The house we are staying in for the house exchange is in Sutton Coldfield, a few miles north of Birmingham. Just down the road from us is a large park area known as Sutton Park. We decided to take a walk and you can see a map of the walk here.
It was a lovely day and there were lots of parents out with their children.
The car park was almost full and I don't think it was 'Pay and Display'. When you go to any attraction in England, ev en if it is out in the middle of nowhere, you have to pay to get into the parking lot.
It looks just like the countryside because it is the countryside. The park is the largest urban park in England.
There were quite a few mothers and grand mothers out with the baby.
I was fascinated by the cows in the pond.
As we got closer to the cows, quite a few of them walked down the hill and into the pond. The cool of the water presumably felt cool and refreshing on what was a hot day by English standards.
There was a bloke called Constable setting up his easel as we arrived. Just kidding.
More about the pond.
There were paths everywhere crisscrossing the park.
It looked like somebody had planted little groups of trees of single species to form a little wood.
More of the red flower plant that I saw up on the North Yorkshire moors.
A few of the paths were set up for easy walking.
Little pine cones.
More of the puffy white balls.
We hadn't realized we had been climbing a hill until it was time to descend down to a small stream that fed the pond. We stopped to talk to the people on the bridge for a while.
Boggy area by the bridge. Having had to deal with so many of them on the walk, I am now fascinated by them when I see them and have to work out how I would cross them.
The couple on the bridge had a dog who was enjoying the water in the stream.
Another clump of trees with a curious trench in the middle of it.
This cow had wandered away from the main herd and was complaining loudly about it.
Some bulls crossed our path and we stood well back.
Apparently this used to be a Roman road. No doubt any remains are well below the current path.
After walking on the Roman road for a while we deviated to this pleasant path through another forest that parallels the nearby road for cars next to the park.
Shortly after taking this photo we were back at the car park where we had started. We had walked a loop of about two miles and we think we will drive to some of the other car parks and do a walk from them. It was a very pleasant outing indeed.
It looks like you found cotton grass. I thought it only grew in Scotland. What a lovely walk indeed. The combination of cows and dogs in the same meadow can be very dangerous, but I did not see calves so you probably were OK. People get killed because they enter a meadow with a dog where mothers and calves are, and mother cows are fierce when it comes to their babies and will chase dog and owner. Several accidents have occured with deadly result. Lovely forest walk. England has so much green...
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