Christine's walking & birds blog

A third new insect for me along the river was beautiful demoiselle - although I would get slightly better pics of these later, when we visited Athelhampton House, near Dorchester.

We don't often visit stately homes, but Greger was interested in this one because the owner has worked hard on making it carbon neutral. However, the interior of the house is certainly worth seeing, with parts of it dating from the 15th century. Some stained-glass windows caught my eye as they featured choughs (in another, but rather duller window, a single bird has a more lifelike bill in it being longer and more slender).

We then wandered round the attractive gardens and found the damselflies on the stream that runs along the northern edge of the grounds - which I think is the River Piddle.

Back at the house we chose the small cream tea rather than the large one (just one scone) and they were, unusually in our experience, fairly generous with the cream and jam; I didn't want to waste any so I loaded my scone with so much of both that it kept crumbling away from the weight, and I ended up in a right mess with sticky fingers, face, and even hair. You can't take me anywhere. After the tea, we drove to Maiden Castle Iron Age hill fort, and during a very windy walk on the chalk ramparts, spotted two clouded yellow butterflies (Colias croceus) sparring in mid-air. They eventually landed for a few seconds on the path, but I failed to get them with their wings open. Another insect first!

It was nice to see corn buntings near the car park, and a brown hare out on the parched fields among the corvids.

From Lyme, the Isle of Portland can be seen on the horizon (well, provided it's not swathed in one of its famous mists!) and a visit there was a must.

It was probably one of the warmest days of the week, so we didn't didn't set off on one of our long walks; we just ambled past the beach huts and horse paddocks to the first quarry, and then returned to the Bill. Despite the lovely sunshine and a few free seats outside the Lobster Pot, we went indoors to eat very nice fish and chips. We laughed at this, because last time we were here, we decided to sit outside - and halfway through our lunch it started to rain. 

An ancient red telephone box looks as though it could do with some TLC!

We called in at Ferry Bridge on the way home and spotted dunlin, sanderling, Med gulls, and a solitary swift.

Golden Cap is the highest point along the cliffs between Lyme and Weymouth - and Greger wanted to revisit it for old times' sake. Many years ago, during our running days, we were camping at its foot; and one morning we donned trainers and ran up to the top. This time, he suggested a more gentle approach, and we drove round to Langdon Woods and walked under a canopy of mostly beech and pine, across open fields with hedgerows (a family of common whitethroats and a single yellowhammer seen here), and then to heathland sloping more steeply up to the trig point. 

The gardens at our holiday let produced willow warbler, magpie, wren, buzzard, and this juvenile green woodpecker - a species I haven't seen since we moved to the Highlands twelve years ago.

A female tawny owl was once heard calling, and on another night we saw a badger run across the lawn. A dried-up pond in the centre of the lawn was surrounded by a tangle of vegetation, which included purple loosestrife and water mint - both new plants for me. I'm running out of steam, so I won't bother with the scientific names.

By the end of the week when we packed up and left, it was decidedly cooler - and I was mortified to see that hotter weather was due a couple of days later. Once again, we managed to miss the high temperatures - we got sandwiched between two heatwaves, with temperatures that were pleasant, but no more than you'd expect during an ordinary English summer. However, I noticed that Greger really suffered even from this heat, so it's really just as well that we were going home.