A Step Too Far - 1

I like to have some sort of objective in mind when I set out on a walk so, with the weather promising some sunshine after the miseries of yesterday - this is the A9 just after 9.00 yesterday morning - we embarked on what in the old days might have been called a 'nature ramble' - just a gentle wander looking for anything of interest, and....

....this track which leads up into the forestry and then on into more open moorland a mile on, is ideal for the purpose.

It was a typical fine autumn morning, chilly, with the leaves sparkling with last night's rain, and all sorts of things to find including....

....masses of berries on almost all the rowans, something which is supposed to herald a hard winter....

....and plenty of fungi including some fly agaric which the slugs and snails had yet to find, and....

....several groups of puffballs. Then there were what I take to be....

....the seed heads of bog asphodel, glowing in the low-angled sun.

Then there was the heather family. This is cross-leaved heath which has been flowering all summer, with....

....bell heather enjoying only a slightly shorter season - but what was noticeable was that the flowers of the ling, which are usually at their best in early September and then die off through into October, were absent, perhaps because conditions at the time of their flowering were either too dry or - and this is a possibility - rather too wet.

So we wandered until we came to this gate, which suddenly opened up the possibility of walking much further along the track to somewhere we hadn't been in ages.

Sparrowhawk

I think we last saw a sparrowhawk in the garden back in August so we were very pleased yesterday evening when one landed on a fence from where it had a good view across both our and our neighbour's gardens.

However, the hawk didn't stay long, probably because, in my anxiety to take a picture, I disturbed it.

We've noticed in previous years that the small birds, like this juvenile goldfinch and....

....this very smart adult, seem to disappear at this time of year, perhaps because there is plenty to eat in the surrounding forestry and fields, so the generous portions of seeds, peanuts and fats we put out are largely ignored. That the birds aren't being drawn in must make it harder for the sparrowhawks to catch their prey.

For several weeks now we've been growing accustomed to the skeins of geese flying back and forth along the coast, and heard the cacophony of noise as these hundreds of birds settle in the fields by the golf course to feed. These have been pink-footed geese but in the last few days we've noticed different calls, those of....

....greylag geese, most of them heading determinedly south.

Late-Season Butterflies - and a Moth

We've been basking in the sort of weather which is usually associated with high summer - so, well into October, we've been sitting out on the terrace and walking in to the village in bright sunshine.

Celebrating with us have been a few late butterflies, a couple of red admirals and.... 

....these two beautiful painted ladies, the one on the right demonstrating the intricate patterns on the underwing which are so rarely visible.

Unfortunately, we've also had a couple of whites in the garden. I know that one of them was a large white because of the caterpillars I found, but some of the caterpillars were much smaller and uniformly green, showing that we have also been visited by a small white or two. Needless to say, all the caterpillars were on my precious broccoli.

Then, this morning, we had a visit from this day-flying moth, a silver Y, the first I've seen this year, which spent quite some time in the garden enjoying the many verbena flowers.

The Rest

I'm lying on a sweaty sheet on my bed in the bedroom which my brother Richard and I share in the big African Mercantile manager's house at the end of Cliff Avenue in Mombasa. I'm almost naked but I've got a kikoi ready in the unlikely event that someone creeps up the stairs and comes in.

It's about two in the afternoon and outside the crickets are screaming in the heat, the only sound except the occasional breath of air which stirs the pile of dry leaves below our window, and the ever-present, distant boom of the great ocean waves breaking across the Andromache reef.

My mother's asleep in my parent's bedroom and my father has gone back to the office after a short rest - a siesta, you'd call it - in the big armchair at the bottom the stairs, and as soon as he heard the Rover backing out of the drive Richard followed him. He has a rendezvous with some friends - he hasn't told me who and since his friends are very largely the same as mine I am a little surprised that he hasn't told me. I could have gone with him but if he wants a little time to himself, that's fine - because I do too.

It's late September 1961 and we're close to the end of what we've just been told is going to be the last summer holiday in Mombasa as my father has taken early retirement and will be retuning to England by ship while my much more adventurous mother is travelling - alone - the whole way down the Nile from Lake Victoria to Cairo. So this time the tears and rage that Richard and I usually express as the holidays draw to a close are a waste of time. If I am to stay here in Mombasa I'll have to find a job and my own accommodation, all this against the compulsory Africanisation of jobs that an independent Kenya will bring in following Uhuru, Freedom, due in 1963.

