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Tag Archives: nature

Thank you, RSPB!

24 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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birds, birdwatching, cycling, England, exercise, My Friend Lisa, nature, RSPB, travel, UK, vacation

My friend Lisa and I had been planning a big day out to go birdwatching for at least a couple months now, and we almost cancelled it because of the threat of bad weather (I peer-pressured her into it).  So on Sunday morning, we met at the Cambridge Rail Station, loaded up her panniers, and hopped a train to King’s Lynn.  From there, we cycled about 20 miles to the Titchwell Nature Reserve, where I was in nerd heaven for the next four-and-change hours.

I was nervous about the cycle, because Lisa is a Serious Athlete and I’m, well, kind of a goof (but I’m getting really good at zumba class!).  She also looked genuinely appalled when she realised that my bike is way too good for the likes of me (fair enough).  But with Lisa carrying my binoculars and lunch, riding a commuter bike, and leading the way for most of the journey, we more or less kept a similar pace.  The only times I got nervous were the downhills, because with my Fat Kid Advantage I would go screaming down the hills and overtake her really quickly, and I would either have to take the wrong side of the road or hit the brakes repeatedly.

Still, we made it there and back in one piece.  It was my first real birding experience in Britain, which was great, because almost everything I saw, I was seeing for the first time.  We saw an avocet about five minutes after we walked it, and I am obsessed with avocets, so my day was made more or less from the moment we arrived.

Titchwell Marsh is a series of marshes – freshwater, saltwater, sea – with hides arranged around the perimeter.  Yesterday it was jam-packed full of Serious Birders with spotting scopes and some truly impressive cameras.  Lisa and I were also there, bringing down the average age by a decade or two.  I got so into it – at one point Lisa was really cold and ready to go get a cup of tea and I said “but look at that bird! and that one! and that one!” – she was probably ready to kill me.  But seriously.  It was amazing.

The rain started about 8 seconds before we got back on our bikes to cycle to King’s Lynn.  I got a flat tire half a mile from the train station, and then we shivered out of our wettest clothes and had a cup of tea before sprinting to the station and huddling for warmth on the train back to Cambridge.  We looked through the book as the train moved south, though, and both of us were shocked to realise how many birds we’d actually seen.  Some birds – Canada goose, swan, mallard – were not so exciting.  Others were things I’ve been wanting to see for years – avocets, a pectoral sandpiper, a lapwing, and (this was the biggest surprise) three Eurasian Spoonbills.

I like shorebirds because they’re super cute, and also usually easy to spot, unlike warblers or small birds that perch high in trees.  But we had a phenomenally successful birdwatching outing, even if the trip back was a struggle.  I cannot thank Lisa enough for figuring out the route and the train schedule, carrying my stuff in her panniers across 20 miles of surprisingly rolling countryside (it wasn’t mountainous, or anything, but flatter would have been better, at least on the way back…), and being excited about birds in the first place.  Freezing train ride aside, I had a really great day.

 

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Navajas!

20 Wednesday Jun 2012

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entertainment, hiking, nature, Navajas, outdoors, Spain, travel, Valencia, walking

For our trip to Valencia, I got a giant guidebook to Spain out of the Cambridge library.  It had a tiny little text box in the section on Valencia stating that the town of Navajas, about 60 miles outside Valencia, had a picturesque little central plaza called Plaza D’Olmo (Elm Plaza).  From the plaza, the guidebook promised, there were four scenic walking trails in the countryside that were clearly signed.  I thought that sounded just perfect, so Ian and I rented a car, maneuvered it through roundabouts and onto the open road, and motored toward a place that only warranted four lines of guidebook.

So Ian and I rocked up to Navajas, pulled into a campsite for an early lunch (because you EAT WHEN YOU CAN in countries with siestas.  Wait too long and the joke is on you, sucka), and then drove through a beautiful town (it was a sort of Adirondack camp for the well-heeled Valencianos of a bygone era, and the houses were crazy).  We found the plaza no problem, but the tourism office closed ten minutes before we got there, and there were no hiking routes to be seen.  We circled the eponymous elm four or five times looking sadder and sadder before appealing to the locals, who spoke zero English. One of them called his brother, who passed Ian onto the local English guy, who was just in the middle of giving us directions when the mobile phone ran out of credit. So then two people marched us about a quarter of a mile down the road to the city hall, where someone dug around in a file cabinet and came up with huge stacks of English language brochures that had apparently not been required for years.  They presented us with English and Spanish versions of everything, pointed us out the door and sent us on our way.

We ended up hiking for about 4 hours through olive and almond orchards, across an old reservoir, along a stream and past have a dozen historic fountains.  It was perfect.

When we circled back to the Plaza D’Olmo at about 5:30, Ian (who in theory speaks Spanish) tried to order “un beer, por favor.”  The woman looked at him with an appropriately withering expression and said “un cerveza?”  He looked so sad and tired it was hard not to take pity on him (I had just marched him through 14 km of breathtakingly lovely Spanish countryside in 28 C heat).

