Well, I made it! Managed to drag myself out of bed at 4am - wasn't too difficult as I woke up at 3am!!!! I always do that - whenever I know I need to get up early, I wake up an hour before I need to. It was lovely and peaceful as I got into my car and drove off to Scotney Castle.

Didn't realise but this was the first dawn wander organised at Scotney. The Warden hasn't been there that long and decided to introduce it as an annual event. We were, therefore, his guinea pigs. The walk, I thought, would last 1.5hrs. When I got there, he told us it would be 2hrs - well, it ended up being 3 hours!! It was great even though we missed the dawn chorus by about 45 minutes but there were loads of birds all chirping away. I'm no twitcher, so can't tell one bird call from another. Advantage of going on a guided walk is being told which calls belong to what birds. Besides birds, rabbits, squirrels and sheep, we didn't see any "wildlife" although he did walk us past an active badger set. Interesting fact: when the nearby A21 was built, they had to destroy a badger set. Reason they got permission was they said they'd built an "artificial" one for the animals in Scotney's grounds. Apparantly they're not always successful, but in this case, it's worked.

Although there were 20 of us, it was peaceful and it was great value at only £5. We did say that if the tea shop had opened they would have made a fair bit of money from us as we were all hungry by the end.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the morning:

Now that I'm back home - having stopped off at a coffee shop for a coffee and muffin(!) - I feel a little tired but don't feel I can go back to bed. Have a lawn to mow before the rain turns up. At this rate I'll probably be in bed by 8pm tonight!!

Finally, another interesting fact I learnt today: during summer, especially if it's been hot and there's been little rain, be careful about sitting under a large Oak or Beech tree. They're not really sure how they do it, but the trees are known to shed "limbs" as a way of conserving moisture/water. So, you could be sitting innocently under a lovely large tree and have a rather large branch fall on you. Don't say you haven't been warned!!!