Shrunken heads, faces in the sky and walks in the woods… just another month in The Marsh – April 2021

April 2021, beautiful sunny days and with random snowfalls in between the cloudless skies, you’ve got to love the UK weather. The sky always looks interesting whether it’s blue and clear, cloudy, full of stars or with a little aircraft making a smiley face. If you feel down always look to the sky, it never fails to lighten the heart I find.

On our first walk with the Whale pod after lockdown three, at the end of March, we took the three grandchildren to see the two large pigs in Weir Lane. All three were keen to get a look at them….

We also enjoyed taking Holly and Charlie for various walks around The Marsh during the Easter holidays. We had a lovely time looking at and discussing various birds, deer and squirrels, whether honey was bee spit(!) and had a variety of discussions about edible flowers, eagles and panda bears which could be considered educational…. and then the odd discussion which probably gave them nightmares (sorry Carla and Mark!)……..

I found myself telling them about my childhood trips across the fields towards Ashwicke Hall with Kay Savage; I told them how I remembered going off for the day with nothing more than a bag of sherbet in a little white paper bag. We used to lick our finger and dip it in the bag until our finger took on the colour of the sherbet and the little white bag got soggy and started to leak the sugar crystals everywhere. We didn’t have hand sanitisers or mobile phones to keep us safe!

But safe we kept on our adventure to see a shrunken head in a barn there. Sensing that I probably shouldn’t have mentioned something so scary I backtracked saying to the children that it could not be true because it is impossible to shrink a head because of the skull, and so I’m sure we made it up. I also had to backtrack after saying ‘Red Indians’ used to make shrunken heads… Glen pointed out that it was racist and that I should call them native Americans… I think we lost their attention by then anyway so it didn’t seem to matter. On returning home I ‘googled it up’ and found…. you can shrink a head because it instructs you too remove the skull….

The children also joined in the wildlife spotting by telling us there was a Unicorn up ahead!

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We finally got around to completing a circular walk which Mark had told us about last year. It is through bridle paths and then across the fields through Ashwicke and back across the fields to Little End. We had a relaxing walk on a warm day and we saw lots of sheep and their newborn lambs….

However, the problem with long walks through fields is that if you come across a herd of cows you are stuck! Half way through the walk not only had lots of cows in the field ahead noticed us, but they were also very interested in us and they all came across the field to see us at the gate. We were there for a half an hour because I would not walk through them and Glen would not walk back the other way, having come this far. The cows eventually walked away from the gate when they realised we were not about to come in to the field but then three of them stood by the footpath signpost up ahead daring us to venture through! I eventually agreed to walk the long away around the edge of the field rather than through the middle!

As I sit here on 1st August reading the unpublished notes I’d written during April I realise that it has been four months since I started writing it. As things opened up and Covid restrictions became less we have been very busy seeing friends and family and not actually writing a blog. Having written and posted photos for a full twelve months, all four seasons in the village, I think It’s time to leave the blog now until we go adventuring again.

However, as I write this the country is still bound by a traffic light system of foreign travel restrictions and we are yet to have the whole of the adult population double jabbed. With high rates of Covid-19 raging around the world and two particular variants of concern (re-named Beta and Delta) working away on the unvaccinated and vulnerable people, we won’t be going adventuring abroad any time soon It seems.