Colour burst

What a difference a day makes! High summer today - too hot indeed. Pete and I went down to Totternhoe NR in Bedfordshire, where I'm doing a vegetation survey. I spotted this colourful field margin on our walk from the car-park to the reserve. We'd decided to take Rosie, but in hindsight this may not have been the best decision. The site is very large, complex and has many slopes. The area where I was initially working was incredibly sheltered, on very steep slopes and had little shade for poor Rosie, who at one point looked on the point of collapse. I wasn't much better and almsot fainted twice when I stood up too quickly!

However, after the initial blazing sunshine, some cloud built up, which made the temperatures more bearable, and we took the rest of the survey very slowly, finding lots of shady bushes for Rosie to lie under while I worked. Fortunately we were carrying plenty of water which helped a lot. Amazingly, despite it being a Saturday in beautiful weather on a site which was full of wild flowers and butterflies, we didn't see another person actually on the reserve. How strange is that?