Carsington Water

A couple of weekends ago I escaped the urban jungle of Birmingham for some much better scenery and much cleaner air! It was my first day out of Birmingham for almost 8 weeks and it was the first road trip in Gregory Julian or Jules (my new car!) with me behind the wheel. My two trusty companions for the day were Jen and Martin.

We arrived early afternoon with the needle pointing firmly below the red. We needed petrol but first we explored the offerings of the visitor centre. After eating lunch, buying a monocular and enquiring where the nearest petrol station was we headed off round the reservoir. The weather was blustery but the skies were blue, white fluffy clouds drifting by and the sun shining.

To be honest we didn't get that far round but what we did see was a welcome change to the urban sprawl. I love being able to look in a direction and not see loads of buildings, but instead see hills, lakes, fields, sheep, cows, just something that isn't grey and box like.

After a while of walking along the path and stopping periodically to have a look at things through the trusty monocular we came across a bird hide. A place to sit and watch birds. It had a log book that we perused and came across some very interesting entries. It would appear that the CIA had been spotted amongst some bushed looking for Osama bin Laden. I wonder if they saw the floating cows that had only been spotted days earlier?

Time was marching on and we started heading back to the car. No need to worry about anyone stealing it because they wouldn't get far on the remaining petrol. Left out the main gate, left at the end of that road and then left again and this brought us to the nearest petrol station, that just so happened to be closed. Joy. A kindly boy racer gave us directions to the next nearest petrol station in Belper 7 miles away he reckoned. I tried to drive as economically as possible as the tension rose. Thankfully we passed a petrol station on the way, a honk your horn for service style one. The price reflected the service but at least we were not running on vapours any more.

We returned to the road and once again started laughing at the funny sounding place names. Well I was at least. I was chuckling to myself as we approached Duffield just as Jen told us her Aunt lived there. We wondered about dropping in unannounced, and after a couple of phone calls, we did just that. I like spontaneity! Martin was sold at the promise of biscuits, and he wasn't disappointed and neither was I, I got to eat some fruit cake! We were warmly welcomed and not once did I feel awkward about dropping by at such short notice.

I'm already looking forward to getting out of Birmingham again!

Thanks Jen for the photos.