Discovery

When we walked around the beaver lake with the Boy Wonder yesterday, he discovered a footpath going off into woodland south of the estate, which after a few yards crosses a stream via a little wooden bridge. He was desperate to explore this path, but we persuaded him away from it on the grounds that it would take too long and hold up the rest of the family, who were waiting to go to the Cotswold Wildlife Park. I'd also told him about my own discovery, on my solo walk on Tuesday morning, of a place where the estate path crosses a different stream by way of stepping stones, and he was naturally keen to go there too. Finally, over dinner last night, R and I had discussed with him whether he might like to go to Chedworth Roman Villa, which is only half an hour away from here, and look at the picture floors made by some Roman people a very, very long time ago ("In the olden days?" "Yes. Very olden days."). 

This morning I laid out the choices again - bridge, stepping stones and picture floor - and asked whether he'd like to go to any of them today. "Bridge first," he said. "Then stepping stones, then picture floor." So after breakfast, off we went into the nature reserve. The footpath into the woods is no more than a ten minute walk from the village, but it took us quite a bit longer than that to get there because the Boy kept finding interesting things on the way that needed to be looked at and talked about. I don't know what this one was because I was some distance away, finding my own interesting things, when I turned and saw this discussion going on, but the sequence of photos ends with something being edged off the path with a twig, so I guess it was a tiny invertebrate that the menfolk were keen to rescue from the danger of being stepped on.

Eventually we made it to the wood, and the footpath over the bridge. I would have happily stood on the bridge for some while, because there was a Southern Hawker patrolling the stream and I found his aerial display quite mesmerising, but - "Come on!" said the Boy. "We are going to walk all the way to the end of this path, and then we will come back and go to the stepping stones." As R and I had no idea where the path went - Swindon, quite possibly - we cautioned against this approach, but were firmly overruled. On we went, the Boy in the lead, waving a small windfall branch he'd picked up ("It's my magic wand") and weaving elaborate fantasies in which he remodelled the woodland to our precise requirements ("Are you sure? Because if I magic them away they'll be gone from the whole world, and you wont be able to get them back, ever..."). When he picked up a second branch I said "Two magic wands?", and he frowned at me and said, "No. Of course not. This one is my magic wand, and this one is my magic stick." The magic stick came in especially handy, when the small breeze that got up turned out to be a tornado, and the Boy (who's spent part of the holiday watching the animated Tom and Jerry remake of The Wizard of Oz) was able to prevent us being blown away to Oz and attacked by the Wicked Witch.

Eventually we managed to persuade him to turn back, but by the time we came out of the woods onto the path around the beaver enclosure it was obvious that he was seriously flagging, so I suggested that we might go into the beaver hide, where there are benches, for a bit of a rest. On the way he spotted a flattened area at the bottom of a patch of scrub, and asked if he could go into it. Thinking on my feet, I said No, because it looks as though some deer might have used that area for sleeping in, and we don't want to go crawling around somewhere where there might be deer ticks, do we? I then had to explain what a tick is, what it does and why, and (courtesy of Springwatch) was able to surprise even R with the information that they don't in fact jump from one place to another, but use the static electricity generated by moving animals and people as an attractant force. Like magnetism, I suppose... but not. Anyway, the Boy listened intently asked several questions, and then after a short silence, said, "Well. I do not like the sound of them, At All." 

The Beaver hide was fun, not because you could see any beavers, but because it had two display boards on the wall showing photos of some of the animals, birds and insects that can be found in the area. These images led to a discussion that ranged from Why is it that you're allowed to touch a picture of a deer without worrying about a tick biting you? to Why is it that the Red Admiral butterfly in that photo is four times bigger than the Roe Deer in this one? It's very easy to forget, when dealing with a bright child, that he is only four, and some of the things that seem blindingly obvious to an adult still need to be explained to him.

He's learning all the time though, and one of the things he learned today had R and me pulling slightly tragic faces at each other behind his back. When we came out of the beaver hide we set off again in the direction of the stepping stones, but he was walking more and more slowly, and after a few yards he stopped and said, "How far is it now?" I pointed to some cyclists several hundred metres along the path, and said that we needed to go all the way to there, and then on for about the same distance again to reach the stream - and then of course, I added, we'd still have to walk quite a long way to get back to the holiday house. He really wanted to go on, but - unsurprisingly after all the walking he did yesterday - he was just too tired, and after a bit more discussion he agreed that it would be better to go straight home now, and maybe try for the stepping stones again tomorrow. As we turned back he heaved a great sigh, and said sadly, "We shouldn't have gone to the bridge first."

I've included a couple of extra photos from today, of the Grey Heron that seems to have adopted Howell's Mere as its home - the extensive reed beds and overhanging decks, and the significant number of fish in the lake, seemingly providing it with enough shelter and food to outweigh the disadvantage of being surrounded by houses and humans. I've accidentally put it to flight several times this week simply by walking out onto our lowest terrace, which makes me think that it favours our end of the lake, and when I stepped out onto the top terrace this evening I immediately spotted it at the base of the reeds, two houses round to our left. Being photographed was one assault too many, and it took off within seconds of me aiming the camera at it, but it only flew a couple of hundred metres and came back down on the other side of the Mere.