Wolves Wild

Creeping yellowcress growing by the footpath along the Mosel at Trier

More of the Egyptian geese at Trier, these families with well-grown goslings. One set on the bank of the Mosel, yards from where the riverside footpath gets at its busiest with traffic from the excursion boats. The other family swimming with the current, passing through an arch of the nearby bridge.

Keys ripening on a maple by the River Mosel in Trier. Picture taken at the end of May: much earlier than the keys would have begun to develop here.

The wall of padlocks on the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge across the Rhine at Cologne. No further comment.

Trier, on the Mosel in Germany, was founded by the Romans and was at one stage the western capital of the Roman Empire. During this period buildings of an appropriate magnificence were built, with remains still extant today.

Here the bases of the walls of one of the three huge public baths, covered in moss and other low vegetation.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Bruecke, Cologne, carries the main railway line across the Rhine, alongside a path which gets heaving with pedestrians, joggers, and cyclists and scooters being ridden far too fast. The fence separating the trains is covered in several tens of tons of padlocks declaring the eternal love: likely many of the relationships are now history.

Record shots were the best I could manage on the camera I had with me, but perched on a warning triangle for the busy river traffic was a shag, blithely ignoring the busy traffic on the bridge a few yards away as it preened.