The sun may not be shining every day here in Keswick, but there’s been little rain and plenty of opportunity for us to be working on the garden and getting out on the hills. Today we had a beautiful Lakes morning with the sun rising over Latrigg against a blue sky.
A marvellous slew of colours too from the flowers and rhodedendron. It’s a joy to be out and what better place for us to have an early breakfast than on the Belvedere deck, as this morning’s photo shows.
The temperatures has not been what we would hope for near midsummer’s day, but compared to what we are seeing every night on the TV of the storms and flooding in the south of England, the North West is the destination to be heading for this summer and the coming holidays!
And if you make it up to The Larches this year, just look at the view of the Skiddaw range (below) from the Buena Vista Crag. You’re tucked away there and unseen at the top of our fellside garden; and if you don’t feel like making it to the top of the fells, you can always from the comfort of the seat travel the footpaths with a pair of binoculars!
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I had heard of the phenomenon in these parts before, but the real thing took me by complete surprise. It would have had SAS trainers (had they been here!) reaching for the superlatives to describe the speed and precision of this evening raid.
Suddenly a whirl of feathers hurtles over the hedge from the road outside and swoops down on this small every day scene of garden life. Before I’ve time to wonder what is happening, the attacker has gone and with it the blackbird. All that is left of a second’s struggle is a pile of black and grey feathers scattered on the grass as the photo shows.
It refers also to the “plucking post”, where they dismember their kill and I remembered the rocky area at the top of the garden where I had seen last week another collection of small bird’s feathers (See Photo opposite). It looks like the sparrowhawk has been here before, while we’ve been busy trying to see the ospreys from the belvedere!
We have had three C2C visitors this last week stopping by at the cottage on their way across the country on the marvelous coast to coast bicycle route.
They were still arguing as they left about the exact distance they had to travel! But did not dispute that it was somewhere between 125 and 140 miles. Good going we thought for two days, particularly as they had to cross the high country of the Pennines via Consett in County Durham. Some stiff hills there!
