This year I am going to do what I can to spend quality time outside every day. I will try to illustrate this blog with relevant pictures. But I also acknowledge that, often, I have the dog with me when I am out, and trying to look for a good image whilst holding a lead means that I don’t see everything else around me. So if there isn’t an illustration – I’m sorry!

Many of my walks are on a 30 minute circuit from my front door, which includes the same stretch of canal path each day. The changes from day to day give me as much pleasure as the reassurance I find in what doesn’t change. So, here we go…

8.45am start – late, it’s a holiday.  A grey day, but dry. Turning on to the canal path there are the usual pigeons everywhere. One sits at the top of a tree, as if trying to look like something more interesting – a kestrel, maybe.  Others sit hunched and fluffed out, rows of sullen would-be passengers waiting to board the bus that doesn’t come.

A jay screeches and flys across the path. On the canal the swan family – two adults and two juveniles with white-brown feathers – drift around a boat in hope of scraps. A single magpie in a tree. A single swan along the river.

At the lock, there is a pair  of mallards sitting on the landing stage, Canada Geese, 3 and 2, and a couple of black-headed gulls on the water. Many more gulls sit along the ridge of nearby houses. Suddenly they all rise up and land on the water – to drink? – without any obvious signal. Then return to their watching point.

Along the return path are mainly garden birds: blackbirds, blue tits, a wren. Canada Geese fly over.

And, turning home, the heron, not in his usual place, standing by the run-off from the canal to the river, but hoping for fish at the end of the canal. A good way to end.