Giz us a sarnie

On Sunday Jon, Biggles and I set off for a Sunday jaunt into Cornwall which culminated in a walk in the fresh air along the coast. The afternoon was not without one or two brushes with nature of the sort that don’t usually occur in one’s everyday travels.

Gweek

At one point, while driving through one of those natural arbours where the tree boughs shake hands with each other overhead something appeared from our left and seemed to come straight for the car. At first, I thought it was an owl as it was gliding so low. It was not until it banked sharply upwards to its left that I realised it was a buzzard. It cocked its head and with a stare from its right eye it soared upwards and off through the trees into the fields next to us.

Next came our encounter with a herring gull. Not at all surprising, perhaps, as we were so near the coast. However, at the time of meeting we were just outside the town of Helston and parked in a local store’s supermarket eating our lunch. We were munching away, minding our business, when a herring gull came along and plonked itself on the bonnet of the car. Jon and I had to suffer its stares whilst we consumed our sandwiches, whilst Biggles was too involved in eating his sausages to even notice it was there. It gawped at us as we gawped at it, until something spooked it, and it flew off to join the congregation of other birds that were making their way here, there and everywhere.





Gnarled tree trunks can often form shapes in our minds – quite often faces. On our way home down one of the tree lined lanes I spotted a tree trunk ahead that seemed to take on one of these strange shapes, so much so that I stopped the car. To our advantage, there was a passing place opposite to where I had braked to a sudden halt so we could use the excuse of letting oncoming traffic pass while Jon took a couple of photographs. To us both this tree trunk looks just like a monk standing with his arms crossed, his head veiled by his large cowl. Unfortunately, as so often happens when trying to post photos on the blog, things do not always come out as clear as you would like but if you look on the right side of the road just beyond what looks like the telegraph pole you can- hopefully - make out a figure.

The clocks, of course, changed at the weekend so most of our journey home was in darkness, the car’s headlights picking up the shapes of the autumn leaves as they fluttered downward on to the rain dampened road.