{"id":963,"date":"2010-02-01T17:15:52","date_gmt":"2010-02-01T17:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=963"},"modified":"2010-02-01T17:15:52","modified_gmt":"2010-02-01T17:15:52","slug":"putney-guildford-bestiary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=963","title":{"rendered":"Putney – Guildford Bestiary"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend Mark<\/a> and I set off to explore another 30-mile section of the Walk 2012<\/a> project, this time exploring various trails between Putney Bridge and Guildford. I am sure Mark will write in more detail about the route on his blog<\/a>, but in the meantime I thought I’d share with you a selection of creatures (real, imaginery and metaphorical) that we spotted this weekend.<\/p>\n

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Horses – or evidence of horses; spotted near Putney Bridge, by Beverley Brook.<\/p>\n

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Laughing\/Green woodpecker – this is my favourite bird as I absolutely love its giggly sound<\/a>. Please forgive the detestably pixelated qualities of the digital zoom and the failure of the photograph to convey the woodpecker’s lovely, undulating flight path; it was very magical to see this bird on Richmond Common…<\/p>\n

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…where we also saw these fine Red Deer.<\/p>\n

Much later on in the proceedings, Mark found a Feasel with its very own road-sign…<\/p>\n

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…and then we slept in a Holiday Inn, which was situated at the end of Felix Lane<\/a> in Shepperton.<\/p>\n

The next morning, striding out into the fresh sunshine and readying ourselves for a 16 mile or so tramp along the Thames and then the River Wey, we found a stern-looking Swan…<\/p>\n

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…and some sort of Goose-Yoga convention.<\/p>\n

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Beside the start of the Wey Navigations, I found a Bear with a map.<\/p>\n

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It is rumoured that a monkey accompanied us on our travels also…<\/p>\n

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…and we were greeted at lunchtime by a very friendly Badger, whose regal visage always occurs in the same place as good, Hall & Woodhouse Ales.<\/p>\n

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Joy of all joys, we spotted an enterprising Barn Owl out hunting early in the afternoon as we neared Guildford; Mark got a better picture of it than I did but you can just about make it out in this shot.<\/p>\n

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When we got home I found a lovely fox<\/a> on Kate’s blog, and went in search of Liz’s post about the Barn Owl<\/a> that I remembered. The title of Liz’s blog post is ‘Magical’ and that’s how it feels to see the real creatures we saw.<\/p>\n

In my mind, even made-up-animals like feasels and bears<\/a> become magical totems when you go on a journey; they make for good story-telling when you’re cold or your feet hurt, and they are a good reminder of all the living things that share the places where we go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This weekend Mark and I set off to explore another 30-mile section of the Walk 2012 project, this time exploring various trails between Putney Bridge and Guildford. I am sure Mark will write in more detail about the route on his blog, but in the meantime I thought I’d share with you a selection of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[640,636,688],"tags":[1054,2248,1205,2247,2252,2145,2251,2249,2250],"class_list":["post-963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random","category-valuing-reality","category-walking","tag-animals","tag-badger","tag-bears","tag-bestiary","tag-creatureful","tag-feasels","tag-monkeys","tag-owl","tag-totems"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pmise-fx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}