Have Bike Will Travel x Lackford Lakes

Alright, so this is cheating a little, since I didn't cycle to Lackford Lakes. But I was intending to cycle to the train station to catch my train to Bury, where I'd meet Auntie Sarah to go to Lackford Lakes. But I walked instead.

Which was why I missed my train by the smallest smidgeon of time.

And therefore why I was standing in the cold train station for about an hour before Auntie Sarah saved me.

We got back to Grandma's too late to get to church, and so we had lunch instead (so much bread yum) and then drove out to Lackford Lakes.

Lackford Lakes is a nature reserve in Suffolk, a quiet oasis of lakes and their islands, and reeds and little observation huts. In the visitor's centre you can look out to a bird feeder swarmed by blue tits and great tits, and a confused looking pheasant pecking about underneath, and we even spied a red-breasted robin. In the nearby pond two geese and a few ducks were dipping about for pond weed, and from the pond-cam which fed a television in the visitor's centre you could see the webbed feet of the paddling ducks as the swam near the camera.

 We began walking towards the lakes, in a fortunate burst of sunshine. The Lakes are so still, the only sound to be heard is the wind in the reeds that flank the waters - nothing else. I'd forgotten how quiet the world could be. It's never this quiet in Cambridge, where there is always somewhere to be, someone to see, something to finish or something to find. In the Lakes you can't help but think "None of that, what matters is now, what matters is beauty. Not my beauty, since I'm not what matters here. What matters here is everything I see and nothing at the same time.'

I picked up a stone with a thumb-shaped indent in it's centre, scooping into gravelly white rock, with a circumference of smooth dark flint.

As we got near to the carpark, we emerged from the shade of the woodland into a small space of sun light. Grandma, who was walking ahead, stopped in the sun and tilted her face up, her arms slightly away from her body - repose.