It was too nice outside to stay in sorting holiday photos, so Sue and I toddled off to join the hordes at Dunham.
Our 6 km figure of eight stroll took us onto the canal towpath, where lots of boats were moored up, their owners happily sunning themselves. This one was called 'Lucky Dip'.
At least four buzzards hovered above, and goldfinches busied themselves in the hedgerows whilst newly arrived house martins feasted themselves on airborne insects. Leaving the canal at Agden Bridge, after some rather noxious muck spreading activity from a farmer who obviously wanted to show the holiday makers how hard he was working, we found a lady with a docile child and dog who had been intimidated by these cows and was returning home 'the long way round', defeated.
A nearby wood sported lush banks of greater stitchwort and lesser celandine - shown below, as well as wood anemones, with a few bluebells in flower and the rest not far behind.
We discovered as we passed back under the canal that we were on the Bollin Valley Way.
There is lots of blackthorn hereabouts.
And of course, it's the River Bollin flowing over this weir.
Beyond the Swan with Two Nicks the Bank Holiday crowds were thronging (just as if it were a Bank Holiday!) as we ambled past Dunham Massey's nicely restored waterwheel building (below), past the tame fallow deer, past the moat with mallards, coots, tufted ducks, Canadian geese, moorhens, etc, and back to the car to return home along quiet country lanes.
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