Not the Aquaduct

I'd been thinking about a walk along the canal and over the aquaduct, which is pretty cool and a bit dramatic. Alas, the aquaduct stretch is blocked off at the moment as it's being repaired or something. But, I think that, if it had've been open, we probably wouldn't have seen this awesome dude, who we think was called Reginald. Reginald Heron. 

Reginald looked sad. He was staring at the same spot on the opposite bank and he wasn't up for chatting, so we just left him to his thoughts.

It didn't really matter in the end that the aquaduct was closed because we saw a ton of other cool stuff. One of the things I really like about the canal is that it's completely still most of the time so you get these awesome tree reflections. They looked a bit sinister today because they were leafless, like something out of a Grimms' fairy tale. But I liked them so I took a bunch of photos – sorry.   

Matthew doesn't like it that much when I talk about trees reaching out to grab people as they walk by. I don't know why. (Still just me and Matthew, by the way. The other two are still not impressed and won't even look at our photos. Pfft, whatever.)

There's no narrative at all to this post, sorry. But it was a great walk, punctuated by me going 'oh wow, Matthew, look at that!' and snapping away until my phone battery died. Like this one above – there was a little pine grove that I've never noticed before, probably because I've always walked this way with toddlers and have been concentrating on making sure no one fell in the canal. But anyway, in the middle of this grove, this tree was completely wrapped in climbers.

Then we saw this á, which spooked me because it looked exactly like the Dead Marshes in Lord of the Rings. 'Don't follow the lights, Matthew!'

Matthew didn't follow the lights and we didn't see any undead, so it was all fine.

The canal's got a load of these wicked bridges, same as any other canal, I suppose. Walking under these, I feel a bit Victorian and I half expect Bill Sykes to turn up – I've no idea why. I don't even think there is a canal in Oliver Twist.

I had two photo fails after this. We saw a squirrel on the opposite bank, leaning into the water to get a drink. That was truly awesome, but it spotted us and legged it before I could snap it. And then there was a ginger cat chasing something, not paying attention and almost falling in.

We didn't feel like stopping at any point because we've totally got used to being outside and walking, so we carried on. And on. And on. Eventually, we came out at the other side of the muck-spreaded field that I showed you the other day. Here it is from another angle, looking thoroughly mucked. Didn't smell of anything at all today.

We climbed up and away from the canal a little bit here, onto the 'new road', for our cup of tea. I've only ever driven up here before, never walked, so I didn't realise what a pretty viewpoint it was. Let me show you.

So, to the north, some farms, all great. And then, I said I'd get you a better picture of the Lake District, so here it is – those hills in the distance are definitely part of the Lakes. I can't tell you which peaks they are because my knowledge of them is zero. I know that my brother and I call one of them Pike O' Stickles Bliskets, but we made that up and we actually use it to refer to any hill in the Lakes.

Then over here, to the west (obviously), one of those special Morecambe sunsets. Lovely. Red sky at night, shepherds in your garden, is it? Something like that.

Finally, to the south, you can see the whole of Lancaster. I didn't get a nice picture of it though, just this blurry zoomed-in one of the castle.

We walked back the same way we came, chattering away about dairy farming (we don't know anything about it, but we passed a farm that a boy called Nicholas from my primary school used to live on). It was one of those walks back that seemed to take a lot less time than the walk out – probably because I wasn't stopping every two minutes to photograph reflections.

Oh my goodness, I almost forgot! It turns out that a few ducks stayed over the winter:

Of course, you'll need to hear what these sound like: https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/mallard/

And since I've remembered, here is a grey heron: https://www.british-birdsongs.uk/grey-heron/

I think that just about covers everything.

Until tomorrow, mesdames et messieurs.

WQ