I considered Kew Gardens for today's outing, but thought that might be better for a visit earlier in the year (if I can stomach a return trip to London one day!) so decided instead to visit the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve in London and then walk from there to Richmond Park.
That didn't quite go to plan. London is defeating me slowly, hehe! To get to London WWT, I had to go on three tubes and then walk a couple of miles too. The middle tube was a 19 minute journey, standing on a crammed train (I wasn't happy, I thought all the tubes were just a couple of minutes and wasn't mentally prepared for a twenty minute one!). I honestly almost cried when I casually asked 'How long am I on this tube for?' expecting an answer along the lines of 3 minutes.
"Nineteen minutes" came the reply. I thought it was a joke at first; when I realised that was the actual journey time, I almost had a meltdown but I sucked it up and survived it (I didn't have much choice but to go with it!) 😌
By the time I'd walked around the WWT reserve (in the knowledge that I had to repeat the earlier tube journeys in reverse!) I couldn't face walking roughly 4 miles to Richmond and another 4 miles back to the tube station, so skipped the park and went back to the apartment early to hide from London. 👍
I'd wanted to visit the wetlands reserve in the hope of seeing a wasp spider. I know they have them there and someone I know visited a few weeks ago and saw them. I was rather late in the season though so there was no sign of them (I looked really hard!) today.
I did find some nice fungi and the parakeets are a novelty for me around here too!
The first time I've seen the Thames I think. Not my favourite river by a long way!
I've never seen any kind of bird's nest fungus before so I was quite excited to find this Fluted bird's nest. I don't think I'd have spotted it amongst the wood chip were it not for the sign pointing it out.
Redlead roundheads...
I liked the wobbly bridge! It dips into the water in the middle (depending on how heavy you are) and a big jump gets you a good splashing!
There were times, walking around the reserve that I could almost forget I was in London. Then I'd enter a hide and see London... urgh!
There was also a sign pointing out this pancake crust fungus and informing me that I probably won't see this anywhere else. This fungus doesn't grow in the UK usually, but the bridge it's on is made from English oak grown sustainably in France, where the fungus does grow, so it came here in this wood from France.
Crystal brain fungus...
I'm not sure what is fungus is... my only thought was perhaps coral spot grown much larger than I've seen it before, but I don't even know if it does that!
