Despite being incredibly late to bed, the dogs were even later. I think they must have been on Charlotte’s bed as our rather spacious bed became incredibly congested at four o’clock.
We had something of a late start today; once armed with a negative COVID test (I do them every four days!) I again tried and failed to post up yesterday’s photos, so contented myself with sending out a few birthday wishes before we all settled down to brekkie.
Having started the day late, we were rather late getting going, but we only had a short walk planned for today. Initially I thought that was probably for the best as it did look to be rather hot for the dogs but, like yesterday, it cooled down. Pausing only briefly to hunt for a geocache in a derelict chicken coop (geocaching takes us to the most amazing places!) we soon parked up just outside the little village of Kelby from where we had a rather good little walk. We started off by quarrelling with some other dogs; well… Treacle quarrelled; Pogo and the other two dogs were all friendly enough, and so was the nice man with them. He got chatting at us, and within minutes we were embroiled in a surreal conversation about the various acronyms formed from his car’s registration number. Even when on holiday two hundred miles from home my idiot magnet never fails.
We had a very good picnic lunch (as we usually do). I could have spent all day sitting in the countryside staring at a view which went on for miles (we estimated about twenty) whilst drinking very good beer from the local brewery.
As we walked we say so many birds of prey. Again I thought they were red kites, but my four years in Red Lake Primary School’s bird club are nearly half a century ago, and I can’t remember very much of what Mrs Wright taught us. We also saw two hares. Hares look a bit like rabbits, but they are bigger and taller and nowhere near as podgy. If you could imagine a stretched-out rabbit… that’s a hare. We also saw a giraffe. Not a real one, but an ornamental one in someone’s garden. Interestingly my brother’s neighbour had a model of the Eifel Tower in his front garden but the council told him it was too tall and had to come down.
This model giraffe was taller…
After four miles we were back at the cars. It was only a few minutes more before we were back at base and we spent a rather good afternoon finishing off the second twenty-litre job lot of beer, eating crisps, and throwing windfall apples for Pogo to fetch and Treacle to guard. As we sat in the glorious sunshine we were periodically covered in the dust being kicked up by the combine harvesters operating in the field next to the cottage.
Eventually we came inside; some of us had dinner to cook whilst others had moral support to offer. As I watched dinner being cooked Charlotte brought the dogs to stare through the window at us. They seemed to like that.
Suddenly the sky became very grey. Despite the BBC’s weather app insisting there was only a three per cent chance of rain, a torrential downpour hit. The little area where we had sat outside was quickly flooded, and that rain must have upset the farmers no end.
We had a very good bit of dinner, far too much pudding, far far too much port, and we played a couple of rounds of Blokus. I lost one, and (jointly) won one (despite nearly dozing off a few times).
And amazingly the heavy rain of only three hours previously had given way to a perfectly clear sky so we star-gazed a little; seeing quite a few of the Perseid meteors.
I took quite a few photos today too. But I waited until coming home before posting them. The internet is iffy in Lincolnshire.
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