I suppose all I really want to do is to go through my options one more time -  a waste of precious holiday, really - and start to come to terms with what my future holds: a return to Bradfield, where I'll be a house prefect; I've already collected three 'A' levels so I'll be doing a couple of 'S' levels - but mostly I'm staying on in the hope I'll be made a school prefect. Then, I suppose, I'll be choosing a course and a university - but of one thing I am absolutely determined: once I'm qualified in something which the country needs I'm coming back to Kenya, one day, sooner later; and I'm going to make my home in Mombasa and then spend the rest of my life here.

Of course, life never turns out how you plan it but, hey!, it's been good.

Autumn Wildflowers

Today's walk, in sunny but blustery conditions, took us through Specked Wood where, despite the dappled shade under the trees which might have encouraged them out, there was no sign of any speckled wood butterflies. By comparison with most other butterfly species the speckled wood has done fairly well here this year.

Many of the trees are now shedding their leaves, led by the rowans, some of which are almost bare-branched already, and most of which have a good crop of berries.

Look carefully and some of summer's flowers. are still to be found. This is a little flower, not more than 15mm across, which is a favourite of mine. It goes under the odd name of tormentil and is unusual in that it has only four petals.

Also, surprisingly, in bloom amongst the tangled grasses is....

....heath milkwort. This was the only one that I could find which was still in flower.

Devil's-bit scabious is still in bloom along the damper edges of some of the tracks as are....

....the last of the foxgloves.

Last, but by no means least, a few remaining daisies are in flower, this bloom all alone in our back garden.

The Longest Road Trip

The term 'Road Trip', with its sense of excitement and adventure, isn't a term much used in Britain, probably because our roads are so congested that any name that suggests pleasure is inappropriate. So we only learned the true meaning of a road trip when we were visiting our son in Canada, where the Canadians travel with great pleasure on their many miles of quiet and well-maintained roads.

We experienced our first road trip on our first holiday in Canada in 2006, when we drove from Edmonton Alberta all the way across the Rockies and Cascades and other mountain ranges to Seattle in Washington State, USA. We didn't go by the most direct route, and we didn't keep a record of our distance travelled, so I estimate we probably did about 800 miles in the four days.

It wasn't a trip without problems, the worst of which was when I hit a curb and wrote off a wheel hub. Hertz didn't have a spare in their Jasper office so they gave us a replacement car - so we left our small Japanese car there, swapping it for the pleasure of a big Ford Explorer.

The worst experience of the trip was travelling along interstate 5, a road of gigantic potholes and huge trucks, which runs north-south through the back of Seattle, and which would have swallowed the small car we started with.

Good as it was to spend time with my brother and his family in Seattle, I was sorry to see the road trip's end. So, when we returned to Canada in 2008 we hired a car which....

....learning from past experience, was even bigger than the Explorer, and repeated our road trip. It was as well we had a powerful car as sections of our route, such as this part over the Cascades, were closing for the season, so the trip was even more of an adventure than the 2006 one.

We did many more road trips on subsequent visits to Edmonton, none of them as long as the two to Seattle. We won't be doing another. It's not that the idea doesn't appeal: I'd happily do another road trip - as long as someone else drove. It's because we're unlikely to travel to Canada again.

A Parting Gift

We've spent the summer working hard in the garden to provide food for the worryingly few butterflies which have come our way, including this tortoiseshell, and have been so pleased to have some still in the garden as we've moved into October. They've been encouraged by some gloriously sunny days when the temperature at midday almost reached 20C.

Joining the two painted ladies have been a few red admirals and peacocks - and then, on Thursday, a lone white which was far too skittish for me to get a picture.

However, it seems that, during an earlier visit, this white....

....managed to lay about a dozen eggs which have now hatched as caterpillars.

I wouldn't have minded if the eggs had been laid on one of the plants we've grown for the butterflies' use, but that wretched large white chose my precious broccoli plants, of which I have far too few to get us through the winter.

And, no, I'm not going to record what happened to those caterpillars.