Marple

Juvenile woodpigeon, Stretford

It had been a cool and rainy night and the joints were objecting to the change of weather, clicking like knitting machines as I listened to the foxes on the railway line. Evidently it wasn't just the foxes that have been feeling the fires of the blood, a young juvenile woodpigeon accompanied one of its parents in the garden and was shown where the rowan berries are.

It became a dry, but grey and cool, day. I was definitely not up for a long walk but I needed to get some exercise to stop the joints stiffening up entirely. The buses are a bit fitful at the moment as some but not all are on strike so I went over to Piccadilly Station and played train bingo. The first train out was the Sheffield train so I got on that as far as my monthly travel card will take me, getting off at Marple.

Brabyns Park 

It was only the other day I'd walked through Brabyns Park to Etherow Country Park and I didn't fancy an early repeat. Instead I took the paths that go through the woodland and loop round to the Peak Forest Canal. The nuthatches were infuriating, calling incessantly but always from deep cover. A particularly noisy coal tit at least played the game by sitting at the end of a branch in a larch tree to do its shouting. There was no sign of the moorhen family on the pond.

Into the woodland, the titmice weren't forming into coherent mixed flocks, preferring to stay as family parties in the canopy and pairs rummaging about in the bushes. Robins and woodpigeons sang, wrens scolded and chiffchaffs squeaked. Overhead was a constant traffic of jackdaws and woodpigeons.

The steps up to the canal

I climbed up to the canal where a group of mallards bathed in the lock basin and a couple of moorhens pottered about. I had a nosy round, marveling at the narrowness of the narrow boats that plied the canal. I reckon both of my shoulders would rub the sides of Lock No.8 but I'm happy not to conduct the experiment to prove it.

Lock No. 8

Peak Forest Canal 

It had taken me exactly an hour to walk the circular walk back round to the station, the Sheffield train pulled in just as I got there. I'd got my bit of exercise, the joints were a bit more mobile, job done. I planned on going home the long way via Glossop but the bus didn't turn up so I went the less long but half an hour slower way via Stockport.