Helen was off at 11 this morning with the girls to Burford for a shopping and girly weekend. When she had gone I headed off up to the far end car park at Wendover woods where you on;t have to pay to park and is off the beaten track. I headed off along the Ridgeway toward Wendover but kept up in the hill heading towards Lording Woods.
The tops of the Chilterns were just in the clouds so the sun was always threatening to break and mists were always passing through. There were not a lot of people about, in fact when I got away from Wendover woods I saw no one for about an hour and a half, it was like I had the countryside to myself.
There is some strange country farmland furniture about up above the Hale, there are some old but expensive looking walls complete with narrow gaps lined with wood that act a styles. The sections of walls are all isolated from each other so I guess at some point there must have been fencing of some sort connecting them all up.
I head in the direction of The Gate and crossed a field which had obviously not had a crop for some time it appeared to be full of dead and dried up thistle plants, and it proved to be a great place to see some farmland birds. Flock of Yellow Hammer and great views of a fairly large fox who I spotted when a flushed a Pheasant, or should I say he/she spotted me. The fox ran off a little way but was then content to watch me for a while before walking off across the fields. That is what you can see if you get get away from the beaten paths that the general populous use.
I then king of turned back and headed back from where I came. As I got back towards the car I came across a flock of tits amongst them was a Treecreeper (one of my favourite birds), and a Green Woodpecker. There was also some strange ice formations on some chalk out crops near a big hole, I have seen them before and I think they might be caused a water is somehow squeezed out of the chalk by the cold.Once back to the car I headed over to M&S at Tring to get some lunch and tea, them home and back in the warm for the rest of the day.