Fairfield Nature Reserve

Right, thank you for your patience, dear readers, while I got those two crap night walks out of the way. As your reward, I have three decent ones to tell you about. The first of these took place on Wednesday evening, which was a lovely day up here in Lancashire – real Goldilocks weather for me, just right. My mother fancied a walk this week, so we met up with her near the train station – she suggested we have a walk about Fairfield. I didn't know what this was at first because I'm not great on names of places where I live; it tends to be 'next to the Spar shop up near where thingybob lives' or 'the one that's just off the roundabout up top o' town'. 

Anyway, Fairfield. I thought I hadn't been there, but it turned out that I had and that it was the place I walked with my brother Terry. But we came to it from the other side with my mum. Course, we first had to find a place to park because it's all residents parking around there; can't complain though – these roads weren't built for cars, and that just how it is. We parked here, opposite the wall outside Lancaster train station. I'm so good to you, am I not, with all of the interesting and informative photographs I show you? A wall. 

We wandered down Sibsey Street to get to Fairfield, and we had to go past the allotments. I must say that, although I haven't seen that many allotments, this one one is a cracker! What beautifully maintained plots. It did make us want to join the waiting list, but it's probably a hundred years long and, actually, we all know I'd be rubbish at keeping on top of my plot. I can't even manage my own garden.

At the end of the allotments is a little row of cottages. The people who live in them might not call them cottages, but they looked like cottages to me. Obviously, I coveted these – I covet a lot of houses, as you know. This is because I hate my own house. But who doesn't admire a house with lovely clean stonework?

A couple more metres and we found ourselves properly inside Fairfield Nature Reserve, and we saw another type of house. I suppose, if we were well read about these things, we'd know what type of bird box this is. I know enough to say that there are different types of bird box of different sizes and such, but that's all I know. This was quite a big one, so not for blue tits. I've got nothing else.

A fork in the road, which is always nice. There's usually a moment of indecision because to take the wrong fork would be bad for some reason, but it seemed safe to choose either in this green and pleasant place – we chose the left one.

It was nice, but actually, I think we did choose the wrong one because this was fairly midge infested – here we have a lesson: narrow paths have more flies in summer. I am truly learning something new every time I go out. Nonetheless, we carried on because there was a field next to this path and there were cows in it – you know how much of a fan I am of cows now.

I'm not sure if you can tell from this photo, but these were dinky little cows! Perhaps not as teeny as the beautiful nutbrown cows I saw in the Austrian Alps many years ago, but still pretty small. Mind you, these cows were babies still, so I don't know how big they'll grow to be.

Next we came to the Orchard, and this is the Millenium Oak. I saw this last time, but I didn't know it had a name – in fact, I didn't even know last time that it was an oak tree. Do you remember that I said Matthew and I would start to learn trees by their leaf shapes, and we were going to get really good at it, and we identified an oak in the park near our house? Well, I forgot what an oak leaf looked like and misidentified this today as a sycamore, which is nothing like an oak. I perhaps needs to make myself a cheat sheet and carry it with me always.

The fruit and nuts in the Orchard can be picked and eaten by anybody. The notice just asks that you don't take too much and that you wait for the stuff to be ripe. Nothing was ripe yet, so we must come back in the next few weeks to see how it's all doing. I've eaten fruit from a tree before, but never any type of nut, so I think that will be a delightful experience. Here we have damsons. I didn't take pictures of all of the fruits, and I couldn't see any nuts so maybe they're a long way off being ready. Oh, there's my mother as well! 

I don't know what these are, but they're rather striking! I've been seeing them all over the place this week, and there are some baby ones up in our Favourite Place. Auntie Trish or my dad will know. They don't look edible to humans, but I don't know. Anyway, they made a lovely little canopy that we had to walk under to get to the next bit.

We found a place to sit and watch the cows further along, and a couple of them came very close to have a nosey at us. Matthew came to life a bit more here – he'd been very quiet so far, which is perfectly normal when we're out with someone else. He always finds his voice at some point though, and this was the place today. Perhaps it's the cup of tea that does it.

Naturally, I don't know what type of cows these are, other than fluffy white ones. There was a sign that said what they were, but I can't remember what it said. Have you ever noticed what gigantic eyeballs cows have? Like, enormous! The size of tennis balls, probably.

We weren't intending to do a very long walk because my mum's knee has been sore and I've got my disc thing, but it was a very pleasant evening and neither of us were limping, so we thought we'd explore a bit more. I looked at Matthew to see if he was rolling his eyes at the thought of more miles, but he was fine – looking quite happy and interested. Good, very good.

Stripy fields over here. It must be hay-making time (or possibly silage, my dad says – which is made when they don't let the green stuff dry out, but instead gather it and ferment it), because there are loads of these stripy fields this week. We'll find out when the stuff is either baled or taken away. I'm proper loving getting to see a bit of the farming year – it's one of my favourite parts about walking so far.

