Chipping Campden

The first time R and I drove down this road he said in tones of disbelief, "Some lucky b*****s actually live here!" Which they definitely do, because I was scowled at by some of them today as I wandered around with a large camera and a long lens, peering into their gardens for the flock of ten waxwings that were reported in the town yesterday. After some searching, and with the help of directions from a couple of the friendlier locals, I found the alleyway where they were seen, and the exact tree on which they were feeding at the time - but the tree was stripped bare and the waxwings were gone.

The problem with Chipping Campden is that although it's confined into a space no bigger than the average village there are a lot of houses, many of them up private drives behind other properties, or built on little closes that run between other larger roads, or winding cul-de-sacs that go nowhere at all and are tricky to find and explore systematically. I wasted most of the morning searching the place on foot, and the best I can say for the experience was that I arrived home with a much better mental map of Chipping Campden than I had at the start of the day.

By the way, should you wish to admire this view yourself, the road is called Conduit Hill, and the area is Westington, which was presumably a separate village back in the day, but now counts as a suburb I guess, even though the central market square is no more than a ten minute walk away. You approach from this direction if you take the Campden turning off the A44, between the turns to Blockley and Saintbury.

In other news, as I drove over the brow of the hill that runs down into our village a Red Kite floated low over the car. I stopped in a field gateway, hurled myself into the road with the camera, and got the shot - but it was essentially the same image as I posted to my extras here, only not as good because there was even less light on the bird. Still though, Red Kites have only recently begun to move into our area, and it's still rare to see one so close to home. The local Buzzards, which are generally more nervous than Red Kites, and tend to look on humans as a threat rather than a potential resource, had better look to their territories.