10th January James Bond Theme from ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service John Barry
Out at 9.00 a.m. after breakfast in bed and morning TV news, I was two days behind my schedule and off to Church Wood RSPB Reserve in Hedgerley. I had had to take a long route to get there but it had had to be done. Weather today was not as bitterly cold as recently and the roads here were cyclable with care. Soon I was off the main road and I reached the famous Pinewood Studios, hence the music chosen for this day. It is still my favourite Bond movie.
Not so long ago on a family holiday to Switzerland, Karen, my beautiful raven-haired, jade- eyed wife, our four children, Rebecca, Claire, Joshua and Sarah and I went up to the summit named Piz Gloria via a couple of cable cars. I can remember the children feeding Alpine Choughs from their hands with fruit cake and seeing Ptarmigan from the balcony. I hoped the Cairngorms' Ptarmigan would be so obliging later in the year.
I also remember that it was on that holiday that I saw an ambition bird from the viewpoint of Meringen Waterfall. Beside a plaque stating that this was indeed the spot where Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty fell to their deaths. Don’t people realise that these are fictional characters? I waited for an hour or two, waiting and watching the water cascade down a huge waterfall. Suddenly a spot on the huge cliff moved. It then took off and was joined by another spot, both revealing that they had spectacularly pinkish coloured wings. Together they ascended just beyond the waterfalls’ spray, spinning around each other in a lovers’ display, until they were quite close. My first view of the fabulous bird, Wallcreepers and what a spectacular setting to see them in.
What I especially loved about the James Bond
movie was the theme music as Bond and his girl, Diana Rigg, my teenage heart
throb, were skiing down a Swiss mountain side being pursued by the villains. I
loved that music so much that as a naïve young teenager I went into a local
record store in Redditch, where I lived at the time and asked if they had a
single of it. Younger readers, you will have to ask an oldie like me what a
single was. Snootily the shop attendant told me that I had no chance of that
and that I would have to buy the whole James Bond album. I did not have enough
money to buy a whole album, around thirty shillings, nowadays £1.50 and I had
to wait thirty years before YouTube helped me out. Diana Rigg was fabulously
gorgeous in that film. What a shame she ended up on the front seat of James Bond’s
car with a bullet through her forehead just after their wedding! “
It's all right. It's quite all right, really, she's having a rest. We'll be
going on soon. There's no hurry, you see. We have all the time in the world.”
Actually when one looks back at other
Bond films it is such a disgrace that so many of them contain gratuitous
violence towards women. How often does one see James slap a woman? I suggest
far too many times and I hope that times have changed for the better.
The security man at the gate to the studios
was an Afghan from Kabul, who had been in the UK for three years. He took my
photograph as I stood in front of the entrance and on bidding him thanks and
goodbye, I continued towards Fulmar. Strange that the name of a small village
was also that of a favourite white and grey seabird. A type of albatross
despite its small size, whose fame is due to showering anyone who comes too
close to a nesting bird with foul smelling yellow oil; something that I was to
experience when up on the very northeastern tip of Bonnie Scotland.
I saw a road sign for Slough, home of Ricky
Gervais’ sitcom, The Office. I never could see what people liked about The
Office but then again, I have never worked in an office. I will stick to Pete
and Dud, Morecambe & Wise and Monty Python for my favourite TV comedic
moments, with Stuart Lee for face-aching moments. As for sitcoms, you cannot
beat Porridge and Blackadder in my book but the lesser well known Early Doors
comes close. Films? Well it has to be Ghostbusters and Mel Brooks’ The
Producers.
On reaching Hedgerley I had to find the house
of a kind couple who had offered me accommodation on the night that I should
have arrived in the village, Doug and Jean. I wanted to say thank you to them
both and explain what had happened. The lane in which they lived was still ice
and snow covered when I got there and so I left the bike at a corner house and
walked briskly yet carefully along it. On seeing a man walking his dog I called
out, “are you Doug?” Indeed it was Doug, out walking with his energetic dog
named Sidney, a cross between a poodle and a spaniel; a spoodle no less! Sidney,
what a fabulous name for a pet. Why am I so enthusiastic for the name you may
ask? Well, every pet I have ever owned I have named Sid. It started as a
tribute to Sid James of Carry On movie fame. Actually the only pet I still have,
after a succession of goldfish, cats and various insects, is a rock. Sid is a large
rock that called to me one day as I was sitting adjacent to the base of
Europe's highest waterfall at Gavarnie in the French Pyrenees. «Aidez-moi », he cried out.
" J’en ai marre de cette eau frapper
ma tête tout le temps ! "
Luckily, I speak a little French and so I
rescued Sid and I carried him the four miles back to the car. Sid came home
with me after I had dried him out. He has been my companion ever since but was
not on this journey with me on this occasion. He preferred to stay at home.
In 2009 I went back to Gavarnie in order to
look for his wife and children. They are now with him at my little caravan in
Worcestershire. And with these words your thought that I am a little eccentric
is now confirmed.
Doug invited me inside their magnificent residence where I was given coffee and the use of their computer to catch up on emails and the blog. From their back-patio windows I watched as Red Kites, eighteen of them, flew along the ridge close by and a covey of five Red-legged Partridges shuffled around in the snow covered field. Then a year tick; a Stock Dove [71] flew over towards the ridge. It was then time for a meal at the local pub with them both. The public house was so popular that they had had a large marquee type area attached to the back of the old building to accommodate the extra people. A meal of chips and sandwiches was eaten with Doug, an IT person of some note and his wife, Jean and Sidney, their dog that is, not my rock.
Thanks and goodbyes spoken to this lovely couple and Sid of course, I then enjoyed a session of sledging with a few families on the hills adjacent to the reserve before walking around the woodland footpath of the reserve itself. Not many people had done the same as the deep snow was still pristine and lacking human footprints. Yet a female Roe Deer showed herself and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, Green Woodpeckers, titmice and Red Kites were seen but no Lesser Redpolls Lee!
18.95 miles 735 feet elevation up and down
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