Saturday 7th June 2025, 3.40pm (day 5,035)
I don’t think I have ever seen a brood of ducklings as large as this. Even though a couple of them are only glimpsed on this shot (there’s one right behind the duck, and another mostly concealed in the left-hand group) there were definitely nine of them. No wonder she looked somewhat frazzled: and there was an equally stressed-looking drake in the vicinity too. Still, they’re a good size: quite an achievement in fact.
Incidentally this was taken at Dunsop Bridge in the Forest of Bowland, a few yards from where, on 27/12/2011, I depicted Clare stood in the phone box that is still there, being the reputed “centre of Britain”. That was 4,911 days ago, meaning that Dunsop Bridge now takes over as the place with the longest gap between appearances on this blog. Can things get any more exciting, you ask? Hey, this particular journey has only just started.
Being 42 