Coming in to Land

Lockdown 3 - Day 74

Alan had his vaccine booked at the Brighton Centre this morning so we headed into town at 9am.  He joined the back of a very long queue, and I bumped into Sian who was waiting for her partner to have his done, so we stood chatting in the sun.  It was all very well organised and he was in and out within half an hour, having had the Astra Zeneca vaccine.

He's currently got holidays to use up before the end of the month so was off today, and we went to Knepp (which is about 30 minutes away) for a walk.  We've previously been and it's a fabulous place where there are free roaming Exmoor ponies, Longhorn Cattle, Tamworth Pigs, Deer and best of all they have a stork breeding programme.  We spotted the first nest but it was empty, and as we were about to walk away we heard a clacking sound and turned round and saw four storks flying overhead.  Two came and landed on the nest and the other two flew off - we later saw them in another nest.   They're amazing birds and fortunately that the sun was in the right spot and so lit them up.

After watching them for a while and taking 'lots' of photos, we carried on with our walk and soon saw the Longhorn Cattle.  The only things I haven't seen before are the pigs, so I really hoped we'd come across them, and we did!  Just one that was snuffling away and didn't seem too concerned that we were nearby, watching.  We then had a decision to wade through lots of mud or turn back on ourselves, so we decided to carry on through the mud and I'm glad we did as we came across the ponies.  They were mostly huddled in a group under a tree and seemed to be enjoying the sunshine, again not bothered at us being there.  There were three ponies in the woodland and I spotted some tree trunks on the ground, so we decided to sit there and eat our lunch with the ponies watching us.  It was really lovely!

There's no guarantee that you'll see any of the animals as it's a 3,500 acre estate, so we feel very lucky that we've seen everything but the deer.  I've added some extras of the other animals.

Once home I sat and completed Census for the Office of National Statistics.  It's a survey that's  done every 10 years and gives a picture of all the people and households in England and Wales. It's  law that you must fill it in and if you don't you can be fined up to £1,000!   Once I'd done ours, I phoned mum to see if she wanted me to complete hers for her as she doesn't have access to the internet anymore.  

Tonight is date night, so I'll go and cook the dinner and then we're off into The Palace to watch Chris Moyles live.

After my vaccine yesterday, I've felt a bit tired today and I've had neck and back ache but other than that I feel fine.