Monday November 29th - Tough Mudder

About 6 years ago I did a November assault course with Adie called Tough Mudder (when I was much fitter than I am today!), which as the name suggests involves traversing a number of difficult obstacles over a very muddy 5km course including being submersed in freezing water on hands and knees in underwater pipes. I remember a sense of achievement in completing the course but I had no intention of trying anything like it again.

Sally and I returned from the Cotswolds on Sunday afternoon and soon after Gary called and asked whether I would be interested in trying to see the Belted Kingfisher which had been seen near Preston. I had no other plans so drove to Gary's around 1am and we set off towards a Cemetery near Preston at 2 am and arrived around 6.30am in a temperature of -4C.

The instructions for on site were quite simple, walk the short distance on a path, descend the steep slope to the river bank. We were mistakenly confident enough to talk about what we might later in the morning having seen the bird. The slope through woodland to the bank of the River Ribble was rather more than just a slope or even a steep slope, a very steep almost cliff-like wooded bank that we estimated at more than 150m descent. We left scopes in the car packed well away any camera equipment in backpacks and tucked in binoculars to limit the possibility of accidents on the descent. It actually helped that it was a bit frosty, making the ground a little firmer without the slimy mud patches that appeared later and with the use of hands, knees, backside and gravity we made it down at around 7.25am just before first light, we set ourselves up on the muddy bank and waited. In the next 2 hours we saw Common Kingfisher, Green Sandpiper, Common Sandpiper, Goosander, Grey Wagtail and surprisingly an Otter, but no sign of the Belted Kingfisher. Hope was then ignited when we heard that another group of birders who were standing around 400m away on the bend of the river had seen the bird around the bend, but out of view for us, we decided to relocate to give ourselves a better chance. We couldn't walk along the bank so the only way to relocate was up the ridiculously steep and now muddy slope, walk the 400m on a path at the top of the ridge and then crawl back down the ridiculously steep and now very muddy slope.

To curtail the story, we arrived at the new spot around 10.15am puffing a bit, more than a bit muddy and with screaming thighs. Just before 4pm as the light was fading with the Belted Kingfisher making no appearance and having not taken any food or water with us, we dragged our rather cold bodies back up the slope one more time, just making it back to the car as they were locking the cemetery gates for the night, tempted to add that we nearly ended up in a dead-end for the night. It made for a rather long journey home.

This was the view we 'enjoyed' for nearly 8 hours.