Tag Archives: swans

Stamford,Lincolnshire,England

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One of the places which I definitely wanted to visit on our recent road trip south was Stamford. For some reason I thought that it was where the BBC filmed Cranford but I was wrong, it was Middlemarch which was filmed in Stamford. It’s about 100 miles north of London but somehow seems much further away.

It’s a lovely place actually, not very big shop-wise but it has a lot of independent shops and it’s all very quaint. I wanted to take a photo of these buildings near the town centre because the wee white one in the middle was leaning every way it possibly could – backwards, forwards and from side to side – all at the same time!

Old buildings in Stamford,Lincolnshire

There were some quite grand looking buildings in the town but somehow I’m always drawn to the wee quaint ones which ordinary people will have lived in for centuries. We tried to get into this antiques shop, the lights were on, but nobody was at home!

An antique shop in Stamford

I don’t think a town is a proper town unless it has a river running through it and this one is very scenic.

The River Welland, Stamford

Swans and all! Although I have to admit that this is as close as I like to get to swans. They might look very elegant but in my experience the males are very bad tempered. There’s a particularly nasty one at Linlithgow Loch which just lives to hiss at you.
River Welland, Stamford

During all our visits down south we had no problems with parking, we usually managed to park legally and for free and very close to the town centres. At Stamford we were about a three minute walk from the town. It’s such a change for us because all of the towns in Scotland have seem to have pay and display car parks or parking meters. The local councils just don’t understand that it really puts people off visiting their towns if they have to worry about the expense of parking tickets and feeding meters then it doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience. No wonder our high streets are dying on their feet!

Seals and Swans in the Firth of Forth and River Leven.

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For the past few days it has been absolutely chucking it down over the whole of Scotland and Glasgow has had the most amount of rainfall there since records began – and if you know Glasgow at all you’ll realise how bad it has been! Lots of flooding all over the country but we’re fine here. I just wish someone up there would turn off the taps! To cheer myself up I’ve been having a look at some photos which I took a couple of weeks ago in the time of blue skies. This one is of the old bridge at Dumbarton on the River Leven and there is a swan with cygnets just going under the bridge. These swans went at quite a lick and I had to run to get this photo, not something I do often, I’m more a dignified walk sort of a person. The River Leven often has well over 100 swans floating around this area but most of them seemed to be elsewhere.

Swans in River Leven, Dumbarton

The Leven is just a wee river which flows into the River Clyde at Dumbarton Rock which you can see in this photo, but it’s still very dangerous and it seems that just about every summer some lads drown in it. They just want to have a lark but don’t realise how cold it is and it’s full of weeds which can fankle (entangle) you too.

Dumbarton Rock

I took this photo last week from the Fife coastal path at Kirkcaldy, just beyond Seafield Tower, walking towards Kinghorn. The rocks there are favourites with the seals and they were making themselves heard that day. Unearthly noises come from them at times, well they would be unearthly I suppose as they’re in the sea, but you know what I mean, positively eerie sounds.

Seals 3

I can quite see how the ancient sailors used to think that the seals were mermaids singing, especially when they hadn’t seen women for years!

Seals 1

I suppose it helped if they were in the water too rather than basking and looking enormously fat. It’s possible that some of these seals were about to give birth, maybe that’s what all the racket was about.

Seals 4

I can hardly believe that we had such lovely weather just last week. We seemed to be in a pattern of one lovely day followed by a wet one for a while but now it looks and feels like November and the schools are going back next week. That could be the cue for the sun to be splitting the pavements and a return of summer. Well maybe.