Weekend stuff

Another walk on Saturday, very much shorter this time, and with a rather late start. Very varied walk, with wide and impressive valley, small village, deciduous woodland and moorland. About six miles, we thought, although the woods walking was rather tiring (narrow paths and rather up-and-down), especially as the day was starting to warm up about then. Iron Age earthworks on the moor, well labelled but hard to tell what was the Iron Age dyke and what was a naturally eroded channel, under all the heather. Lots of lapwings in the valley and skylarks on the moor, and a solitary and glorious columbine in the woods. Pottered round a seaside town before heading home, enjoying what was left of the sun.

After two very busy weeks, a weekend camping and a Saturday out walking I now have mounds of washing, so of course it had to rain on Sunday. I've just realised that while I definitely washed a pair of trousers I'm not at all sure I have a shirt for tomorrow. Oh well, I've probably got a clean old shirt hiding somewhere. Bare-chestedness is definitely not included in the office dress code.

When I was asked on the walk what those black-and-white birds were, my first reaction was to say 'peewit' - the word 'lapwing' never comes to mind as easily - which really puzzled the people I was with as they thought a peewit was a curlew. I had never come across this usage before, and I'm inclined to think that they were just mistaken. A lapwing has a very distinctive 'pee-whit' call, and I can't think of any reason why a curlew should share the name.