Last weekend we helped Pam celebrate her 50th in style round at her house. It was what I like to call a ‘classic party’ and it was just a shame that Pam only made it to 9pm before she had to retire to bed. It turns out that the mix of champagne and vodka shots is not a good one when you are 50. The rest of us all had a lovely time.
So much so that the next day I was a little sensitive to light and I felt it best to let Jane do the driving over to Rugby from Ashby De La Zouche where the party had been. I never let Jane drive me and I am an appalling back seat driver but today it had to be done. We’d already had a partial English breakfast at our hotel (well we’d paid for it) and by 11am I was eating an ice lolly as a preventative measure against dehydration. It was another scorching day and I’ve been caught out like this before this year! I heard the other day that this Summer has been the best since 2006. To be honest I think this has been the best Summer ever. I don’t recall 2006 at all- do you?
We met up with Karen and Marcella today at Draycott Water. Jane used to work with these girls when they all worked for Severn Trent Water. Now they’ve all gone their separate ways but they’ve kept in touch. I don’t think, therefore, that it was any coincidence that today’s walk, chosen by Karen, would take use around Draycott Water which is a reservoir near Rugby. It does, of course, belong to Severn Trent.
We met up with the girls in the car park there at 11:30 Sunday and it was already very busy. I hadn’t really known what to expect but I’d seen that the walk around the reservoir was 5 miles and mostly on good Tarmac tracks. There was a big modern visitor centre and all in all it seemed very well set up for recreation.
It was lovely and sunny and there was a pleasant breeze and it was nice walking around water again. However, when we got close to the water we all noticed a bit of a pong. To start with we thought it might just be the green algae in this corner but it soon became obvious that pretty much the whole reservoir stank. Karen, our resident SME (subject matter expert), told us that it was in fact a water treatment works.
Who would have thought that water would be quite so smelly. Then again, Venice smells bad in the Summer but was fine when we went in Feb. However, the crowds here didn’t seem to notice the smell much and perhaps I do have a particularly sensitive nose, like my Mum says. There were people cycling, walking, jogging, sailing and even one bloke standing waist deep in it fly fishing. Personally I think the ‘No Swimming’ signs were a bit of a waste of money, I’m really not sure anybody would want to.
Despite the pong we did have a very enjoyable walk and they’ve tried to add some points of interest along the way. We enjoyed the sign that said ‘No Fishing- Conservation Area’. Karen correctly pointed out that this was also a silly sign as people were allowed to fish in all the other parts of the Water and just not this corner. What did the fish do then she said- all cram into this one spot to save themselves?!
Next we came across the bird hide. Now this we were quite excited about as Jane and I have done a bit of twitching in our time (Puffins on Skomer). I’d even brought along my binocs today to see what I could see. The hide looked onto a reeded part of the lake and we saw some nice ducks and also some Great Crested Grebes which were a bit more impressive. I actually thought these were quite rare but it turns out that that was back in the 19th Century when they were nearly hunted to extinction because people wanted their head feathers to decorate top hats and ladies undergarments. Better news now though- they’re no longer that rare.
Later on Jane and Marcella watched some more birding action as a pair of male and female geese had a domestic and the female gave the male a right talking to.
At this point Karen and I had wandered on a bit and we were chatting about work. We both work in Financial services and we were comparing notes on the latest vernacular or management speak. It was good to hear that people are also considered to be ‘on point’ where Karen works (responsible) and that Karen now works in the COO (Chief Operating Office- seems everyone organisation should have one!). However, she also gave me a new one to introduce which is a ‘fire drill’. I hadn’t heard this before and apparently it’s when an important person asks you to do something and you have to drop everything else you were planning on doing and do this. Yes, I’m sure we can use that, thanks Karen.
Jane and Marcella meanwhile, were comparing notes on Crete as Marcella had just come back and we’re about to go. Marcella was telling Jane about the fact that they’d stayed in All Inclusive but her two teenage sons hated the food so they ended up going out most nights to eat. In fact we talked quite a bit about teenage boys as between them Karen and Marcella have 6. Wow. There’d even been talk of two of Karen’s boys joining us on the walk but this was Sunday after all and they just couldn’t be bothered. Fair play.
As we walked around Karen explained that she used to live in one of the Severn Trent houses near here and that really is why she’s such an expert. The reservoir was built in 1969 and is the biggest stretch of water in Warwickshire holding 5 billion gallons of water. It is one of 111 reservoirs in England that hold drinking water. And yet so smelly….
The thing is though here, that it really is good easy walking and it was great to catch up on all their news before we said goodbye to Marcella who had to go and move her Dads greenhouse. The rest of us did the more traditional thing of going for Sunday lunch.
Walky Talky 