Wet and Windy Walk

Another day, another walk, another alliterative capitalised blog title :lol:.

Today was the monthly Home Ed walk at Pulborough Brooks and with Ady off it was planned to be a nice first time there for him. Chris was supposed to be bring Jack and Maisie and it would have been a chance for him to meet Caz (who has Davies and Scarlett once a fortnight) too. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas.

We woke to no damage to our house or garden (although the chicken run was blown halfway across the garden and their food bin was rolling around the patio – they were still secure in their house and very reticient about coming out although we did get another egg today :)) but many of our neighbours had fence panels down or other damage. The weather was predicted to continue through the day and Julie rang to say Chris wouldn’t be going. I assumed no one else would be either but as we have membership and were going in Ady’s car it wouldn’t cost us anything and we might just get an hour or so of dry weather to walk round in so it was worth driving over to see. So we packed our picnic and did just that.

We got there at about 11am and were met with shocked glances from the volunteers when we said we were going to walk round rather than there to use the cafe like every other car in the carpark. Although they’d been open for nearly 2 hours the door to the reserve had to be unlocked for us as we were the first (and indeed only) people going out there today :lol:. The children were given a spotter sheet each to find things as we went. Scarlett got a cartoony one with things like ‘bird flying’ ‘bird singing’ ‘flowers’ to spot, Davies had a proper photographed one of various wetlands birds to find.

We started the walk in dry albeit windy and soggy underfoot conditions and had a good 20 minutes or so of walking and spotting. The ponds were all very full and quite murky with mud so there was very little to be seen. Also very few tracks or evidence of animals was around either, having all been washed away.

We did find a couple of trees that looked like they might well have just come down though with very fresh wood exposed and roots that looked newly disturbed:

We spent some time admiring some cows and talking about our own ‘one day maybe’ cow owning plans and then happened across the footpath being closed while the farmer herded the cattle across into another field so stood and admired that awhile:

It then started to rain so we headed for the nearest hide and sat in there for a while until the worst of the rain passed over. Very noisy as it has a tin roof but also very snug – reminded me of camping actually, feeling cosy yet in the middle of it – and the ground reminded all of us of last year’s Kessingland with it’s moist squadginess 🙄

We’d left our picnic in the car which then seemed really silly as my flask of tea and bags of sandwiches would have been very welcome.

We set off again on the rest of the circuit but the rain really had started to set in. Everyone remained cheery and we did stop at a couple of the other hides but we were getting really quite wet and it was cold too with a blustery wind pelting at us. Consequently we didn’t spot many of Davies’ birds but Scarlett ticked off all but one of her’s (bush with berries on it). It had stopped raining briefly on the last leg of the walk and we took a slightly slower pace and noted the way the water was running down the slopes and making use of the trenches the volunteers had dug out. Ady and Davies had been talking about dams this weekend for some reason (I think it was while walking alongside the Thames) so we built a small one to see if we could alter the route of the water running down and see how it built up behind a dam.

There was not a tremendous volume of dam-building material around (mostly been washed away :lol:) but we managed this effort:

which did indeed stem the flow and perfectly illustrate the point of dams.

and only one of us fell over while walking on slippy bits of path to collect stones 😉

Then we were dam-busters and returned the flow to normal.

Ady went to hand the pens and spotter sheets back into the visitor centre while I helped D and S out of their wellies and wet jeans and into the car and he came to join us with ‘well done’ packs from the visitor centre each for them. Not sure whether this was for attempting the spotter sheets or simply for going out there at all but they were crammed with posters, stickers, back issues of the RSPB magazine and other bird ID sheets, so they were very pleased with them :).

We ate our lunch in the car and then drove home via a different, more scenic route ending with a drive along the seafront to check out the waves. It was a very high tide and the waves were most impressive but as the children had no trousers on they had to view it from the car. There were several people down there taking photos though, the sea at it’s most angry and powerful is an amazing sight, Ady and I often used to walk down to the beach in extreme weather before we had the children who would almost certainly feel the need to explore just that bit too closely and get swept away!

We came home and were greeted by Maureen our lovely neighbour (the one who knows all the gossip but only has the one single personality and has never called the police to keep her husband from getting in) to say thank you for some flowers Ady had left on their doorstep last week. She said she was sorry she’d not said thanks before but they’d had their dog, Ali, put to sleep last week and been very upset about it and not really left the house :(. Davies and Scarlett, who adored Ali were very upset and came in the house and made her a picture each of her and Ali. Davies asked for the letters to write ‘Maureen’ and did a lovely picture, Scarlett wrote her name and did a great picture of Ali too. Ady planted up a container with various QVC-shown plants (we have soooo many plants and containers here atm) and him and Davies went over to give the pictures and plants to Maureen :). I made hot chocolate for the children and they sat playing with the toy animals for ages. Then Davies went off to help Ady in the kitchen and Scarlett was looking at her poster of birds. She was writing down the names of them and then bringing the bit of paper over to me to read and surprised me by converting lots of the lower case letters on the poster into uppercase letters to write in (she always writes upper case) and knowing a fair few of the sounds of letters too. I’d happened upon the first set of Bob books on the bookcase last week so knew where they were and grabbed the first book to show her. She already knew the sounds M A T and S and managed to read the first couple of pages fairly easily, which I think surprised us both. She then got bored at the repetitiveness and didn’t want to do anymore, at which point Davies rejoined us and read ‘Sam sat on Mat’ without sounding it out first at all. Either my Dad is sneakily giving them literacy lessons or something is sinking in all by itself 😆 I like the fact that they seem to be at the same stage as it is an incentive for Scarlett to be as good as Davies and for Davies to ensure he remains ahead of Scarlett – friendly sibling rivalry could well provide the key to reading here I think! 😆

Then it was time for Davies to go to Beavers so Ady walked him round there while Scarlett and I looked at pictures of Big Ben on the laptop, then she got engrossed in playing a game with the animals again, Ady was cooking dinner and I went round to collect Davies. I was met by the Beaver Leader with a broad grin telling me it had been a much better session due to ‘a certain person not being here’. Davies was bursting to tell me the news which was that Matthew – the one who had hurt him last week, had been met at the door with his Mummy at the start of Beavers to say that he was not welcome to come anymore :shock:. It had not been done infront of the Beavers but she had made an annoucement to the rest of the boys about it and apparently they were all thrilled, he really has terrorised that group. Davies said he was very happy for Beavers that Matthew wouldn’t be coming any more but he did feel a bit sad and sorry for Matthew. I have to admit that despite having violent feelings towards him myself last week (mother lion!) I felt pretty sad about it too. He is just a little six year old boy and to be excluded from something at such a young age must surely set you up for a pretty crap start in life really. Davies and I talked about how knowing you are loved makes you feel worthy of being loved and therefore act like someone who deserves to be loved and the opposite of that being someone who is treated badly and therefore feels like that’s what they are worth and acts accordingly. All very simplistic and not at all the root or reason in every case but I know Davies has learnt something pretty deep from the whole Matthew experience which no doubt he will continue to process and remember. Poor child 🙁

We had a lovely roast dinner while watching a zoo programme followed by the Simpsons. Both of them are struggling to get to sleep having had a couple of messed up bedtimes and Davies was still awake at gone 11pm tonight when Ady went up to bed (I think he’s gone to sleep now). The wind has died down but it is still pouring with rain here with loads more forecast over the next couple of days. Tomorrow we have nothing planned in the day, Ady is back to work so I think Davies and Scarlett and I will have a nice quiet day at home, watch some films and generally recover from the weekend.