Feeding time

A journey of six and a half hours back home from my sister's.

The first half of the journey very picturesque through Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire. And if it wasn't very pretty, with a pretty name, then it had an unusual name - the settlements of Pennsylvania and Petty France fall into that category.

We needed somewhere to eat, so as we dropped off the Cotswold ridge with the Severn Estuary in clear view, we decided to go to Slimbridge for the briefest of stops.

Which is where this little girl feeding the swans comes in.

The extra - a crab apple tree in my sister's garden, with big bunches of mistletoe growing within it. Two plants that I really notice on travelling south at this time of the year, which I don't see in the north - mistletoe, which is very visible once the trees have shed their leaves. And Old Man's Beard, the wild clematis with it's wooly seed clusters, which loves the chalk lands.