Another Winter Journey

A long run today up to Liverpool and Freshfield via Ludlow; furniture, oddments, beds.  I noticed birds everywhere, especially flocks of crows - rooks I think - that were tumbling in flight, presumably courting and re-establishing nest sites etc.  I think they call it 'whiffling', a lazy, tumbling free-fall flight; dazzling and unsettling to watch.  I also saw a red kite hunting north of Onibury, flocks of starlings, distant lines of geese. 

Some great views out onto the great Moss near Formby; a flat landscape defined by bare hedges and ditches, distant lines of bare trees.  I had forgotten how much I loved the Moss. 

A grey day, never-quite-lit, a lot of cloud.  Rain on the roads, spray, thorn hedges sprayed creamy-brown by lorries.  I tried to see the journey in terms of fields and woods and birds and not roads and vehicles; but I also found some interesting and unusual place names - Hengoed, Queen's Head, the Wolfshead roundabout.  'Wolf's head' was an old name for an outlaw.  A journey of places aimed for and never reached; Runcorn, Frodsham, Chester, Wrexham, Welshpool, Shrewsbury, Leominster, Ludlow.