21st January Albatross Hank
Marvin & The Shadows
Off early to reach Blean Woods RSPB reserve, near Canterbury,
with Dave leading the way. Now this may have been a punishment for my selfish
thoughts when cycling to Cliffe Pools with David Saunders but Dave Rolfe was
faster than my little legs could cycle and he had to occasionally stop for me
to catch up. Well my excuse for my tardiness was that my bike was heavy laden,
unlike Dave's. Still fifteen miles or so, along the back-village route, through
Faversham before that lovely downhill stretch adjacent to the A2 just before
Canterbury. Reaching the reserve entrance it was goodbye to Dave, my companion
for the last couple of days. A man of few words yet pleasant company. I found
Blean Primary School, the place for my next school visit and left my panniers
there whilst I returned to Blean Woods to bird away a couple of hours.
I surprised myself by remembering woodland areas that I had last visited twenty years ago. Then it had been an extremely hot summer's day as I explored the woods, stated to be the largest broadleaf woodland in Britain. I had entered via an entrance near to a village called Dunkirk, where trees had been felled by the hurricane of 1987.
The 1987 storm, famous of course for Michael Fish and his weather forecast,
“Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rung
the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you’re
watching, don’t worry, there isn’t.”
What happened after that was were winds around 100mph, eighteen people killed and 15 million trees across the country blown down!
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/case-studies/great-storm
Three students of mine, from when I was a Secondary School teacher in Wolverhampton, had skived school to spend a week birdwatching on The Isles of Scilly. Fifteen years old at the time, Jason, Alex and Richard, had taken a tent to sleep at the campsite on The Garrison, St Mary's. With trees crashing down around them, they spent the night in the toilet block!
The rest of their holiday was spent sleeping on the floor of a local birder's apartment and enjoying the many very rare American songbirds found on the islands in the aftermath of the storm.
Birds the lads had that week included :-
Really to be honest, back in 1990 I got lost in the immense forest but eventually found parts of the RSPB reserve and exited the way I was now coming in. A local school had a minibus in the car park and teachers had brought teenage boys to the woods who were enjoying cross country runs in the cold. I walked around the laid-out paths but there were few birds; titmice, Chaffinch, Green and Great Spotted Woodpeckers, a couple of Jays and over sixty Wood Pigeon.
Back to the school for an afternoon assembly with over four hundred lively children with attendant static staff. I almost lost my voice as they had given me forty-five minutes to fill with similar things as at the last Primary school in Rochester. Mind you, doing the albatross 'dance' was a mistake as some of the children took the opportunity to mess around. I should have had a crossbow! Order restored, eventually prizes were given to the frog and albatross.
21.69 miles 762 feet elevation up 570 feet down
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