On our walks

Ian I take daily or sometimes twice daily walks, usually within the city of Exeter and mostly from our door, though we have driven to the city centre and walked from there a few times.

Recently the walks have been getting longer and longer and we've made several up to St Michaels Church at the top of Pinhoe village:


The land by the church has a wonderful confusion of guinea fowl (yes I did have to look up the collective noun) and a few alpaca (or are they lamas - I couldn't get close enough to measure their height) as well:



The walk takes us up and around a disused quarry, but the view of the quarry is mostly obscured. Part of the lane is covered with lesser celandine at the moment.


Last Monday Ian had a meeting in the morning and we had a busy afternoon, followed by a film so we didn't get out for our walk until 11:30pm. We were really pleased to see a hedgehog crossing the main road and followed it to watch it for a minute. The following night we couldn't resist going out to look for another and surprisingly were rewarded by a hedgehog on a bank leading from a garden down to the pavement of the same road. The third night we decided that there was no chance of seeing a hedgehog, especially as we went out a little earlier so that we could pop in to the supermarket on the way home. We were wrong and a third hedgehog was found snuffling around the lane between the main road and our road laughing at us for not bringing the camera. This time we trotted off home to pick up the camera and came back. The hedgehog had moved towards a hedge and although I took a couple of photos they were completely blurred. Upon entering the hedge the hedgehog disturbed a huge frog which jumped out and into the grass. It was very dark and we were convinced it was a vole until I spotted the frog looking at us.

Of course the fourth night when we took the camera with us on our walk we didn't see a hedgehog. Maybe we'll be lucky again in the future, but if not we had a wonderful hedgehog week.