Blue Plaque

My longest drive in a long, long time. I am travelling south to stay with my sister and family for a few days.

I stop at Gloucester Services for lunch, which is excellent (hello again to the Westmorland Family). I see my first swallow of the year there whilst having my lunch outside in the sunshine. Feet away the large pond is teeming with thousands of tadpoles.
Checking I realise that I am remarkably close to WWT Slimbridge, so I divert there for a couple of hours. Lots to see, but the big highlight for me was seeing four cranes catching a thermal and rising up it on huge outstretched wings. And kingfishers nesting across from the appropriately named kingfisher hide.

The image is the house at Slimbridge where Peter Scott, founder here of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, lived for a number of years. Slimbridge was the first WWT Reserve, at the time the idea of allowing the public in to see the wild birds, and to attempt to save species by breeding them here and eventually releasing them back into the wild, was extremely novel. Son of Robert Falcon Scott (“Scott of the Antarctic”) his TV programme “Look” was a big part of my childhood - along with “Zooquest” (David Attenborough), “Animal Magic” (Jonny Morris) and “Zootime” (Desmond Morris), and others (Armand and Michaela Dennis stand out too).