Robin Hood woz 'ere

Another beautiful, springlike day. Al filled all 11 bird feeders and hung a couple in the back yard on our big Copper Beech. Within moments coal tits were on them. One in, one out. Took a couple of photos which I'll put on Flickr, even caught one flying off with a peanut.

It was too nice to spend time indoors doing jobs, will be plenty of bad weather when we can do that sort of thing, so we went for a walk up the hill from home, over Coombes and joined the track to Robin Hood's Picking Rods. The approach to them was via huge puddles and thick mud. We tried to pick a route around the squelchiest areas via reedy clumps, but found it was just as wet, minus the brown mud but plus black, smelly mud.

We watched/photographed some cyclists planning their route of attack to get up the lane, one just went for it, the other headed back up the lane to turn round then have a good run up.

For more info about the Rods see here but in short it says the Picking Rods were probably once part of a Mercian cross, probably only one column here originally, however, that was broken in two and then set as they look today. They are said to date from the 9th century. The tallest column has a tiny cross within a circle carved onto it, whilst the smaller one has what could be cup-marks, or circles, and small holes. It is uncertain what these represent, but this could mean the stones are much earlier in date.

To cap off a lovely walk, we called at the local pub on the way back (well, it's tradition) for a coffee (me)/couple of Hobgoblins (not me) and a late lunch/early tea.

What a nice day :-)