RSPB day

Almost ready for reaping

 This morning showed high cloud and I was glad to be up and on my way.  I could have spent more time exploring York, but I decided that I was going to take my time on the trip down to Bingham, and to Steve and Gill.  Thanks again to SatNav, I got around the ring road with no problems, and safely on the road to Goole, which lies on the Humber River. The technology wound me through the town and through Old Goole, and out along the south bank – sometimes close and sometimes a good distance away. Even more than on the York plains, this is crop farming country – mostly grains, but fields of many other veggies benefit from the fertile silt they grow in.  

Inside a hide

Almost to the next inlet, I turned in at RSPB Blacktoft Sands. RSPB is the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds, and with much of east England being on major flight-paths, the organization is present in the management of marshland. I’d visited Blacktoft Sands about 12 years ago, and as the RSPB guy said, they don’t change much. The reserve overlooks a series of pools and reedbeds towards the edge of the Humber, and the path has six “hides”, each with a slightly different view, where you can sit and watch the avian action.  

Red Admiral on the path

Since I’d packed lightly, binoculars had not been a priority – and with my sight being so much worse these days, they have to be really good binoculars to make me happy! - so I was confined to what I could see with my regular specs. 

Swans with nine cygnets

Not all the hides had equally good shows, but at one there was a regular convention of egrets picking over the pool, and a couple of grey herons waiting for them to move. Another hide showed what was obviously a nursery pool, with ducklings and cygnets dabbling up-tails-all under parental supervision. There were several curlews – but feeding, and not flying with their sad call. The flying was mostly being done by the lapwings and by a pair of marsh harriers, tumbling acrobatically, and then gliding off in pursuit of new prey.

Marsh harrier in flight

I ended up spending more than three hours there – it’s lovely walking, though I didn’t see the red deer that one of my hide companions had spotted earlier in the day, nor the hares that apparently like one particular path. I did see the Konik ponies, with which the RSPB keeps the grass and reeds under control.

Konik ponies graze the land

The SatNav had me retracing my route, so I turned left instead of right – I love forcing it to re-route!  It brought me to a road running parallel to a river embankment, and I realised that this was the mouth of the river Trent, which runs all the way through to Nottingham and beyond. This was going to be my guide; a quick check on Google Maps told me that there were riverbank roads most of the direction I wanted to go.

The Trent at its broadest

The SatNav was not happy with me – it’s good about finding back roads when they’re the only route, but it really wants to use the main roads – and that was what I didn’t want to do. I crossed the river and turned onto the side road, and kept forcing it to re-route. That was a lovely quiet drive; very little traffic, and no pressure to speed – just pootling along and enjoying the day. I made for Gainsborough, which was my next RSPB place;  Beckingham Marshes was a little tricky to find, and turned out to be an unattended site, with no parking, and farm vehicles at work in the next field. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t hear birds over the sound of machinery, so I went on to the last place, Lansford Lowlands, just north of Newark. This was a site on the Trent where there was a lot of quarrying for gravel for roadbuilding. RSPB had partnered with Tarmac company to restore the area and to re-form the gravel pits so that reed-beds would develop.

Trail start at Langford Lowfields

This was another unattended site, but there was signage for the trail, so I set off for a walk. It was longer than I thought it would be – initially open woodland, and then the trail passed through “tunnels” of hawthorn and close-growing trees. As I passed through one of these, there was an almighty crack of thunder, and the skies opened!  All I could do was to get my raincoat on and stay in the hawthorn “shelter”. I was there through a major thunderstorm for about 20 minutes till the rain eased off a bit, and I made my way back on a path that had turned into a stream. When I got back to the parking-lot, I found my car was standing in a 6-inch-deep lake of water, and I had to wade to access the door. Everything that wasn’t directly covered by the raincoat was soaked, and the 20-minute drive to Bingham was pretty unpleasant – both in the car, and outside, with standing pools of water all along the route. I arrived on Stephen’s door as a very wet mess!  We don’t need any pictures – I’m sure you can imagine it.  But a change of clothes, a mug of tea, and I felt much better!