It was about 5:30 PM and 22 °C with very bright sun out when we got in the car and set off for the Welcombe Nature Reserve for a little walk organised by the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust. There was a stop at the chemist, the usual route was taken to Stratford, and we disembarked from the car at the Welcombe Hotel, Mum misunderstood the instructions given to her by the man at the reception there and we set off in the opposite direction from the route we should have taken and had to negotiate a busy golf course. Eventually we were back on track and spotted a man on the Welcombe Hills who was stood with his big lying down dog who was cooling down in some shade before consenting to move again, a few butterflies fluttered around, lots of bits of dandelion were floating through the air and everything was extremely green, and one jet trail was in the sky, Mum farted, and we were passed by a half naked man with a satchel on his back riding a bicycle.

Some wandering around the hills (where there was a small herd of cows flobbling their ears and tails around) was done, we asked a woman with a dog where the nature reserve was (and I forgot what she said), and we kept wandering until spotting a group.

They were being led by a man called Steve talking about land owned by Shakespeare, and his family, digging a 275 meter long trench to stop the people of Stratford getting to the hills, it seems that Shakespeare was a wealthy man from his playwriting and owned a number of properties in the town as well as acres of land, and the Clopton family owned land and built an enormous house and a vicar had knocked a house down. Steve went on to talk about the wildlife reserve and said he’d learnt a lot about poo, as sheep and cattle were grazing as part of habitat management, and another bloke said something about a very old swimming pool. A number of the group were intrigued by this, and we all went across to a copse and in the gloom, there appeared a perfectly formed pool which must have once been by the enormous house. A husband and wife were walking a couple of incredibly fluffy dogs and someone else was walking what looked like a Labradoodle, no-one in this group asked who we were, and due to there being a bloke with the WWT (Warwickshire wildlife Trust) logo on his shirt – we assumed we were with the right one and we were led up a very steep hill.

A man in a shirt, tie, and leather shoes pointed various things out, a farmer talked about his cows (and said something about bull semen) and the 60 of them grazing here, another man talked about the cows allowing invertebrates to complete their life cycle and the importance of cow pats, and the farmer described his Aberdeen Angus and Belgian Blue cow herd (which I spotted on a nearby hill) and said he checks them 4 times a week. Then we went up a path, I noticed a man with something about a food bank on his shirt, and when we next stopped, a woman got out an interesting water bottle holder and gave her dog (who looked like a Labradoodle) a drink, and as this group seemed to be going back to Clopton we diverted off, were able to see the hotel, and went through a very dark wooded area, the ground was covered in gnarled roots aiming to reach the place – making it very hard not to fall over – and made it at 7.42pm (when I was feeling extremely glad of my walking boots).