Big sky over Orton Pit

After a morning food dash to Sainsbury's, Alex and I spent the middle of the day at Orton Pit. He was gathering data for his college project on the diversity and abundance of stoneworts in unmanaged and unmanaged ponds, and collecting water samples to analyse later. My role was training him to identify stoneworts and to make sure he didn't drown in any of the ponds.

The water levels were as low as I've ever seen them, leaving extensive areas of very slippery wet clay around the ponds, making the whole procedure fairly precarious. But thankfully neither of us fell in!

We were mostly staring downwards, but when I chanced to look up I was struck by the wonderful cloud formation which just seemed to go on forever - a benefit of those East Anglian big skies. And in the foreground you can see some of the hummocks I photographed on Saturday, each of which is about 7m in height.

Tonight the boys are having a sleepover with a couple of friends, so I may well retreat to bed for an early night and leave them to get on with it. I suspect not much sleeping will be done!