Reflections

Saturday
We decided to have a change from walking in the forest today, and drove up to the town of Meaux to the Parc Naturel du Patis, which is quite an extensive wetland area bordering the River Marne. I had read about this place on the web, and it sounded like a good place to do some bird watching. We did see quite a number of birds - many coots, several grebes, a couple of herons and quite a number of what appeared to be cormorants, not a bird I would have expected to see around here. Unfortunately, apart from the coots, all the other birds were too far away for me to get a decent photograph. Fortunately we had the binoculars, so we were able to observe them fairly clearly. It was a mainly overcast afternoon and quite breezy, but there were occasional momentary glimpses of sun, which would serve to accentuate the colors of the leaves and bring beautiful reflections to the water.

Unfortunately the afternoon ended on rather a sour note. On our way home I suggested we stop at Leroy Merlin, a large hardware store to buy a couple of light fittings we are still short of. That turned out to be a pretty bad idea as the store was crowded and the check-out lines long. We finally left and set off home, the light fading by this time. We stopped for traffic at a roundabout, and just as Roger was starting off, someone ran into the back of us. Fortunately no-one was hurt and the damage to our car isn't too bad, but it was particularly upsetting as we'd only had the car (a company lease car) since Wednesday - we had been driving an older lease car which had been left by a colleague returning to the States about the time we arrived. The car isn't brand new, but it's relatively young and new to us. To make matters worse, the person who ran into us was a young girl driving her brother's car without insurance! Some extra stress we could have done without!

One year ago: Wet leaves