Staying Home: Day 57

My brain went into a spin last night pondering all the new family history information I was given, so I struggled to get to sleep and had a short night. I then woke up with a headache, but took some paracetamol and it cleared before I started work. I then got bogged down in archives research and spent longer than I should have done on it. As a result it didn't feel a very productive day.

For our walk today we headed down through the woods to the canal. Before turning down towards the canal there is a short section of road which crosses the main West Coast line railway. The wall is just too high to be able to see the tunnel entrance beyond it, but I knew that it was there so held my phone up and took a photo. Quite why the Victorians decided the entrance to a railway tunnel needed to look like a castle I don't know, but they did.

We walked along the canal tow path for a while, then cut off into the water meadows which sit between the canal and the river. A number of the willow trees have fallen over, and this one was leaning impressively. The willows used to be managed by pollarding - cutting back the new growth regularly and using it for basket making, fencing and so on - and I think the trust that manages the area is now trying to start pollarding them again to keep them healthy. The meadows were looking beautifully lush and green.

I know that this section of the water meadows has some rare black poplar trees - black poplar is the most endangered native species in Britain. I think these are two of them.

H and TG carried on with their work. We were emailed a letter by the school congratulating TG for her hard work and effort since the lockdown started. The letter also made it clear that the kids are not expected to complete every single assignment, and that they should be taking plenty of down time for hobbies, socialising (virtually) with friends, and just generally relaxing  - working hard and getting good grades is important, but so is life balance, and I love that they are explicit about this. We spent most of the evening watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, with a break in the middle to make burgers for dinner and to watch an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It feels as though the day has gone very quickly, but that I haven't achieved very much!