Estuary Motorway

I mentioned some time ago a potential blip spot which I looked forward to visiting when conditions were right. It's an estuary which is home to an enormous crowd of swans who are a bit of a tourist attraction in the area and have become remarkably tame as a result of all the attention and feeding they get.

Today was a lovely bright Autumn day, so I decided to head over there and see what was what. Sure enough, the swans were up to their usual tricks, taking over the narrow road which runs alongside the shoreline (so close to it that it's often under water) and acting it up for the many children who'd been taken out to see them and to feed them. I took over 100 photos, selected a few which weren't too bad, but in the end decided that none of them did justice to the spot. The main points are the sheer numbers of swans who live there and the way in which they have adapted to regular human contact. Nothing that came out of the camera captured either aspect to my satisfaction, so you'll all have to wait for another time to see what makes this place so special.

Instead, I've opted for this shot I took before I even pointed the camera at a swan. The estuary is crossed by the M1 motorway, which runs north from Dublin and links with at the border with the main Dublin-Belfast road. You're not really aware of the estuary below as you drive along the motorway, but there's no missing the structure from down at estuary level. There was something about the reflections of the sunlit water on the underside of the motorway which caught my eye.

Sorry about the swans. They'll live to pose another day.

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My blip of the day is Barking's Turtle
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