Took son Dima out to Buscot in Oxfordshire for a map reading session today. Really lovely, sunny and crisp weather: lots of surface water though as the floods still haven't subsided that much. As an example of the flooding we found, at the river lock we visited at Buscot Weir, the level of the river at the bottom of the lock was the same as the level at the top of the lock: no need for a lock today, then! Just by the Weir there are two benchmarks that show the maximum heights that the river has been known to have reached, late in the 19th century and late in the 20th century ... the height of the river today was well below these two heights. So they've had it much worse than we found today! As we came to the end of the day's meanderings, we came across an old horse in the corner of a field: we christened it Dobbin! Dobbin was wearing the mankiest, reggedy old coat you've ever seen but he looked kindly so we stopped the car and I gave Dima a Polo mint to give to the horse but he was afraid that Dobbin would savage him! I got out and fed the poor old nag three mints: put a mint on the palm of my hand and let Dobbin do the rest: he made a lovely crunching sound with them that made me laugh. Here's a pic of me with Dobbin and then a pic of how he showed his gratitude!

yours truly feeding a mint to Dobbin

Dobbin says thanks DW!

DW