Thursday 2 June - Ellesmere

Ellesmere has always been a favorite destination for us when in Shrewsbury and today was no exception. The bus ride took a little under an hour and there was one other paying passenger and two pensioners who ride free.  It was cloudy and bright this morning but the clouds cleared later on and the afternoon was sunny.  We walked around the western part of the mere under a loud barrage of bird song and enjoyed the various flowers and plants.  The ducks were a little elusive but the coots were fighting among themselves over the water.

At one point we came across two swans with eight cygnets and gave them a wide berth.

The colors on some of the fungi were very bright indeed

On our return we found the swans and cygnets had gone.  We later caught up with them near the boathouse, along with a large number of geese, ducks and coots.

We had an excellent lunch at the Boathouse.  Mary had crab ravioli and I had fish and chips.  We spoke to the owner whom we had met at the market in Shrewsbury in November.  His wife, the chef, has an excellent control over the kitchen.

This afternoon we walked across to the canal.  The path through the woods was very overgrown indeed but not particularly difficult providing we walked carefully.

There was one gosling who was always behind the rest and the parents had some difficulty in keeping them together with the fairly heavy canal boat traffic

There were a lot of boats and people along the canal all the way into the Ellesmere basin.   We sat for a little while watching the swallows feeding over the basin.  They were presumably picking up water skeeters. Little dive bombers snatching up insects on the surface with little splashes.  It was a pleasant walk under sunny skies.  The bus back to Shrewsbury was fine although we were the only passengers for the entire journey.

Click here to see all pictures taken at Ellesmere