Open the photo gallery >>
New Year’s Day, and all is quiet.
Well, not quite. We went for a walk around Willen Lake and actually it was a bit busy. I suppose the bright sunshine, fresh air and post New Year’s Eve hangover contributed to it.
Ami had her new twin-dooberry scooter, which proved useful, and Izzy decided to walk, as she does, and once again we had a clutch of new cameras to take with us. See attached photos.
We parked up by LA Fitness and decided to walk clockwise around the south lake, including walking out around the little knobbly bit around the bandstand, near to the cafe. We started separating from each other fairly quickly here, with Ami scooting off, and then not scooting off, and Kas and Kev trying to take a few photos, and Izzy plodding around with Kas whilst constantly expressing a desire to go faster. Or slower. Or faster.
We managed to avoid stopping at the cafe on the way past.
From here we moved around towards the Siemens building and then onto the section around the north where the parkrun course goes. Last Saturday it was flooded and parkrun was cancelled, mainly because for the second time in a month the lake was up over the path on this section. It was passable today, but only just. We alternated between walking on the path, diverting around the grass and scooting through the puddles. Conditions on the grass would be described as “heavy”, if this was horse racing. Judging by the state of the course, it’s looking like Parkrun might be a bit dodgy for this week too, not that I’ll be there.
The bit that is likely to stop parkrun would be the little bit over the wooden bridge at the far end. Why ? Because the path is more like a ford. It’s a bit wet. The deepest water was about 3-4 inches deep. Izzy had to be carried through that bit. She stole a piggy-back off Kas. Ami went over on her scooter, being pushed by Kev. So Ami got over with dry feet. Kev and Kas had big heavy boots on. Izzy got her feet wet having a little plodge. So Izzy started suffering from cold feet from here onwards.
By the time we were here then there’s no merit in turning back. We’d have to ford that stream again and it’s not any shorter. So we decided to keep going round the lake and the parkrun course. I’m glad we did. If we hadn’t, I wouldn’t have got this excellent shot from under the bridge.
As we made our way around the far side of the South Lake Ami was playing a game of “following the lake”, meaning that she was walking along the tide line of crud that the overfull lake deposited in the previous week. You don’t notice the little ups and downs in the pathway until you see the tide line wandering backwards and forwards over the path.
By the time we got to the south end it was starting to get very dusky, being about 3:30 or so. By this time Ami was mainly walking while Kas pushed the scooter. She was also lingering behind a bit. Not sure whether she was lingering behind Kas or streaking in front of me. I’m going with “lingering” because both kids normally prefer Kas’s company to mine. I did manage to get this rather nice shot across the lake all the way through to the Peace Pagoda by the North Lake, though.
As we walked our way back in front of the buildings it was getting distinctly dark, but the kids had definitely got their eyes on the prize – an ice cream. Sadly they didn’t have the scoopy-outey variety available, so they had to put up with a Magnum, but they survived.
Here are some of the photos from today.
If you look closely at them you can see that I was experimenting with various settings on the camera.