Project 365 day 162: Great Stour Reflections

I'm catching up with photos from yesterday evening, when we enjoyed a beautiful, warm summer evening walk along the Great Stour Way, through Hambling Marshes on the edge of Canterbury. Across the river, hidden behind the trees, are the Wincheap trading estates; the path and cycleway pass under the busy A2, and two rail lines run across the opposite edge of the marsh, the high speed line from St Pancras and Ashford which continues through Canterbury West to Margate, and the slower line from London Bridge station to Dover which stops at Canterbury East. The remains of the embankment and bridge of the long closed Elham Valley line, which once ran below our orchard, also crosses the marsh.

For all this, it is a very peaceful place. From the path, the river was often not visible, concealed by tall grass and vegetation, including many huge clumps of various umbellifers. I'm not sure if the ones shown here are standard cow parsley or one of its many relations, but further along the banks we saw many two metre high dark stemmed plants like small trees which I think are the highly poisonous hemlock water dropwort. Where we could see the river, the reflections were worthy of Monet, with willow branches and frothy masses of white flower heads overhanging patches of still water. The water meadows were carpeted with buttercups, white clover and yellow rattle, and grazed by calm, curious cows who came to look at J looking at them. A large flock of small brown birds repeatedly surged up from the grass to fly in something like a small murmuration before returning to ground. I couldn't see them well enough to identify them, and I don't know which birds behave in this way at this time of year; a poor quality photo of one bird which alighted on a tree shows a finch-like beak, light breast and strongly marked brown wings which suggest a tree sparrow or female chaffinch; I didn't see the pinkish or speckled breast which might suggest linnets. Whatever they were, their movements were wonderful to watch.

There were many wild flowers. Unfortunately, my companions would not have tolerated me photographing all of them, but we saw yellow flag irises, vivid magenta thistles, pink campion, lilac-blue meadow cranesbill and bright patches of big ox-eye daisies alongside the path. Before long there will be banks of rosebay willowherb. 

This was our second trip out after our long months shielding. The path is well used but was not busy; however, couples and groups did not generally move into single file to pass us on the path as I would have preferred. Levels of infection are low in this area, and we have been vaccinated. However, had we known yesterday that surge testing has been taking place in Canterbury all week in response to an outbreak of the more transmissible Delta variant, which is less well controlled than previous variants by the vaccine we have received, we would have chosen a different destination. I wonder how long it will be before our small pleasures cease to be haunted by these anxieties.