Piddle Ford

Nice slow day, joining our service on Zoom, communion taken with coffee and a piece of Garibaldi biscuit followed by the general church meeting while we ate lunch.

Then we explored our surrounding fields, walking through an old (but productive) pear orchard - I counted around 30 trees in varying states. The fruit are still small and I know little about pear varieties so can't tell whether they're eaters or for perry.

We came across a large pond, actually a fishing lake, though the water an uninviting colour and nobody was fishing. Judging by the fag ends and litter they don't much care for the place.

Reaching the Piddle Stream (stop giggling at the back...) we hoped to follow it to the ford (main photo) but a hedge and nettles were in the way so we returned to base and drove round, we'd driven through it a couple of days ago. It's only round the corner, there's a picnic site  marked on the map but hardly family friendly, just room for two carefully parked cars, but gives ample opportunity to have a good look.  The pedestrian bridge gives a view of the stream, which widens out for the ford and the wind was blowing ripples against the flow but a Poohsticks experiment (a cluster of ash keys fell in) demonstrated a slow and steady travel to join the Whitsun Brook a matter of 500m downstream, keeping its own name for historical purposes or merely to amuse the less serious.

The wind has brought CV loudly skies and cooler air, 22°C and we may have more rain, as the Piddle seems to be used for irrigation.