connection on the Radio 3 breakfast show.
Just 4 km because I lingered at the views, leaving some 476 km to go.
The very first thing I saw was a red squirrel - quite a coincidence having heard a radio story this morning about their likely extinction in the UK within 40 years due to a combination of imported pestilence and grey immigration. Then a skein of migrating geese passed overhead at Church Island and shortly afterwards, I found myself under the arches of Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge looking at Shellduck feeding on the ebbing tide.I walked up to fields full of apparently pregnant sheep after passing rhododendron blooms scattered by the storm. I came across a clump of wind beheaded daffodils and watched two magpies gathering twigs. It's been that mild that nature has declared Spring.
Another coincidence as I crossed the border into Wales, I heard Burton reading Hopkins, an excellent Welsh connection on the Radio 3 breakfast show.
Just 4 km because I lingered at the views, leaving some 476 km to go.
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