Here Comes The Flood (again)

Today I had to drop into the GP surgery in Blaby, so I took the opportunity to grab a change of scene and have a look at a couple of former haunts within my Soar Valley South patch - and therefore well within my newly acquired 5MR area. I only intended for a short walk from parking up on a roadside, and was not equipped for anything other than tarmac .....

On this aerial view, there is a pathway that runs between the yellow and red dots - known as part of the Guthlaxton Trail. This is a shortcut to get from Blaby to the canal. Except when standing at the yellow dot and the pathway looks like this ....

Even if I'd had my boots and Sealskinz on, this path was not passable - proper wellies required. Immediately to the left is a scruffy hedgerow that offers partial views across what is often a dry grassland, sometimes a deep floodplain and very very occasionally a good place to scrutinise for Snipe and a few ducks. Here is the general view from the one dry spot I had at the start of the path ....

You can probably just about see that there appears to be lots of water visible through the barrage of twigs. It actually looks like in a couple of days time when the waters have receded a little, this could be a great spot to have a good look over. Today, I could see something through the mess of woody interruption, but getting anything useable with the camera was folly. See ....

A majestic drake Goosander ....

My initial plan was to walk through and onto the canal tow path, in the hope that Goosander would be present on the canal as I have seen before. I also had one fly over so likely to be a few around here - it's just getting somewhere to enjoy them properly that is a problem whilst we are knee-deep in river water. I nipped around to the other side and parked up; here's a view looking south-eastish from the red dot showing the River Sence over-spilling its banks ....

Just north of here is access down to the Grand Union canal path (via No.99 Whetstone Lane Bridge). I only walked a short stretch between the two cyan dots on the aerial view - mainly as the path was a bit slippy with inappropriate footwear, and because every bridge harboured a dodgy looking bloke nearby with a fishing rod, thereby rendering any hope of good Goosander views null and void.

This Grey Wagtail only gave distant views before dancing off a bit further every few steps.

Several pairs of Moorhens along the overhang on the far bank.

Before heading home, I took a very small detour and parked up at Jubilee Park - another old haunt on the patch that I should spend more time at this year. There is usually a small pool just about visible from the park, with the River Soar and River Sence converging close to it. Today the pool was huge with no sign of the rivers as such ....

I'm always wary of this area when it's flooded, and despite the view there was a bloke jogging around the shallower edge. Trouble is that you can't see where the flood starts and the River bank is. It's not that long ago that David Noakes, a local birder and nice bloke that I met a few times who was a regular at the park, sadly drowned here when the area was flooded.

Just viewable from the safety of the roadside pavement was a mass of Canada Geese, and I could hear and eventually saw a couple of Wigeon tucked in amongst them. Again, once the main waters recede there should be a better chance of getting views of what's out there.