The White Stork Project

Alan had a day off work today, and after yesterday’s brief visit to Knepp I suggested we could go there today to explore the estate.

There are various different walking routes, the longest being 8.8km which takes you past Knepp Castle, but I wanted to take Alan to see the storks first. It really is an amazing estate of 3,500 acres that has been devoted to a pioneering rewilding project, and there are free roaming Exmoor ponies, longhorn cattle, deer and Tamworth pigs.

There are treehouse viewing platforms around the estate and we went up one of them and were lucky to see the ponies running in a long line. Next were the storks, and like yesterday we timed it well and not long after we’d arrived the parents flew in to the nest to feed the chicks. I’ve added a link here about the White Stork Project here at Knepp, if you’re interested. It’s very exciting as it’s the first time in about 600 years that stork chicks have hatched in the UK!

After seeing the storks we set off on the ‘purple’ route which took us through the woodland where we saw the longhorn cattle, past a windmill, through a little village, into the deer park, past the castle where we saw the deer, then we came to a huge lake and here we saw a snake! It really was a wonderful walk and it wasn’t very busy so it was nice and peaceful. The only thing we didn’t see were the pigs, but we’ll definitely be back so hopefully we’ll see them another time. The other nice thing is that it’s completely free to visit the estate, all they ask is a £5 donation for parking.

After a 7.5 mile walk in total, we got back to Bertie for a late lunch. On our way home we stopped off at Park Cameras as I wanted to buy a new monopod and a got a Manfrotto carbon fibre one which is really lightweight!

Tonight was DJ date night, followed by a homemade curry and a relatively early night as we have an early start tomorrow morning. We’re heading North to visit the family at long last!

Happy weekend!