Sunday 21 June 2020

Day 90...



Another a Sunday and another walk out exploring the local area. MrEH’s turn to choose the direction today, and he opted for out over Harlow Common towards the motorway, then south towards its junction with the main road back into town. Paused for a while on the Common to have a chat with the resident ponies...


..then on along the footpath, with some unexpectedly good views through the trees. 


...OK, occasionally slightly marred views, but still... ;-) 


Our trusty OS Map has started to look a bit battered now - and we’ve talked about possibly buying a more up to date one and then marking up the paths we’ve walked on the current one. Realistically, if it hadn’t been for the restrictions put in place by Covid-19 and the lockdown we probably wouldn’t have explored half the areas we have over the past few weeks, but it’s been such good fun, it’s definitely one of the good things to have come out of this crazy situation. 


People have a habit of saying that our local area is dull, boring, featureless - and I guess even living here you have a habit of  comparing it with other areas of the country, and finding it wanting, but on a day like today, it really is quite beautiful. A lot of today’s walk was close to the motorway - and yes, slightly marred by the traffic noise which is now back to approaching normal levels - but still some stunning views.


Also stunning wildlife - wildflowers, butterflies, and birds. We’re gradually learning more about the flowers and the butterflies - today’s highlights include seeing absolutely MASSES of Skipper, Small Tortoiseshell and Gatekeeper butterflies, some beautiful wild roses and also these rather wonderful orchids...


...which we’re struggling to identify at the moment. Bizarrely these seem to mainly be clustered around the motorway - we’ve not seen them anywhere else locally! We also saw a Yellowhammer again today - you might remember that we only saw our first of those a few weeks ago, so it was a definite treat to see another!

Robyn

2 comments:

Karen said...

Lovely photos. I think your orchids are Pyramidal orchids.

Robyn said...

Karen thank you! I was just thinking earlier that we still needed to identify them!