Little Bird

A great gig last night, with a surprise guest appearance from our old guitarist - my friend Stuart. Good to be playing with him again, even if was a bit of a one off (his other band practice was cancelled and he wanted to try out his new rig at gig volumes).
As always at The Derby, it was a late finish so I didn’t get to bed until after 2am. We are going away to the Midlands for a couple of days and were hoping to get away from Kendal early, but it was mid morning by the time we left as I really didn’t want to get up this morning. Nevertheless, we did get to our hotel in daylight so decided to explore the nearby National Nature Reserve at Aqualate Mere. A very muddy path led us to the bird watching hide where we mainly saw Blue Tits on the feeder, though a woodpecker was also sighted hiding in a tree. The mere is the largest natural lake in the Midlands and, like The Lake District, is a product of glaciation. But whereas our lakes were formed by the glaciers gouging their way down the valleys, this was formed at the other end of the process when the melting glacier filled a natural depression in the ground.
Despite the mud, it was a pleasant walk-in the autumnal sunshine and we spent about half an hour in the hide, watching the birds. We are now at the hotel, cleaning mud off shoes and trousers before having our evening meal. We booked the meal package with our room so no need to go out looking for restaurants and we can fall into bed right after eating if we want to. Which may well happen, because it’s an early start tomorrow and I’m still feeling the effects of last night’s late finish!