Milton Ferry Bridge

Warm, grey and windy today - not very conducive to photography. I decided to finish digging over one of the fruit / vegetable plots this morning, and plant the raspberry canes that I bought on Wednesday. While I was out there I let the chickens out as usual.The two smaller ones came out as normal, but the silkie cross stayed in the run, looking listless. She'd been in the nestbox for the previous two days, and we'd thought she was broody, but on closer examination it was clear she was very poorly, with laboured breathing and an upset stomach.

So this afternoon we took her to the vet, who diagnosed a severe respiratory infection and put her on antibiotics. The vet suggested we kept her inside in the warm, and that we should take her into the bathroom with us if we were going to have a bath or shower, as the steamy atmosphere would help her lungs. So at the moment I'm writing this on my laptop with a chicken sitting next to me on an improvised perch made from a dining chair and a sleepy dog at my feet. The chicken seems quite fascinated by television - just hope she doesn't expect these sort of comforts when she recovers.

I managed a brief early afternoon walk with the dogs, and took this photograph of Milton Ferry Bridge just after I'd got out of the car. There were a few brief spells of hazy sunshine, and the soft light really brought out the spring colours - the bright green of young garlic mustard and the new leaves of hawthorn in the foreground, and the golden and greens of the willows in the background. I was delighted to see the first bluebells in flower in the wood - this is on a south-facing slope and always has the earliest bluebells round here.

Milton Ferry bridge, which spans the River Nene, formerly supported a toll-gate for charging pedestrians who used the local path to and from Alwalton - the white toll-gates can still be seen on theleft-hand side of the bridge. Records show that toll collectors were still working the bridge well into the 1960s and were usually based at the nearby Ferry Cottages which were actually moved up the hill to make way for the new A47 dual carriageway, which runs behind the woodland shown in the photograph. A tablet on the side of the bridge shows that it was originally built in 1716, financed entirely by the Right Honourable William Earl Fitzwilliam.