After a wonderfully long and deep sleep, we awoke to find east Kent wreathed in fog. It would have been easy to lay in bed all day, but we had cats to collect! So, soon enough I was making a pot of coffee. My task for the morning was to make a huge pan of stew. Seems like my plan to do that at the end of winter had been forgotten, and so two huge pumps of beef skirt had lay in the bottom of the freezer all summer. So, I decided that I would use it during this holiday, and what could be better that the second from last day of the holiday when the weather should be autumnal? Well, right and wrong…..
The BBC promised us sunshine in the afternoon, which seemed unlikely, but they know their onions and I don’t, so as Jools went to collect the three cats, I began chopping onions, the meat and various root vegetables. Add to pan, add water, season add oxo cubes, bring to boil and simmer for four hours. After four hours the gravy has turned into sludge, mixed with the onions and soup mix which I also added. There is nothing quite like the smell of simmering stew.
The cats arrived, and poor Mulder’s bowels failed again, this time managing to poo through the bars of the cage onto the back seat of the car. It takes a special kind of cat to manage that!
After lunch we headed out to the cliffs on a hunt for the Long Tailed Blue butterfly. You may recall this rare visitor to these shores was seen at Kingsdown back in August. They ones seen then laid eggs, they hatched into caterpillars which have now emerged as glorious butterflies. I saw on a blog that a male had been seen at the weekend, it was a glorious sunny afternoon and so what could be better than a walk along the cliffs looking for butterflies?
So we drove to the monument, parked up and grabbed the cameras. I thought of checking the monument for autumn lady’s-tresses orchids. At the beginning of the month the local council mowed the grass and several dozen tiny orchids. In truth it was late in the season and I was not expecting to see any. A quick glance and I saw no orchids. But a closer look revealed a couple of tiny spikes in the shadow of the monument. The more I looked, the more I saw. OK, no more than ten, but these were not fully out and should be wonderful by the weekend. So Jools and I got down on our knees to snap them, must have looked odd as what we were snapping as the orchids were invisible from any distance.
We walked along the cliffs, but I saw no butterflies about, even with just a breath of wind to move the long grass. However as we neared Kingsdown, I began to see the occasional blue, but soon realised they were all Adonis Blues, which of course is always a thrill. There really is no other blue that comes close to an Adonis. I snapped several before we moved on to Long Blue country.
Up on The Leas there were about a dozen other photographers were already there, all searching for the Long Tails. A couple had been seen earlier, and stories were swapped about sightings. Jools and I spit up, but I saw none, just more bloody Adonis. And to think until a few weeks ago I was obsessed about snapping just the one of them!
Jools called out saying she had one. Now, I should point out this had happened six weeks previously, but had turned out to be a large colony of Chalkhills. I walked over, and looked. And sure enough there was the black spot, the long tuft on the rear wing. It was a male feeding on a bloom of an everlasting pea. Sadly, it inched further and further into the bloom meaning I just got a clear sight of its underwings, but it was good enough to appreciate its beauty. The upper wings, which I had caught a quick glimpse of, was a grey/blue colour, but also clearly marked with a black spot.
Turned out I was happy enough with those shots and we turned to head for home. It was now hot. I mean really warm, maybe in the 80s, just like high summer back in July. And the only thing to do once home was crack open an ice cold beer and sit in the wooden chair on the patio.
That night I warmed up the pot of stew, boiled some potatoes and it was as wonderful as it smelt. Time then to sit on the sofa nicely pooped out.
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