The rutting stags

Yesterday Gavin was invited to play in a golf day organised by a neighbour, who is a member at the same club as Gavin. Due to the rain in the afternoon he cancelled the golf much to the disappointment of Gavin (he is very much a fair weather player!) but the dinner at the golf club last night still went ahead. It was lovely to meet other neighbours there and some of his other friends. We sat at a table with three other South African couples and a Scottish couple and we had such a fun evening, we decided that SAfricans and Scottish share the same sense of silly humour amongst their friends. It was a case of six degrees of separation as Gavin and one of the men knew so many people in common.

Thankfully it was not too late a night as this morning I was up early and at Bushy Park by 6.30am. I planned to photograph the sunrise, and then a little later I was meeting two friends from my camera club to photograph the stags. The sunrise was a no show, but the stags were in full rut mode, bellowing at each other and we saw quite a few clashing their antlers as they challenged one another. The females looked quite disinterested! I have only manged to edit some photos as the editing is taking forever as I have to run each image through Topaz Denoise, to remove the grainy result of shooting at high ISO's in the early morning low light. I have added some more images here if you would like to see them.

We are all getting in a bit of a panic about the London marathon tomorrow. After an initial forecast of mainly sunny weather the forecast is now for heavy rain, which the runners are not looking forward to. The train strikes today are still having a knock on effect tomorrow morning and I am hoping I can get a train in to London as the earlier ones I planned to take look like they are cancelled. I was hoping to move around to see Gavin, Luke and Meriel at one location and then go back to see Adam at another location, but the 1.5 hour difference in the start time between the first three and Adam, plus Adam running a slower race means if watch Adam at the first good spectator location I may not get back to see the others finish....its all a bit of a logistical nightmare, so I may just stay put in one spot for several hours ...in the pouring rain!

Tonight I am relieved to be at home to slonk on the sofa and catch up with TV - I have been out 4 nights out of 5 this week, and I really need a night at home. Gavin is hoping for an early night and a good sleep before the marathon.