Capture The Moment

A bad day...

This was a day I’d like to forget really, but it warrants writing down.

I’d thought for a while about visiting the churchyard of the church next to Delaval Hall: lots of woodland there, a couple of ponds in the vicinity, guaranteed peace and quiet and – hopefully – plenty of relaxed, easy-to-photograph birds.

Got there, and the bloody gate was padlocked shut.

Ah well, the area between there and and Holywell Pond was pretty interesting in its own right: horse paddocks, moorland, woods, water, hedgerows and loads of flowering Gorse bushes, so I felt pretty optimistic anyway – I figured I’d be good for Wheatears, Whitethroats, Linnets, Dunnocks and the like.

Sure enough, there were Whitethroats all over, and I’d already decided that a good image or two of the species would be my priority today.

A perky Robin in the trees near the church got the ball rolling (I like the soft greens here):

I then headed over towards the old tram track which goes between The Avenue and Whitley Bay, a disused colliery waggonway route which has been converted into a public right of way (and a rather pleasant one too), where as I expected, Whitethroats and other warblers were everywhere.

It was while I was squirming through some overgrown Blackthorn hedging trying to get between a particularly showy bird and the Sun that my problems started.

I’m always careful about where I’m putting my feet in this kind of situation, mainly in order to avoid breaking branches and making a noise that might scare the bird off or drive it into cover: well this time, I wasn’t careful enough.

I put my foot down on what looked like another clump of grass, but it hid a Blackthorn branch on which were a couple of two inch long thorns, the thickness of a knitting needle – and sticking straight up…

The bloody things sliced clean through the sole of my Karrimor shoe and straight into the ball of my left foot, as far as it was possible for them to go – more than an inch of each went straight through the sole of my foot, causing two deep puncture wounds an inch apart.

I yelped like a kicked dog, and pulled my foot away, but the damage was done – Christ! It hurt!

Straight away I could feel blood pouring into the shoe, and within a few yards it squelched with every tentative footfall: I could barely walk. The big problem was that I was miles away from transport and didn’t have my mobile phone with me (and I knew there was nobody I could call for help anyway).

So I decided to crack on. To my relief (and surprise), after about half an hour the pain started to ease, I thought “fair enough, that’s probably the worst of it done” and decided to look in to the hides at Holywell Pond. Although the NWT hide is locked to non-members, there’s a little feeding station there, and the lake (it’s way too big to be a pond!) is easily seen too.

I spent an hour or so there, but with only some images of this Mute Swan to show for it:

Then I realised I was in real pain again: I couldn’t put any weight at all on my left foot, and I was now even further away from transport than I was when I’d punctured it!

My only choice was to walk along the waggonway to Holywell Dene and through the Dene back to Hartley village, where I could get a bus back to Blyth – the thick end of three miles.

A walk through the Dene is a very pleasant thing to do any other time, but my pain was made even worse due to the fact that (as I was realising the hard way) the soles of my POS Karrimor shoes are rather thin, and the track through the Dene is made of lightly-compressed Dolerite roadstone, each piece being hard, angular, two or three inches long, and determined to stick into the ball of my foot!

And there were thousands of them…

By the time I finally reached the bus stop at Hartley, I was a mess.

Thankfully, the bus was on time and I got back to Blyth: but I had another half mile to walk from the stop to my door, by which time I was finished.

I really should have had a trip to A&E, I suppose – stitches, a Tetanus jab and antibiotics would all be good ideas I imagine – but I really was wrecked.

A day later (Sunday evening, when I’m writing this), I’m still bollocksed – hopping around the house, still unable to put any weight on my foot, so I’m stuck indoors – and a glorious day wasted.

And it makes getting a cup of tea from the kitchen to the living room a bit of a challenge too!

I just hope that by Tuesday I’m able to walk a bit – God knows how I’m going to get to work otherwise…