River Severn otter eating some of the fish it had caught while I was watching.
Occasionally, after it had finished eating one, it would turn its head to look in my direction and appear to grin.
‘The Shire Country Parkin south Birmingham runs along the River Cole. The area supposedly provided the inspiration for the similarly named land in J.J.R.Tolkien’s imagined world. It was still countryside when the author lived there as a boy.
The park is now a green corridor in the residential suburbs of the city.
Several of the roads which interrupt the park cross the river by fords, not bridges.
Mass of purple crocuses by the canal basin in Stratford on Avon, and others in the garden of the Shakespeare Institute in the town. This is in what was the house of the popular Victorian novelist Marie Corelli. The building in the background is her tower folly – that is, the elaborate garden shed she used to do her writing in.