Swithland Reservoir
4th February 2007
Own walk, using OS Explorer 246 map (4 miles approx)
Swithland Village
The area north-east of Leicester stands out as being 'a-really-nice-place-to-visit'. Home of Bradgate Park and a host of attractive villages, bonded together by undulating countryside, it's always a nice experience to go there. Other words to define it? 'Cuddly'? 'Pukka'? 'Aaah...bless!'? You get the meaning, I'm sure.
The Bird That Was
So I am not accused of putting endless photos of lanscape and trees on here, this is a photo of 'wild nature in action' - just missed. Either a fox with bad and messy table manners had caught a bird or the bird had spontaneously exploded. Either way, it wasn't a great ending.
Berryless Bushes
But for those people who need pictures of trees and landscape, here you go. I took this picture as I was amazed how full these Hawthorn bushes were with berries some weeks ago. However, since the almost hurricane force winds struuck a few weeks back, there is now less food left for the birds.
Walking round to the left of Rushey Fields Farm, we hit the Leicestershire Round and turned right, heading towards Swithland Reservoir. I had a strange feeling of deja vu as I turned on to this path...
Great Central Steam Train
One day I shall buy a place on the Great Central Railway steam train and have lunch overlooking the reservoir. This was a fine sight to see on a Sunday afternoon.
Dotted everywhere around the countryside, making sure that they could capture every angle and movement of the steam train, men in orange jackets stood, peering through their rather nice cameras, waiting to capture a moment of history. It's strange how people feel as though they have to take lots of photos to enjoy their day, instead of just being there and experiencing the moment. Er...
The calm waters of Swithland Reservoir were very, er, calming. The day was cold but very still. I could have stood looking at the scene for many hours, but my freezing hands willed me to move on.
What better a way to enjoy the view than with a nice cup of tea? This was the idea of a previous visitor. However, I couldn't see 'Jim's Caf' anywhere around the reservoir, so I just had to imagine what drinking a cup of tea here would be like. Hmmm... nice...
When I was here exactly one year ago (see the Leic Round 04/02/06), the reservoir was lower on water and this tower stood higher above the water line.
Again, one year ago, the wall of this overflow stood above the water level and was bone dry beneath.
As a result, this stream (river?) didn't exist, which would have affected the wildlife, wier and mills further downstream towards Quorn.
This is where my knowledge of nature begins to get shaky, when talking about types of birds. I shall presume this is a coot surrounded by the expanse of the reservoir. I could have had other atmospheric photos of birds on water, but they kept diving underwater just as I was taking the shot.
If I turned this photo upside down, would you have noticed? How do you know it isn't upside down already? Is this sunset or sunrise? What exactly is reality anyway...?
The fact was that this was a great expression of the wonderful world we live in.
This perhaps doesn't express the wonderful world we live in quite as well - a field of Oil Seed Rape. We were 'forced' to go across this field as my plan to walk completely around the reservoir was thwarted by a very large and locked iron gate and fence. Ideally we should have gone down Kinchley Lane, turned right and then right again to get to Swithland.
Proof of the cold weather - birds standing on an ice cap. A polar bear was seen roaming just beyond...
Some of the first flowers of the year to appear. They were soon to be living fully up to their name, as a few days later the snows came...
