Nurturing nature

I definitely wouldn't describe myself as an outdoorsy person, but do enjoy time spent either walking, or paddling on canals and rivers. There's a nature reserve just 15 minutes' walk from my home - although despite this I've not been there especially often - and a nice RSPB reserve in easy driving distance, so there are lots of easy opportunities to get out into the great outdoors.

This summer I've had lots of opportunity to explore new places, spend time birdwatching, and go on some great walks. I've paddled a canoe on a lake in northern Sweden, and recently Teen and I had the chance to try sea kayaking - a new activity for us, and a great way to explore a little bit of the Scottish coast. It was definitely a change from my usual flat-water paddling on the Thames, as the waves and currents added a definite level of challenge! Great fun, though, and I'd definitely do it again should the opportunity arise.

The day after the kayaking, we were back out on the water, but this time on a rather larger boat with an engine and more people, heading out for a trip around some of the Farne islands. These were absolutely spectactular, and even though we were too late for puffin nesting, we did manage to get a glimpse of a couple of puffins. Lots of guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, cormorants, shags, and gulls too - and plenty of somnolent seals waiting for the tide to come in and wash them off their comfortable rocks!

Later in the same holiday, we did a lovely walk to Linhope Spout, a rather pretty waterfall in the Northumbrian countryside. It wasn't a particularly long walk, but was far enough for me, particularly with a couple of (not very steep!) hills on the way out which necessitated a couple of stops so I could recover the energy to continue. Somehow the way back to the car didn't feel nearly as tough! And having reached the top of the waterfall, Teen and I just had to go another couple of hundred metres to find an elusive geocache. The GPS signal was very iffy, which was unhelpful, but we were pretty sure we were in the right place. It took a bit of searching, and previous cachers hadn't always been successful, so we were utterly delighted to find it exactly where it should be, after only about 15 minutes of searching.

Having returned to the spout and reunited with Mr B, we had our picnic then made our way down to the open area at the bottom of the waterfall. He and I decided the water looked too irresistable so just had to have a little paddle - but the truly intrepid folk were actually jumping into the natural pool at the base of the fall, and swimming there!

The next day, faced with a drive of something over six hours to return home, we decided to break the journey at RSPB Old Moor - as we'd planned to do on the way up north until the weather decided to turn rather too damp to make that much fun. We asked the welcoming volunteer for advice on where to go or what to look for, so she suggested heading up to the hides where spoonbills could be seen. We didn't need telling twice! Off we went, calling in at the various other hides on the way to see if there was much else exciting around. Lots of geese and ducks, but nothing particularly unusual until we got to our target hide. At first it looked as though there was just a group of egrets near the huge flock of lapwings - then I got my binoculars on them properly and realised that no, these were indeed the spoonies that we were looking for. At that point they were all hiding their distinctive bills in their wings, resting, but a few minutes later a few of them woke up and started preening or looking around. That was a real treat, seeing them so clearly - and the fact that we got lucky going somewhere we could see them purely by change, well, that was just the icing on the cake.

Back at home it's easy to take for granted the nature around. But out for a (geocaching) walk at the weekend with Teen, we saw a hare and three deer. And in our own little garden we have frogs and toads, as well as a variety of birds and insects, so there's plenty to see as long as I remember to keep my eyes open...