We hadn't gone far actually, before we saw the first two red
squirrels chasing each other in the leaves – they are really quite small, and
very cute! I have only ever seen a flash
of fur before, but I feel I can now definitely say that I have seen red
squirrels!
We continued on the walking route around the Island, still
looking for squirrels. It seemed as
though they were mostly on the east end of the Island, possibly because that is
where all the feeders are, although we did see some of them flying through the
grass in the open park areas.
It was a very nice Island and it was very nice to be able to
spend a whole day walking on the Island too, with lots of different areas – of
course there were woodlands, and the beaches (which is where we saw a
woodpecker), but there was also an area known as “The Lagoons”, some heath land
and the Nature reserve which was a mixture of marsh and woodland.
We had come full circle in about 2 and a half hours, when we
decided to visit the cafe where I had a Ploughman's Lunch and Mathew had
casserole. Afterward, I dared to have a
slice of “Chocolate Biscuit Cake” which was a little like tiffin, only softer,
more cake like and less heavy.
After lunch, we decided to take another walk around the
woodland area on the east end of the Island where we had initially seen some
squirrels when we had started out here this morning. Sure enough we saw a few more squirrels
running around, and we stayed in one area watching two or three at the same
time, one of which had chosen a sweet chestnut to run around with, and was
having great difficulty getting into it.
This squirrel was very fast and ran around to try getting into it in a
few different places – we never found out if it managed to get through, but I
hope it did!
Soon it was time to leave. We visited the shop – which I
have to mention here is a National Trust shop.
The leaflets and the website rave on about its shop which both say sells
many unique squirrel gifts, but it doesn't – unless there is a second shop on
the island somewhere which we didn't see, there is nothing particularly special
about the gift shop on Brownsea Island!
We waited for the boat back to Poole Quay, which gave us a
little “tour” on our return journey, with added commentary at points of
interest around the Islands and no the coast line. We disembarked and got back into the car to
get back to the cottage for a cup of tea.
Later on that evening, we went out to Bridport to have a
look at places to eat for my Birthday meal.
The unfortunate thing about where we were staying, was that we had no
internet so we couldn't look at any menus online! So we decided that Bridport would be a good
place to go to, as a brochure in the cottage mentioned quite a number of places
to eat. When we got there, it was raining,
although not too heavily. I actually
quite enjoyed walking around in the rain before we settled on a pub called “The
Bull”.
No comments:
Post a Comment