Just one walk around the lanes near where we live this month, but it was so good to be out in the blue-est of blue skies - and so early on in April too. But first these gutter loving dandelions on School Lane caught my eye - very resourceful of them to grow there, and great for the insects but not so much for the upkeep of the roads in the village.

A row of flowering dandelions growing in the gutter

I did warn you there were very blue skies didn’t I? I took this as we spotted a couple of large birds - buzzards or kites - but couldn’t work out which so took the photo, and at a quick glance you can’t even see the small bird shapes, can you? If you look closely there’s one about two inches above the tree to the left…

A very blue sky - with a small bird shape to the above left of the tree

A brick archway on Church Lane in the dappled sunshine

But anyway, our walk took us down School Lane and onto Church Lane, which took us down to the River Trent. It was much drier than our aborted attempt last month, where we had the wrong shoes on for the amount of mud! It’s amazing how much difference a month can make, but as you’ll see, it has.

A view along the lane with fields on the left and a wooded area on the right

Looking down towards the river trent, with a tree on the left handside and hedges/boundaries of the fields either side of the track

cracked mud - showing how much drier the path is this month

This month we could see the jetty - and it’s probably the clearest we’ve been able to see it on all of our walks along this route. I’d not seen the sign for the, sadly no longer running, Fiskerton Ferry but we did today. It’s a shame it’s not running as there’s a nice looking pub on the opposite river bank!

The wooden jetty is clearly visible in the centre of the picture, despite the green vegetation either side of it

A much closer look at the wooden jetty, but still from the river bank

An old wooden table and plastic chairs discarded by the jetty

We also spotted possibly the remains of the ferry’s operations - an old wooden picnic table and some plastic chairs in the undergrowth. At least that’s what I’m hoping they’re from as I can’t believe anyone would dump them right on the river bank intentionally, but I guess you never know.

Looking through a metal barred gate at the sheep behind in the field

The skies were blue, and it was much warmer than we expected it to be - but there were no lambs yet. It wasn’t long though as not long after our walk there was the first ‘escaped lambs’ post in our village Facebook group. Two cheeky lambs had managed to get out onto the quiet lane, before being ushered back in by a concerned villager.

Escaped sheep (or lambs) is the best use ever of our village Facebook group. Fact.

Thanks for joining me for this update, if you enjoyed this post you may also like to see all of the posts in this series.