Bowood (Sunday 26th June 2022)

When I visited the Bowood Estate in April for the first time this year, I walked a forty minute round trip from the car park down to Bowood Lake and back, slightly hurriedly as I wasn't sure how long the walk would take, to make sure the car and I didn't get locked in when they closed. It had become possible to reach the Lake in just twenty minutes from the car park because a new short permissive path between two fields led to a public right of way.

This afternoon I set off much earlier and with a better idea of what the walk involved. When I reached the Lake with its view of Bowood House across the water I decided to continue further along the lakeside and reached Coombe Grove, the road at the other end that leads to Mile Elm. Along the way I saw sheep and large lambs, three herons (or possibly two if one had doubled back) and five adult swans, two to the right of the footbridge and three on the lake. There were also Canada geese, huge groups of lesser black-backed gulls and some tufted ducks and mallards to be seen on this beautiful afternoon. To a non-expert like me, most of the butterflies seemed to be meadow browns, but there were at least a couple that clearly weren't. I didn't have my binoculars as I was carrying three cameras, but looking at the images I had taken, I could also identify a great crested grebe behind the geese and swans on the lake. Sand martins were hawking over the lake and shore.

I got back to the car two hours after I had left it and came home to water the garden, hear the Archers, make supper and experience some Glastonbury.

L.
Sunday 26.6.2022 (2102 hr)

Blip #3690 (#3440 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #000
Blips/Extras In 2022 #127/265 + #053/100 Extras
Day #4476 (1041 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2833 (#2673 + 160 in archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Yellow) and Pentax HD P-DA 55-300 mm F4-5.8 ED WR lens

Bowood series
Landscape series

A Footpath Walk In The Bowood Estate, 26 June 2022 (Flickr album of 43 photos)

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
The Quarrymen - In Spite of All The Danger (recorded possibly 14 July 1958, Kensington, Liverpool, on acetate)
The Quarrymen were a local five-piece skiffle group much influenced by Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. They'd been recorded by an audience member at a féte in Woolton but this was their first time in a primitive studio, Phillips' Sound Recording Services, singing around a single microphone dangling from the ceiling. They recorded two songs, Buddy Holly's That'll Be The Day and their own In Spite Of All The Danger, largely influenced by Elvis Presley's Tryin' To Get To You. The song was written by one Paul McCartney back in January, and another member, George Harrison, got a composer credit for contributing two guitar solos. McCartney added harmonies to a lead vocal from third member, John Lennon.

This historic recording featuring three-quarters of the Beatles cost them 17/6d (i.e. 75 pence) and the acetate, now thought to be worth £100,000, is owned by Paul McCartney, but it is available on the CD Anthology released in 1995.

On Saturday 25th June Paul McCartney, having become an octogenarian a week earlier, performed a stamina-challenging three hour set at Glastonbury. During his performance he paid tribute to his previous Beatle bandmates by performing John's Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, George's Something and a song they wrote for Ringo, I Wanna Be Your Man (better known in the single by the Rolling Stones, to whom they had offered the song), in which he was assisted onstage by Bruce Springsteen, and also played In Spite Of All The Danger (the only McCartney-Harrison composition in existence), getting back to where it all began.