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, March 24th, it was sunny when we woke up so a spur of the moment decision was made: lets explore our previous walk a little more, and walk the correct way. We hurried ourselves to shower, pack and leave as soon as possible and were out the door at 11.05am. We headed our usual way to Latchbrook, though didn’t stop with any distractions as we usual do, and went straight to the steep stairway that was the beginning of the public footpath we found.

At the top of the very first hill, conditions were almost perfect for photography. The colours were vibrant, and the sky was blue, so we stopped around this area for quite some time to take photos of an old shed (I’m guessing), which was rusted, adding a lovely red to the scene. We headed a little further in to the top of the field where the first gate and stile was, stopping once again to take photos of the gate, and a small bird hopping around in the trees, which I couldn’t quite make out.

While at the gate, we took the time to take some photos of each other, and together. As always, they didn’t turn out quite how we wanted so no one will get to see us together from that day, except ourselves. After a bit of frustration, we walked through the second field, again taking photos of the next gate and stile, before climbing over. This was the gate in the previous post that we didn’t take notice of and therefore headed in the wrong direction. This time we did, and headed over to another gate, then up the field a bit (it was the wrong gate) to the corner diagonally to the first. While in this field, we stopped again for some photography. Zeta snapped around and I managed to get a fairly okay panorama, with a total of 8 photos, showing the country side and a bit of Saltash. Nothing spectacular though.

We continued on to the right gate, climbing over the stile once again, and into a cow field. The cows simply looked at us and ignored us for the most part. We got some photos of them, Zeta getting a video as well, right at the time one of the cows was having it’s toilet break lol. We moved on, coming to a crossing, I guess you would call it, where a few of the fields intersected. This was obviously where the cows moved from field to field, as it was extremely muddy. I’m guessing the mud was probably well over ankle deep in the middle. We skirted around the side of this, stopping for a moment so Zeta could take some photos of a deep road cut into the mud by a tractor of some sort and then continued to a lane that was a line of trees and wall on both sides, straight down between two fields. It was quite a peaceful walk.

At the end of the lane, we came to a sort of cross-road, if you wish. We could go in 3 directions: left (route 3), right (route two) or straight ahead (route one). We decided to go straight ahead. It was a small area with a body of water, lots of trees and plants of other kinds, and a bridge that went over some of the shallower water. We went to the other side, taking photos of an old tree in the water. Zeta got another video here, and then we decided we’d take a seat and eat lunch (packed sandwiches we purchased on the way at Spar). We sat on the bridge in the sunshine and ate. During our after lunch snack (crisps, or chips for those in Australia), Zeta spotted a butterfly which kept landing on the bridge. She got down on her hands and knees, and moved slowly towards it, then onto her stomach to get some macros of it. I tried to do the same, but it flew away almost instantly, landing on a plant nearby, where I got a couple of photos. We later identified this butterfly as the Peacock butterfly.

After lunch, we went over to the next stile, which was a horse paddock. There were two horses. Zeta was first to climb over and walked into the field a little, until one of the horses started walking towards her, then making noises, scaring Zeta a little. She walked back to the stile and climbed back over, assuming the horse didn’t want to let us pass. Eventually, the horse came over to us, and let us pet her (assuming it was a her, that is). We noticed she was eating a plant that wasn’t in her field, but there wasn’t much, so we went off and found some for her, feeding her by hand. She was actually quite a friendly horse.

We took some photos, some videos and then decided we’d head off the other way (the right path) rather than attempting to go through the field with the horses. We followed the small bridge back to the other side and followed another path, which more or less lead to no where, so we came back and went to the last path we could take. First off, it was into a cow field again. A lot of cows here, and a lot of perfect opportunities for photography. We spent a fair amount of time, composing photos of the cows and the landscape surrounding them, eventually moving on over the next stile and into another lane like the previous, following it right to the end, where there was a very small stream and a bridge to cross. Naturally, we followed the bridge, and up through another gate, which again, lead into another field.

We followed in the direction the arrow pointed, which came to a stile and gate. Unfortunately, this one had no arrow, so we just assumed to go straight ahead. We came do a dead end, so we followed around the edge of the field (after taking some photos of the beautiful view, of course) looking for our next stile and/or gate, not finding it. Unfortunately, at this point, we had both used all of our memory. One gigabyte worth of photos each. It was also getting fairly cold, and late, so we thought we’d just head back the way we came and get home. We walked on home the same way.