We took this path, after the man that had just emerged from it told us that it led to the canal. The other path that was here led back towards the river and our cars, but we weren't ready to go home yet. You might recognise this path, although, to be fair, I have shown you an awful lot of very similar-looking paths now. But this was the one I came down with my brother and we didn't really know where we were. I knew exactly where I was now, though, because I'd got my bearings – it's nice when that happens. Sometimes I think I have a really good sense of direction. Wherever I'm driving in my own town, I can tell you which was is west, say. Other times, if I've driven around a bit of a rabbit warren of houses, I have no idea where I am. That's probably just normal – I've probably just described a completely normal and therefore non-interesting thing.

Here's a stripy field close up. Aren't they marvellous? I've loved seeing the grass grow tall in them, but this is awesome too.

Next we came to the more open bit of the path that would take us towards town and the canal. It was bordered by thistles, so we stopped to have a sniff of those – lovely. And the different varieties had different fragrances, which was a gorgeous thing to discover. Matthew sniffed one and got a nostril full of 'dusty stuff', he said. Then he started sneezing and now he thinks he's contracted heyfever. I don't think he has; I think he just got some pollen and thistle dust up his nose.

More of these splendid berry-laden things. There seemed to be different varieties of these too because each plant had a slightly different shade of berry.

So, I said I'd captured the best of view of the castle from Miss Whalley's Field the other day, but maybe this one is the best view. I dunno. What d'you think?

This has just reminded me very strongly of our school song (which you can see the words to here, if you like). 'In our small world upon the hill ...' – awwww, makes me cry every time.

We passed a trio of weed-smoking teenagers just behind this tree, bless them. They all smiled and looked a bit sheepish. And then we saw two amazing things – first was that pile of straw-looking stuff to the right of the tree. It looks man-made, but it also has openings near the bottom, as if an animal has made it into a home. Badgers? Or is it too small? Foxes, or is it too exposed? I have no idea. But something lives in there. The other thing is the bird box on the tree – Matthew said that he could see underneath it and that it had no bottom, so it couldn't be a bird box, but perhaps it could be a bat box. That's just very cool. 

You'll be thinking around about now that there's a lot of walk left because the car was miles away, and you'd be right. So moving swifly on! We reached the canal soon after this, where we straight away saw a moorhen. This week, I've seen a few moorhens and they've all been on the people side of the canal rather than the opposite bank, which is where they usually hang out.

This is a stretch of the canal that I know very well from having to run along it for PE when I was at school. I've mentioned this before, I'm sure, how only the very few people who liked PE actually ran, and the rest of us only pretended to when the teacher was watching us. It was only a mile – how funny that it seemed like a marathon to a bunch of teenage girls. I wonder if they still have to do the same route, and I wonder if they still hate it.

Looks like a bunch of those Muskovy ducks live around here. I just read that these ducks can become violent if they have to compete for territory and that they will attack people. They looked safe enough on this day. 

It was all going on with the wildlife today, I tell you! In the same field as the Muskovy ducks, we saw three alpacas who had just had haircuts, but they'd been left with their feet covered so they looked like they were wearing Ugg boots – I said they looked like flairs, but my mum spotted that they look more like Uggs. Goodness knew what other creatures we'd see before the end of the day, but this was about the weirdest field of animals we've seen so far in our four months of walking. You just don't expect to see turkey ducks and Ugged alpacas in Lancaster.

It's not my favourite field, but that is a bonny field, is it not? Undulating was the word for this.

If you're reading on your phone, you might not be able to tell, but next we saw rabbits. I've nothing to say about that, really. Rabbits are very pretty and fluffy creatures. I've got nothing else. Oh, except that we had two rabbits very briefly, and they were called Headbanger and Shadow Demon. But sadly, I'm not very good at remembering to feed pets that don't live in the house, so they didn't last very long.

So, where to next? Well, we were close to my school, and our cars were in that direction, so we walked up Dallas Road and ended up here. I didn't cry today. That was when we realised that Matthew has actually never seen my school, which was a bit shocking. He thought it was rather marvellous and very grand looking. 'Woah,' says he, 'I didn't know you went to a posh school.' 'Oh,' says I, 'it just looks posh, it's just normal really', which isn't really true if I think about it – it is pretty posh for these parts. I pointed out the book tower where I stole those two books from – I think my mum was secretly pleased that they were both Jane Austens.

The wall opposite school is a good place for a sit, so we had a little rest. We'd done rather well to get from that cow field all the way to school without stopping or sitting down. That was a good three miles, so bravo to us!

This is Dallas Road primary school, but our school used part of the top floor of this building as a science block. I don't know if it still does, but I would imagine so. Rather an impressive looking building for a little primary school.

Well, that was just about the end of the walk because the train station is round the corner from my school. Back at the car, we all had a giggle (actually, only I giggled) about how I was the only person who could see over the wall of the bridge onto the track. London lieth that way, in case you were wondering. I tell you what, one of my favourite things is waiting on the platform for a train going south – bloody love it, because it's a complete novelty. Train rides means possibility and excitement and newness, and usually Manchester. I'm feeling very strongly that, when Covid has buggered off eventually, I must go to London. I haven't been for about twelve years and I'd like to explore.

Anyway, I'm rambling. I'll shut up now. Well done for getting to the end of this lengthy and meandering walk with us. We all enjoyed it immensely, and we hope you did too.

Until tomorrow, little dudes.

WQ