John Linton We set out today to see if we could discover the other part of the Great Crane Project which is, quite understandably, not publicised anywhere that I could find. No problem, I have a passing geographic knowledge of the Somerset Levels and a reasonable idea of terrain and ground formations so off we went to try our luck. It was a sunny and not so windy day when we woke up so we thought that we would enjoy the Levels themselves and the several nature reserves in the area. As we traveled South and West from our hotel the sun began to disappear and the wind began to rise, slightly but noticeably. By the time we reach the first of the reserves South of Glastonbury it was quite dark with increasing showers of rain.
We tracked down the local RSPB volunteer office and were, unsurprisingly, told very politely that no information was available on the location of the cranes 'training location' and were given several recommendations of other good walks in the immediate district. So we took their advice and drove to one of the closer ones and spent a couple of hours meandering around one of the recommended routes without seeing anything very exciting. Perhaps all the birds had already migrated - they had certainly reared their chicks by now and they would have headed of to pastures new. So with the rain getting more ominous (and our total number of bird types seen over two hours amounting to 5) we trudged back to our car and headed home by way of a pub lunch.
As usual all you have to do is turn into any B road and lo and behold there is some romantic looking building housing good food, friendly patrons and local ales. This one had a wrecked car on the grass in front of it with the remainder of some large smashed stone pots and what looked like like geraniums in them. On enquiring within the barmaid/owner said it crashed last night with the driver and passenger 'legging it' before they could be accosted. The car was unregistered and uninsured and neither the police nor the local council wanted to have anything to do with it. So we ordered some food (mine turned out to be a gargantuan serving of liver, bacon, mashed potatoes and peas with onion gravy) while Annette continued her decimation of the UK's pig population via yet another ham salad).
The food was, again, excellent but the highlight of the stop was having a half pint of the local cider. It was a bright orange colour and tasted of, surprisingly, apples but was very cold and a little effervescent. I have never liked cider but I really enjoyed this. It was quite strong (7%) so I could not have a second because of the driving but it tasted nothing like the commercial cider served in many English pubs (Strongbow) which I have even seen in Australia. Apparently it was made just down the road (this was Somerset after all) and was only sold in barrels (no retail) to 30 or 40 pubs in the immediate surrounds. It was quite delicious. We then headed back to the hotel via some 'land marks' of previous visits over the past 30 or so years. A house we once thought briefly of buying, the swanky country house hotel we took our children to for a four day white Christmas, the first hotel I stayed in, and then went back to many times when I used to manage a UK business for three years and a pub we spent a memorable night in when we were very young.
So a 'nothing day' but then it is a holiday.
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