A walk in the park...

I have to be pretty pleased that we didn’t actually get away for the weekend. The weather has not been great and it would have been no fun at all to be tourists in the rain in York. Instead we have made a few future holiday bookings and no I’ll not be writing anything about them until they are absolutely definite.

Yesterday I gave my back a bit of a tweak and did wonder if it would upset my night’s sleep, but fortunately id didn’t. It’s bad enough that I don’t sleep that well anyway without adding to the reasons for me to wake up. It was a bit tricky getting out of bed, but once I started to move it got better. After a very late brekky we decided that a walk was the order of the afternoon and turned left out of our gate and kept going. Past, well almost past an old church and cemetery. I say almost because I find them just too hard to walk past. The Man and I wandered among the gravestones, stopping to read the stones. Many bearing the names of several children in the same family. Dying young in those days was pretty commonplace. I think it is sad that there is no one to take care of the stones and say their names aloud anymore. One very well cared for grave held the remains of a chap Called Robert Fitzroy who died in 1865. I looked him up on Google when we got home.

Briefly: On 25 June 1831 he was appointed commander of the Beagle, sparing no expense in fitting out the ship.Very conscious of the stressful loneliness of command...he approached someone in the British Admiralty…to find a suitable gentleman companion for the voyage.Such a companion should share his scientific tastes, make good use of the expedition's opportunities for naturalism research, dine with him as an equal, and provide a semblance of normal human friendship.Fitzroy eventually approved Charlie Darwin for the post.
 Not only that, he has a connection with NZ. Following the death of NZ’s first governor, Hobson, Fitzroy got the job. Commemorated in may place names, and  In 2010 NZ’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) named its new Supercomputor "Fitzroy" in his honour.

 Further along we found a very tranquil 

wooded park to wander through,

and in the middle was South Norwood Lake.

 It is man-made and was originally intended to

 feed water into a canal that inked Croydon with

 London. When the canal had passed its useful

 life it was filled in and became the railway line.

 The lake itself was pretty much neglected until

 a water sports body revitalised it in 1881.

 Now it is the home of many water birds

 and shares the water with the local sailing club.

Here on the left is The Man, enjoying a spot of bush walking

The Lake is a very pretty spot 

Home to lots of different waterfowl and their babies.

I spotted this interesting sign as we were leaving the park.