25th July 2016 Froome, Cavendish, Yates, Thomas, Cummings...

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Monday 25th 76F, 25C, bright with cloud and light winds. Neighbour's smoke from demolition timber forced us to close our windows again. A walk to the village and back. I was just crouching on the edge of the verge to photograph a gorgeous Small blue butterfly when a truck went past and drove it off. Grr? I could carry an DSLR with a longer lens but it would dominate my walks and get in the way of my binoculars.

Froome wins his third Tour De Farce and continues to re-write the record books along with Cavendish and a number of other remarkable British riders. It seems the Continental Pros can't compete 'clean' as per their decades of corrupt, blinkered leadership by the cycling "authorities". A loose term covering a huge number of sins.

Some of the several million jay walkers will now have to return to their lunatic asylums for yet another year of compulsory incarceration for their own safety. 

Warm and sticky again. I really don't like this warm weather! It makes me tired and head-achy. Yesterday's flock of swallows [not Martins] hung about all afternoon. With the young perched on the roof being constantly fed by swooping adults on the wing. The long swallow tails only appear in adults. Checking through binoculars showed the red faces of Swallows. This morning there were still lots of young sitting in a row on the ridge as I walked back along the drive but they left just as I approached.

The very full, TA Summer Edition of the Gazette has arrived via PDF. Far easier to read on the screen than an original printed edition. I've just been looking at the printed Danish Post Office prices leaflet to find the cost of sending a packet. I really cannot believe the sort of knuckle-dragging retards who would dare to release a public service leaflet with sub-micro-print!

Even with a decent magnifying glass and my best reading glasses it was difficult to read the "subtitles." Of course there was plenty of room for the huge graphics to soak up the acreage on the available area of paper. Guess what? I had already decided to send the packet. All I wanted was a clear scale of prices against weight. How difficult can they make it? I didn't need to be "sold" a packet sale with garish advertising graphics like the lower class "box shifters" do with their online pop-ups!  Heads should roll for this sort of thoughtless [brain dead] crap! Everywhere you look the entire world has gone over to micro-print. Packaging on medicines, food and consumer items all printed on the atomic scale. Just because you can does not mean that you should! I put it down to the drooling idiots pulling rank well above their pay grade. Or the Post Office paying a fortune for some consultancy firm to design their leaflets for them!  It's not rocket science, people. A group of bright children could get it right for the price of a school laptop. It doesn't need "mates" in the advertising industry to produce a postal price leaflet.

Afternoon ride with a crosswind tailwind going. A headwind coming home. I completely missed the showers at home which left damp roads. Only 12 miles.

Tuesday 26th 62F, 17C, overcast, light breeze. It should be cooler today with a more comfortable maximum of 20C, 68F. There were floods from cloudbursts on Jylland. Roads and rail lines closed and cellars flooded.

It was a delightful morning for a walk. With constant sunshine despite the cloud shadows floating across the ripe fields. The warmth of the sun on my back was moderated by a cooling breeze to keep things very pleasant indeed.

I saw a doe with her calf very near the road. Obviously untroubled by the passing traffic, they were enjoying a rest on the main track to the woods.  My arrival, with camera lens at full zoom began to trouble them and they eventually took off down a spray track towards the marsh.

Where the pond was populated by literally hundreds of female Mallards again. They moved slowly in a packed flotilla, clockwise around the edge and then across the distant shoreline. Where a large Cormorant was standing stiffly to attention on a jutting branch as it dried its plumage.

I continued on around the marsh and then along the edge of the prairie by spray track. There was a hint of spray propellant so I kept my extremities away from the crop. Eventually I reached the top of the hill where I ducked through the woods to avoid standing crops. To exit on the long track, all the way downhill to the road. Another deer was browsing in the crop beside the path but soon bounded away. A severed deer leg lay on the track for some unknown reason. The same area was covered in bird feathers so I hope it wasn't a poison trap for birds of prey. The warblers continue to sing from almost every tree months after I heard the first. Just before I reached home a large, almost all white buzzard mewed its way across the cliff face of the beech woods. Rest day.

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