Tuesday, 10th April, (another late entry), was our first trip out that we had planned more thoroughly compared to the rest. We had our new ramblesacks (Berghaus Freeflow III’s), so we tested them out. We headed out before lunch, following the directions I had written down on a piece of paper to get to Churchtown Farm Community Nature Reserve. It was fairly straight forward getting there.

Our first “photography stop” was St. Stephens church, where an old man walking by stop as he noticed us taking photos, telling us a little bit about it and how that part of Saltash was the oldest. He mentioned a few other things, though I’m not sure what they were.

We continued up Farm Lane to the entrance to Churchtown Farm Community Nature Reserve and entered through a gate into a large field. At this point, we had to guess which way to go (we later discovered we didn’t actually go through the beginning of the trails) as there were three paths we could take. We took a diagonal path and realized it went to an exit anyway, so we went along the bottom of the field to another gap in the fence where we found more fields and paths. At first we went down a little lane though it was fairly we blocked by overgrowth. Zeta heard something down there in a bush and stamped around, then seeing a rabbit jump out. I’m sure she must’ve scared it quite well. I saw a few Great Tits, though unfortunately it was too dark in amongst the trees to get any photos of them.

Continuing on, we passed through another field, not actually sure whether it was following one of the Churchtown Farm CNR trails or not, and came to a stile, which we discovered was a part of the Sparrowhawk trail, a trail in which you could possibly see Sparrowhawks (which we did!), and a range of other wildlife. We decided we’d follow this one, through a fenced area and onwards, seeing a few different birds. We followed a path up the side of a hill, where at the top we decided to stop and have lunch.

Zeta unpacked her bag, pulled out our picnic blanket and we ate lunch (tuna sandwiches and crisps) with a nice view in front of us. We got to watch some buzzards flying above us while eating as well, which was quite nice. It added a little something to the lunch. After we had finished eating and relaxed for a few minutes, we headed off again, spotting a Blue Tit just nearby our lunch spot. It had flown into a bird box so I waited for it to come out again to take a few photos. It’s quite a cute bird to watch.

Continuing on, we came out into a field/hill, where we walked up a trail and decided to turn back and go the way we came. There was a tree we had spotted a little earlier (and had taken many photos of), which had a stile nearby, so we followed a trail up to the tree and stile, taking photos and then following more trail up and over yet another hill, which led into a lane. Here we found an information board so we could find out what trail we were actually on, and it was the Curlew trail, the largest of the 3 trails available. We decided we’d follow this one, as it lead right around to Forder Viaduct.

This part of the trail lead down alongside the water, which made for some nice views. When we had come to another hill, we stopped for a few to take in the views. The water was quite blue which made the blue quite refreshing. At the next hill, we stopped again to take some photos of Forder Viaduct and Trematon Castle, then once again continued on, spotting a Long-tailed Tit along the way (very cute bird!). From this point on, we more or less just followed the trail all the way to Forder, when we headed back home.

Saturday 3rd March, the weather was quite good so we walked into Saltash for lunch (pasties) then continuing down to Lower Fore Street, where we finished our pasties and then went for a walk halfway across the Tamar Bridge, then back again. We then went down to Saltash waterfront to sit with the swans and pigeons for a little while, before deciding to head back home.

Tuesday 6th March, the weather was good again so we walked to Forder for some photography. We set out after lunch, the first part of the walk was mostly road walking. Once we got to Forder, we looked for some ducks to feed, but only found two, which weren’t all that interested, so we continued walking across a grassy field. Here we saw some birds flying around, which were probably buzzards. There were about 5 of them all together in the sky, flying around and calling. We continued walking over the grass to a small trail in the trees. We walked through to the end, took some photographs and decided to head back to the other side of Forder Creek, where the sun was shining. The trail on this side of the creek much longer than the one on the other side, so we killed a lot of time walking through here. The trail was muddy, but gorgeous none the less. We followed this right out into a clearing where we got an amazing view of the Forder Railway Viaduct. This was more towards the bottom of the hill, so we walked to the top, where the view all around was even more amazing. Up here, we took some photographs again, even though the conditions weren’t great for it, and even saw a rabbit. Eventually, we headed back down the trail towards Forder. As we neared, we saw a single Cormorant sitting on a boat, which made for a good photo opportunity. As it was getting late, we just headed straight home.

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