The Velvet Touch

Todays Photo Link

To Todays Slide Show

Well today we had organized a trip with friends to Birmingham and to see dragon boat racing, but like all best plans they had to be laid to rest as no trains running this weekend due to engineering work. Not to worry we quickly organized ourselves and eventually ended up at Dobbies World in The Anker Valley about nine miles north of Coventry, then onto Sutton Cheeney and Ashby Canal, and The Battlefields at Bosworth.

At Dobbies they had a deer hide and deer park where we hung out looking for deers. We were very lucky indeed today that one of the deers came right up and let us stroke him. We have deers near by in the woods at Brandon but I've never seen them as they are very elusive and usually shy creatures. So to say I was delighted for the first time to be able to get up close and actually touch one is a understatement as I was over the moon. The deer let me stroke its antlers which where soft and felt like velvet. It was very rewarding to touch its nose stroke it's back and feed it some shoots off a tree. Also at Dobbies we got to stroke a couple of pigs who found our friend Teresa's skirt quiet tasty much to her annoyance. A nice tree top walk lots of nice lily ponds with plenty of frogs and coy carp, wildfowl and The walk along The River Anker made this a very interesting and enjoyable nature walk to visit indeed.

After Dobbies it was just a few miles down the road to Sutton Cheeney on The Ashby Canal which we walked along for a little while through some woods and on to the famous Battle Fields of Bosworth where Richard III, the last Plantagenet king, was left dead on the field and thus placing Henry VII on the throne as the first of a new, Tudor dynasty. While we where at the Battlefields we saw some soldiers training for a reenactment who where preparing to let of some cannons. Then we had a nice scrummy picnic that was kindly provided for us by Teresa. After we burnt off some calories and walked to Shenstone Station where there are regular Steam Trains to Market Harbrough before making our way home.

All in All a lovly day out but tiring !