Another red squirrel trip

24 May 2007 ~ 13:34

We stayed at the same hotel, Tree Tops, in a lodge in the grounds. The hotel has a pool, but unforunately the weather wasn't great and it was full of leaves.

On Saturday we met up with an American girl, a fellow expat like Mark, and her very sweet two-and-a-half year old daughter. We went around the woods together and at first didn't see any squirrels, but then we came across two that we were able to feed with the 'squirrel food' we had purchased. (I'd brought a big bag of monkey nuts up from London but Mark left them in the hotel)!

Afterwards we all walked up to the sea, but it was just so windy there that we turned back before we could see the ocean. Kelly, the American lady (from Texas) took us to lunch at a really nice pub called The Red Squirrel, which had a cool pub sign of a squirrel made of acorns.

We had a bit of an adventure after we got back to the hotel. Mark & I took a stroll and we met some people walking their dogs who told us that a sheep had tried to follow them. We soon came across the sheep, a big ewe who happily let us pet her and feed her leaves but occasionaly tried to butt us! She'd got out of a field where she obviously lived as a pet with a llama and two ponies.

Well, we carried on walking, but when we came back she had wandered much nearer to the main road and was eating leaves from a tree. Mark tried to herd her back towards her field but she ran away and ended up actually on the road. A car stopped and the girls in it tried to get her to move. We were quite worried about her getting run over.

Then a car stopped on the far side of the road and an off-duty police officer came over. He'd called another cop on a quad bike, and Mark & I helped the police get her back in the paddock. The off-duty policeman opened the gate and we herded her in, then put some branches and iron rails we found up at the gap so she couldn't get out again. The two ponies and the llama came over to see what was going on and we felt guilty that we had no treats to give them.

When we caught the train back to London on Sunday, there was drama on the train! TWO separate incidents led to people being arrested. First someone got arrested for trying to steal out of someone else's bag. The owner of the bag was asleep but fortunately another passenger saw this African guy going through his bag and alerted him. The trains have CCTV so the whole thing was caught on camera. As we pulled away from Stafford this would-be thief was standing on the platform with two cops, in handcuffs! Later we saw more police come onboard and I asked the train manager what else had happened, and he said a drunk man had stolen a can of beer from the buffet car and refused to pay for it.

So a lot of drama but we got back eventually!

Here's a couple of pix we got of the squirrels we fed. The pics came out much better this trip.

Stored nuts | Future acorns