Serene early morning river
We upped sticks and headed out of Wallingford shortly after 8:30 this morning. A few boats had left a bit earlier, to avoid being caught by the council official collecting overnight mooring fees! The river was quiet and the water like a millpond as we headed downstream, and then........
At last, a kingfisher captured on film
.... Angela spotted a kingfisher sitting on a branch, some way off. We stopped and reversed, hoping to sneak a little closer. Amazingly, the beautiful, illusive bird stayed put and we were able to take some pictures of it. We have seen fleeting glimpses of several kingfishers on this trip, but have never managed to capture one before. Today we were lucky and were thrilled to bits.
An amazing garden shed
Again, we saw many incredible houses with some amazing boat houses at the end of beautiful gardens. Amongst them was this glass sided building hanging out in space - must be a great place to watch the world go by.
Canoes everywhere in Pangbourne
An enforcement officer Heron
Alpacas R Us
We passed what appeared to be an Alpaca farm - there were hundreads of the wooly creatures covering several fields alongside the river.
Grebe and babies
A swan showing off
A grebe captures a fish
We stopped for some lunch in Reading, and watched a family of coots with really noisy babies squeaking the whole time. Then a grebe appeared close by, so we grabbed the camera, but it disappeared below the waves. But, a few seconds later it appeared with quite a big fish in its mouth
Down it goes
The grebe then proceeded to swallow the fish whole, and did this right in front of our camera.
Just the tail left now
After several seconds of gulping, the last bit of the fish slid down its throat and the grebe swam off presumably with indigestion.
A black swan
Beautiful Sonning lock
Most of the Thames locks are really well maintained with lots of flowers - Sonning lock is particularly lovely.
Tonight's remote mooring
We passed through Sonning, looking for somewhere to moor for the night, but we could only find a space in a £10 per night spot on a rough bank. That didn't look like very good value, so we ploughed on down the river. Trying to find a place to moor one after about 4pm is difficult, and it was now about 6pm. Luckily, about a mile fiurther downstream we found a bit of bank and a tree to tie up to, and we managed to moor there. It has turned out to be a great spot with absolute quiet, surrounded by reeds with only waterfowl for company.
No comments:
Post a Comment