This morning started off very cool. My garden thermometer was only showing 3.5° C. That was the result of the sky being fairly clear. In turn, that has meant that it has been mostly sunny so far this morning. The latest revision to the forecast says sunny intervals should continue until 1pm this afternoon. Maybe a later revision will show them lasting longer than that. The rest of the day will be cloudy - overcast, but not what the forecast call overcast when the cloud has to be grey as well. It should stay dry all day today, and the best temperature we can expect will be a couple of hours of 10° C this afternoon. Tomorrow may see 12° C, and the sunny intervals may start, and finish a few hours later than today.


  After a few days of boredom under grey, and sometimes wet skies, I was very happy for a change of scenery. I must admit I was doubtful that I would enjoy a long walk. I was feeling creaky, and didn't think I would want to walk very far. On the assumption that I might only walk a couple of miles I thought I would try and make it more worthwhile by taking my big Canon EOS 1200D DSLR camera with me. The idea being that I could take some great pictures. In that respect I was wrong.

  Yesterday turned out to be a typical case of "well I've walked this far, so why not just a little bit further ?". The desire to see what is round the next corner is a powerful one. Eventually I got to the point when I decided to walk as far as the little known path, with the River Pool running alongside it, between Worsley Bridge Road and Meadowview Road.

  I had it in mind to drop a few seeds onto The Friends Of The River Pool who might try and improve the river there. The river could do with a very light clean up, but mostly I would like to see the river bank altered in a few places to make the river a bit more accessible. At the moment the river bank is very steep, almost vertical in most places, and it is a couple of feet high - even higher in some parts. It would be difficult to get out if someone fell in. Health and safety is always a good argument. I guess what I would like to see is a small beach like area.


  This is probably the best picture I took all day. This squirrel pretending to be a meerkat was the first thing I saw when I entered the Linear Park from Catford Hill. The light was perfect. The sun was shining from the right hand side of the picture, and somehow was barely obstructed.
  One day "The Bridge of Doom" will get an official name (assuming it doesn't already have one that I don't know). I waited here for a few minutes until the people crossing it had thinned out a bit. I note that there are now signs up warning the new decking may be slippery. Perhaps it still deserves it's nickname, The Bridge Of Doom !
  This picture shows my problems with the lighting. I wanted to preserve the blue of the sky, and so could not turn up the exposure. That meant that near ground level everything was in shadow because the sun was behind small trees from this perspective.  One thing this picture doesn't show is how bit of the park seemed very busy.  That was particularly so by the "Bridge Of Doom". It seemed positively crowded there.
  This is The River Pool, looking downstream, after it has crossed under Worsley Bridge Road. The little known path can just be seen to the left. Note how my shadow is in brilliant sunshine, but most of the rest of the picture looks very dull.
  The couple seen in the distance are a couple of ramblers. As they reached the path the man said to the woman "fancy exploring this path ?". The path, built when a new small housing estate was built maybe only a few years ago, does not feature on Google maps yet, but presumably will some day.
  At the end of the path the river ducks under Meadowview Road, and then continues in a culvert below Southend Park. Now that is a shame, and I can't think of any good reason why the river should not be a "feature" of the park. It looks like it did once run through the park, but much/most of the river was encased in concrete as a panic anti-flood idea after the floods of 1968. It has since been proved that millions of pounds were wasted doing this because there were cheaper, and better ways of doing it - like looking after the river instead of ignoring it so it gets clogged with rubbish and other debris.
  I first spotted this well hidden camp some time in the summer, and I was sort of surprised to see it still there, and presumably still in use yesterday. I suspect I saw who lives there. There were a couple of "Eastern Europeans" cooking sausages over a small fire on the riverbank. That is not really allowed according to the rules, but it seems to do little real harm (except for a fire risk when it is dry in summer). I think the young woman was worried I was someone official when she saw my big camera.

  I wasn't on my last legs when I got home, but I have to confess I was pretty tired. I could have, and should have, made a slight detour to get the length of the walk up to a full 5 miles, but I was feeling satisfied I had walked 4.7 miles (rounded up to one decimal place). Maybe I felt too tired to eat, but I was thirsty when I got home. If I recall correctly it was some time before I had a snack, but I had had a fair amount of breakfast before going out. I wonder how I would have fared if I had gone out with an empty stomach ? I would guess I would have got into my stride quicker, and maybe I would have not felt quite so tired when I got home - which is the opposite of what most people think.

  I remembered to weigh myself when I got home. I have conveniently forgotten what the scales said,  but is seems all my hard work over the summer has gone to waste in just a few short (or usually long feeling) weeks. It didn't seem to take long before the sun had set yesterday afternoon. It was around 3.30pm when I got home, and I think it was still just about light when I had a snooze. It was most definitely dark before I woke up, but dinnertime was still some way off.

  My dinner was halfway healthy. It was simple some grilled "Turkish Style" sausages (made in Germany, and rather inferior to actual Turkish sausages) served with tinned peas and some mayonnaise (for some reason). I still have another 3 of those sausages ready cooked for tonight (maybe). I treated myself to my last tub of low(ish) calorie/sugar icecream as a dessert.

  When I went through all the pictures I took I was quite disappointed with how many had come out. That very low sun was below the treeline in most places, and he trees (and bushes etc) cast long shadows - often long enough to stretch to infinity - over anything less that 30ft tall. If I had increased the exposure to get the foreground bright the sky, and the tops of trees would be completely bleached out. It made photography tricky. Selective video was OK though.