I was so pleased with the day.  When I was in Switzerland, I realised how much I love being outside – the time I spent hiking up a mountain in Locarno was the high point of the trip, and I hoped to recapture a bit of that in Spain.  And I would say that the hike plus the cultural experience plus the navigating-Spanish-roundabouts-and-not-dying totally exceeded my expectations.

Mountains, Cuckoos, Stone Roofs: Just Your Average Thursday in Locarno

30 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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adventure, hiking, Locarno, nature, outdoor sports, Switzerland, travel, vacation, walking

Locarno is in the Italian part of Switzerland, a four-hour train ride from Basel.  On the way there, we sat next to a little Swiss German couple in their seventies.  About 8 seconds after the train pulled out of the station in Basel, the woman started commenting on the landscape.  “Beautiful! Amazing! Fantastic!” (in German, of course; Sarah translated for me).  Basel is a nice city and the countryside is nice enough, but we were about 90 minutes away from the really pretty stuff when she started rhapsodizing.

We channeled her through the whole excursion, though, crying “amazing! perfection! beautiful!” whenever we felt particularly moved.

Originally the plan was to stay 2 nights in Locarno, but we spent longer in Freiburg than we planned and weren’t willing to give up on Strasbourg, so we decided to just go breakneck speed: we took an early train, speed-walked to the hostel, got a sandwich and started exploring.  Locarno is surrounded by mountains with a complex and very well signed set of trails.  If you’re lazy, though, you can just take a series of funiculars and gondolas and chairlifts to the top.  The transpo nerds in us wanted to take the gondolas, but the hard core sportsters in us said “gondolas are for suckers! We’re going to sweat our way to the top of this hill like a boss!”

And then we sweated our way up the mountain, like bosses.

The trail system really is amazing, though.  We took the funicular (cause seriously, who can resist a funicular?) for the first leg of the journey, and then we just followed the yellow signs to San Bernardo, a destination 2 hours away (amazing: they said it would take two hours, and it did.) We walked with no real sign that we were getting close, and then, out of nowhere, we were in a town (and in fact, walking across people’s back gardens) while cuckoos sang from nearby trees.  St. Bernardo was the first in a series of beautiful mountain villages with staircases running through them, the occasional jerry-rigged home-built funicular, and honest-to-goodness stone roofs.  SO. INCREDIBLY. COOL.

From there we went to Cardada, where we took in the view, and then we headed back down the mountain on the western edge.  All in all we hiked for about 8 hours, stumbling onto the Piazza Grande just as dusk was settling in.  We got bread and cheese and ate it, dirty and smelly and disreputable looking, on a bench while meticulously dressed people spilled out of an art opening next to us.

The next day we didn’t quite recapture the magic, but we did find our way to the river, which was breathtaking, and to Ascona, another town about 4 miles away with a beautiful little high street and harbour.  And then we took the train back to Basel (“amazing! Wonderful! too pretty!”) and joined Annie, our host, at an impromptu street party on the river before Sarah caught a 6 am flight to Amsterdam.

Fantasy Holiday #2

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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adventure, Arctic, entertainment, holiday, narwhals, nature, travel, vacation, Whales

A few months ago (in those heady days between turning in my thesis and graduating from my masters program), I watched a documentary on narwhals.  You may already know this, but narwhals are awesome. I was hooked – so hooked that I immediately hopped on the internet and looked up the price of narwhal-watching tours.

The prohibitive cost of the trip ($9000 for 10 days) ensures that it will remain  fantasy holiday.  But its so awesome! Its a cruise, basically, wherein you take a boat to the edge of the Arctic ice shelf.  You can go hiking and fishing and also expect to see narwhals, Orcas, bowhead whales, icebergs, probably some arctic birds….

In other words, its just really frickin’ cool.

Birds!

28 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

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birds, birdwatching, England, entertainment, nature, ornithology, outdoors, travel, wildlife

Before I worked for the Audubon Society (an open space and nature advocacy group with a focus on birds), I didn’t know anything about birds.  But over the course of the year, I became completely obsessed with them.  Birds are amazing.

Page from "Birchfield Close" by Jon McNaught, Nobrow Press 2010

I’ve got a pretty good handle on English garden birds now, but there are literally hundreds of birds all over the country (and offshore) that I haven’t seen – and I am so psyched to explore. I’m particularly excited to see some puffins.  In the meantime, though, here are some birds I have seen:

Blackbirds really are everywhere.  And just as the Beatles song says, they really do sing in the dead of night.  I heard one at midnight a couple days ago.  Above, the birds are (l to r): blackbird, coot, jay, robin, goldfinch, blue tit, moorhen, Egyptian goose & crested grebe.

Image sources here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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