A glorious sleep in. Awake at 8:30am feeling actually rested.
I spent most of the morning cleaning up the house (Mirinda was busy marking) and generally shifting bits of paper around, something my time in the public service more than adequately prepared me for.
For a break, we went to Homebase (wood for outside shelving) and puppy stuff (they have pretty much destroyed their bed). They rather enjoyed their new Kong we bought them.
We then set off for the Badger Watch at 18:30. A lovely journey down through the New Forest. Saw lots of wild ponies alongside (and on) the road.
At Burley we stopped at the Manor Farm restaurant for dinner. All very pretty. We ordered, then waited. We sat down at about 19:45 and received our food at 20:30! So we wolfed down what seemed to be a lovely meal and took off once more.
The Studio was not too far away and we were there a little early but next time it’ll be dinner at the Queen’s Head, I think.
The Studio is thatched and set amid the most beautiful grounds. There is also a fabulous house. It all looks quite unreal but very, very peaceful.
The first order of proceedings was to meet in the Studio and be instructed to put cordless headphones on. Then a taped badger guy told us how we are to act in the hide all quiet and absolutely NO movement. No sooner had the tape finished than we were whisked down through the garden to the hide.
It was a brick building with three (thankfully cushioned) bench seats running the whole length facing a big window. Again, there was a commentary through the headphones.
Big lights were turned on outside and suddenly the forest looked all magic and other worldy.
Meanwhile the Badger Guy on the headphones was giving us a lot of of recorded information when, suddenly, a couple of foxes appear. They share the sett with the badgers. This is not unusual. However, badgers have been known to eat new born fox cubs so I’m surprised they continue to live together.
We watched the foxes on and off for the whole hour. As entertaining and cute as they were, they weren’t badgers. The Badger Guy apologised and swore he’d never known them not to appear. He claimed to have seen them down the hill near the big tree and we just had to wait.
Poor chap. He was very apologetic, offering to refund everyone’s money and tried to give us all a free badger video. Naturally we all refused. There had been a fireworks thing going off shortly before and Mirinda reckoned that could have made them a bit wary. Anyway, we MUST go back.
The minor discomfort of sitting making no movement or sound for an hour is well worth it…if you see a badger at large.
So, a long drive home to two sleepy but very quickly awake, puppies.
We introduced them to their new bed and they seemed to like it a lot because they repaid us by peeing in it. Stupid dogs.
