Bourton-on-the-Water

In my part of the world, place names with lots of hyphens are pretty common. Driving to Bourton-on-the-Water yesterday, I went through both Moreton-in-Marsh and Stow-on-the-Wold. It's not difficult to see where Bourton got its name ...

The river Windrush flows through the centre of the town and is crossed by little footbridges. It's a clear, shallow river and ideal for paddling. Naturally enough, it's a popular tourist spot and every other building seems to be a tea room or gift shop (or sometimes both).

My son and I were there to re-visit a couple of places we remember going to nearly twenty years ago when he and his sister were small. First of all, a maze with a difference.

As well as finding your way to the centre of The Dragonfly Maze, you also have to collect clues from numbered rebus stones along the way. This is trickier than it sounds, it took us quite a while to find them all and then a bit longer to make sense of them. Every time we came to a junction in the maze, we took it in turns to choose which way to go. I kept taking us down the same paths - I have no sense of direction at all.

Finally, we arrived in the centre of the maze to find the treasure hidden in this building.

I shan't show you what was inside but it was lovely and yes, there was a dragonfly.

After the maze, we walked down the road to Birdland, a beautifully landscaped park with over 100 different bird species to see. There were King Penguins (smaller than Emperors, in case you wondering) ...

... Pelicans ...

... and this very friendly bird whose name I've forgotten ...

I was very taken by some Weaver Birds, tiny little yellow birds who were busy weaving rushes into round nests.

Part of the park is a woodland nature reserve where you might spot a kingfisher or an otter ... or something a bit older ...

Well, dinosaurs are related to birds after all. We had our picnic next to this tortoise who was taking his lunchtime constitutional. Here's a shot of him in action. Now there's a prehistoric looking animal.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day and I got a bit more practice with my new camera. It keeps cropping thins without my permission but, apart from that, I'm getting the hang of it. At least knitting tends to stay in one place when you're taking its picture.