Stags and rugby

Funny how some days not much happens and other days it is action packed all day! Today was the latter - I was up at 6am to meet some members from my camera club at Richmond Park to photograph the stags during rutting season. It was great to meet them in person after staring at little squares of their faces on zoom for the past year, and they were all incredibly nice and welcoming. Unfortunately the photography was not as we were hoping - we had dull, grey light all morning, and the stags were no where to be seen! Usually you hear them bellowing at each other and see many skirmishes as they knock antlers together - but this morning we walked forever trying to find stags, and when we did come across a small group they were all just chilling together quite harmoniously! See extras for some images of the big boys we did see, and the way they just stared at each other rather than tussling as they usually do. I think the rut is over - before it has even properly begun. One of the members has been every weekend for the past few months and confirmed that on each visit the rut was very low key, no aggression as is usually observed. We did find some enormous mushrooms though, the size of a dinner plate, and had a laugh photographing them with 500mm plus lenses in the absence of macro lenses.

It was more big boys this afternoon, when we went to Cambridge to see Adam play for the Blues team (university 1st team) against the visiting team called the Pacific Islanders, a team comprising Samoans, Kiwis, etc. The match started with a 2 minute silence for an All Black player who recently died (Rainie may know more about this). Cambridge Uni won by a large margin 29-7. It was Adam's first match in a long time as he has been out of rugby due to his back injuries and due to Covid, and he played brilliantly, being the player making the most tackles in his team (see extra for one of those crunching tackles) and he scored a try. This collage shows a neat pass he made during the match. At university all the inter university matches are played on a Wednesday, and then matches on a Saturday are usually against non university teams. Unfortunately for Adam he cannot regularly play on a Wednesday as his PhD does not allow for a day off most weeks. 

Tommy also came to see the match and afterwards we went to see his new accommodation for this year - it changes every year but an advantage of Oxbridge is that accommodation is provided by the university for the duration of their studies, unlike the other universities who only offer accommodation for the first year. It was lovely to see Inca again too. 

We then popped in to Adam's flat, Adam had recovered with a hot shower and it was great to see Pip too. It was an easy drive home of 1 hour 35 mins (over 2 hours to get there at lunchtime).