Buxton

Buxton Pavilion Gardens 

It was hot. I got an old man's explorer ticket with a view to getting about, having a quick look at a few places and spending most of the day sitting in air-cooled trains with their windows open. I had plans of going to see if that Slavonian grebe was still at Acre Nook Quarry or the green-winged teal on Sandbach Flashes. Dear reader, I stayed on the air-cooled trains with their windows open watching woodpigeons and butterflies as we passed them by. The outside world was like a school trip to an iron foundry.

By teatime it was bearably hot so I had a wander round the Pavilion Gardens at Buxton. The mallards and geese stayed in the shade of the trees with a couple of mandarin ducks, the drake already in full eclipse plumage. No birds bathed in the stream. The swarms of "bees" over the water turned out, on closer inspection, to be Batman hoverflies. I looked in vain for dragonflies. Not really surprising, I guess, an apparent swarm of bees wouldn't be a draw for them.

The stream through the gardens

It was a very agreeable wander round and much though I wanted to beat myself for being defeated by the weather I couldn't be bothered.