Monday, April 28, 2003

 

Day 5 Cricklade, Wiltshire

Up early to a sunny morning and went for a walk at 6.45 a.m. and decided to visit the nearby water meadow to see the Snakeshead Fritillaries in flower... quite rare.

CRICKLADE has Snakeshead Fritillaries at North Meadow National Nature Reserve. 108 acres of hay meadow. At its peak, in mid April, there one million blooms have been counted. It is on common-land water-meadows between the Rivers Thames and Churn and can be seen from footpaths around the edge of the meadow. The fritillaries are followed by other wild flowers in May and June.

I also saw Cowslips and Burnett among many other wild flowers. The fritillaries were a delicate haze of colour when I viewed them from a distance.

Late morning Pat and I decided to go to Cirencester and window shop at our own pace. Our hire car was in London so we decided to catch the bus. We found the bus stop but we could’t decide which one on which side of the road to stand, of course we picked the wrong side. The bus came and the driver indicated to us that he would pick us up in 5 minutes after he came back from the turning circle.

We boarded the bus and we made the next error, Pat handed a 20 pound note to the driver for 2 x 2.20 pound tickets, the driver gives no change. The driver asked if we could raise 2.20 pounds for 2 x 1.20 pound single tickets which we managed to scrape together.

The bus journey took us through the little side lanes and pretty villages, continually criss-crossing the busy dual carriage way. A lovely, slow 40 minute trip. We enjoyed our quiet stroll round Cirencester with its nice shops and well dressed shoppers. We returned to Cricklade about 3.30 p.m. and walked down the high street waving at Mrs Bouquet on the way.

The cool spring day managed to stay fair with a fresh wind blowing


I also saw the old marker stones with the original lessee's initials engraved. The descendants of which are allowed to mow the hay in summer between the marker stones.

posted by OldEric 10:19 pm