gone to the birds

According to our B&B host (and other authoritative local history sources, such as the Lonely Planet) the southern area of the Lake District was once considered part of Lancashire. So to honour this historical connection, today we ventured beyond modern Cumbria and visited the sleepy hollow of Silverdale.

For those who have been following this blog it may come as no surprise that within 150m of Silverdale rail station is the Leighton Moss Nature Reserve, run by the Royal Society for the Protection for Birds. To traverse this last 150m though, we determined we had to first catch the 8:40am bus from Coniston to Ulverston, and then 12 minutes later catch the train to Silverdale.

Our B&B information noted, “Breakfast is served between 8:30 and 9:00am.” In our experience, such things tend to be a little negotiable. Wednesday evening, the conversation: Could we have our breakfast early, at 8:00am, if it were not too inconvenient, we enquired? Oh dear. Such consternation. Now, our hosts were lovely and we enjoyed our stay. But it is clear that this B&B is run on on well-oiled wheels of routine. The breakfasts are grilled, for everyone all at once. (Before orders taken; hence his disappointment when one mother and daughter had ordered “Toast” and &An egg on toast” the morning before...) It would disrupt the schedule. So we negotiated. We would have cereal and an egg on toast at 8:00am. All happy (enough).

Very well. Breakfast complete, beans ultimately also provided alongside egg and toast, amounting to half the cooked option that was to be unavailable. An uneventful bus journey, marred only at the end by discovering our expensive day passes were significantly more costly that the sum of the individual fares. Smooth connection to the train, which arrives on time, depositing us at Silverdale as expected. Excellent.

Our entrance at the reserve was free because we arrived by public transport, a saving of £14 for the two of us including our guided tour. The tour particularly innovative, we decided, designed to ensure all the screaming school children on half-term break travel from hide to hide in a single collective cacophony, thus disturbing other visitors at only one part of the reserve at a time, for a fixed period of the day. Brilliant. Perhaps we should have enrolled for the anti-tour, that moves around the hides in an alternate order instead! However, (particularly post-tour) an enjoyable day spent walking paths around the Reed beds and waterways of the reserve, and sitting in hides searching for birds.

The Leighton Moss centre is known for three rare species, the Bittern, the Bearded Tit, and a variety of Harrier. We saw none of these, though spoke with a number of people who saw Bearded Tits today, and were even present in a hide where a group of people caught a fleeting glimpse of a Bittern, which however eluded us. Nonetheless, we were able to positively identify 30 species of birds today, which included a few common varieties but also 3 birds that we've never seen before. Fun.

If we'd been a little nervous about just having 12 minutes to transfer from bus to train on the way, we were more confident our our return journey. While the 5:30pm bus we planned to catch was the absolutely last bus of the day back from Ulverston to Coniston, we had a full 45 minute to reverse the four to five minute walk we'd done in the morning from the bus station to the train station. However, 4:22pm slipped further into the past and there continued to be a deafening absence of train. I soon worked out that if the train didn't arrive to us by 5:00pm we were in serious trouble. That seemed a reassuringly distant deadline when the calculation was first conducted. But as minute after minute was invested in the cookie jar of stolen time, we became... restless. [For those of negotiable cardiovascular health, let me jump to the end of the story and say: we survived. Now, back to the story...] When the train finally rounded the bend at about 5:01pm, action overrode mixed emotions. But as we passed through subsequent stations and I consulted our timetable it appeared we had discovered why it was late: it was slooow. It continued to haemorrhage time as though we would all simply be handed a new day tomorrow.

The train thus pulled into Ulverston station at 5:28pm, giving us two minutes to traverse a route that I now realised I had paid scant attention to in the morning. We hit the ground running, locals women yelling to Bronwyn “He's beating you!” as we hotfooted it up the hill. Leading by example, I soon was far enough ahead to see our X12 bus turn the corner in front of me, as I yelled back over my shoulder Run to a wife who appeared to have lost her steam. I rounded the corner, and stumbled to the back of the line as the nonplussed locals queued to get on the bus. The driver calmly rolled the electronic display over to show Coniston once again. (Doesn't he realise this is a crisis?) We climbed on, flashing our overpriced tourist-tax tickets and taking an exhausted seat. Engine running, the driver takes a leasurely walk across the road and chats to his fellow driver. Finally, after we have sat on the bus for a full five minutes past the departure time, the driver glances at his watch, climbs back on board, and we're off. Nothing is ever simple.

By the time we get back to Coniston 45 minutes later my asthma symptoms are wearing off. I don't actually have asthma, except at times like this. It's not that I'm unfit either, I've realised. It's just that the capacity of my lungs in insufficient for the size of my body. (Ed: Sounds like the definition of “unfit” to me.) (Hey! Who's this Ed guy?) Anyway, we were relieved to be back in familiar territory. We ate a simple dinner at the pub from Tuesday—Bronwyn a Carrot and Orange soup, against her better judgement, while I had lamb for the third night in a row. (When in Rome, eat the locals...) Finally, we crash for another short ten hour sleep... Could we get used to this?