Purple toothwort and kingcups in flower

All in all it's been a very good Easter weekend here in the Tamar Valley. Admittedly it has now clouded right up with, as I type this in mid afternoon, a little light rain falling but Saturday and Sunday were very pleasantly sunny and quite warm as well. On Saturday afternoon we enjoyed a cracking ramble to Morwellham further down river and on the Devon bank. There are some wetland areas adjacent to this walk and it was good to see plenty of kingcups in flower; another speciality that we hoped would be seen is the parasitic purple toothwort, the white or pink variety might not be particularly rare but the purple one is much more so. It is quite spectacular regarding the vibrancy of its colour and we were rewarded with the flowers being out.

It always seems to be the custom to remember miserable weather on bank holidays in this country and forget that they can be pretty good on occasion. I've just looked at an entry I made at the end of August 2007 when I made a similar observation having experienced good weather for both the Easter and late Summer Bank Holidays that year. Lets see what the two May bank holidays throw at us next month.

A quiet bank holiday for me

Now I've never been one to get too excited about bank holidays. Well ok when working for somebody else it was nice to have time off but I've never had a burning desire to join the masses in long traffic queues or add to the problems to our creaking public transport system. That's just not my scene! Yesterday we drove about ten miles from here to do some quiet walking. And on Saturday again some local walking sufficed.

After such a wet summer the sunshine has put a smile on people's faces. We have had two excellent bank holidays weather wise this year - Easter and this one. Can't remember exactly what the two in May were like but when people talk about bank holidays always being wet I suspect their memories are being quite selective. I'd love to see some statistics on this, I suspect that we would be surprised at just how many have been good.