Saturday 21st May 2022

The weekend.

And a whole day to fill with non-work things.

Like shopping and cooking.

After coffee, we went to Tesco, and without really trying hard, spent £104, though twenty of that was on a bottle of brandy. To make brandy butter.

Tesco has most things, just not a lot of it, semi-skimmed mile was only available in two pint bottles, no four or six available. And fresh produce was thin on the ground too, but plenty of asparagus, so we stocked up on that.

Back home for bacon butties, and Jools said she wasn't going to come out orchid-chasing with me, so I went on my own.

First up was Wye Down to see the Late Spiders, that a friend told me that they were quite advanced. In fact, many of the spikes were in flower, or close to it. When I started getting into orchids, the peak weekend was always the first weekend in June. Not any more, this is the peak weekend, two weeks ahead of what they used to be.

I climbed into the reserve, through the sea of crosswort, then up to the cages that dotted the side of the down, each cage marking the location of a precious orchid spike.

I check every one, some twice, to see if any rare ones had come up. I took shots of about half the spikes.

It is a ten minute drive to Park Gate, back through Hastingleigh and Stelling, then down the narrow grass-covered lanes, down a valley and up the other side.

Not many people about, so parking was easy. I grab the camera and walk to the reserve, and even from the entrance, I could see the pink of Monkey Orchids stretching into the second paddock and beyond.

I stopped at the first spike, the cloud covered the sun, so I had to wait ten minutes until sunlight returned. And from then I went round to check every spike in case a super-rare green one had appeared.

I saw no green MOnkey.

But I did meet some nice people, and I showed the the colony of Fly in the third paddock, And once the site had been surveyed, I said I would take them to see some Bird's-nest Orchids.

So, we travelled in a mini convoy, through Barham to Womenswold, parking outside the wood, andafter grabbing cameras, we walked in.

My friend, Terry, had told me that they were showing, but I wasn't prepared for the numbers of spikes that we saw, over 40 in all, including two groups of more than five, growing in the middle of a path.

I left them to it, and drove across country via the narrow lanes back to St Maggies, getting back at half one.

Shall we have lunch?

Yes, yes we shall.

We had cold tapas, and wine.

And once that was done, I settled down to watch the League 1 play-off final, Wycombe v Sunderland.

Always a tense game, but Sunderland ran out 2-0 winners. And the crowd went wild. Or the Sunderland half did.

We had more tapas for supper.

Whilst listening to funk and soul.