Someone (lauperr) thought it would be a great idea to go to the woods, in the dark, to try and spot some night-time animals. So we packed a ruck-sack with a flask of coffee and a blanket, wrapped up warm and found a tree to sit under near the ponds in Bourne Woods. The idea behind sitting near the ponds was that the animals were likely to come to the water to drink during the night as there seemed to be deer tracks leading down to the water. What we didn’t think of was the number of mosquitos that tend to hang around water and love biting unsuspecting human beings who are out of their usual urban habitat.
Anyway, we had brought along with us a brand new “good strong torch” to help us walk about half a mile back to the car once we had finished. On the way I usefully pointed out that the most important thing in going anywhere in the dark is probably to bring a backup torch, which we didn’t have. “Oh it’ll be fine” says the ever optomistic lauperr. From then on, the torch was jinxed.
At around 11pm we had starting to come round to the fact that the only animals we were going to see were the ducks sitting on the pond and the occasional bat swooping over our heads. We heard an owl at one point but we couldn’t hear much else over the constant sound of the crickets. I’m sure there was a small furry mammal trying to creep up on us all the time we were there, but we never saw it.
So, we started to pack our things and just be happy with having a peaceful, romantic time in the woods with a flask of coffee, albeit slightly bitten. I turned on the torch and we started to pack away our things when everything went dark. Completely dark. There was a few seconds silence, even the crickets seemed to shut up for a minute. After a brief conversation in which lauperr established that I wasn’t in fact joking around we started to try to figure out why the torch had cut out. After about 15 minutes of taking the torch apart, putting the battery in all different ways and shaking it around a lot we finally settled on the fact that the bulb had blown. Great.
Luckily my mobile phone, the Nokia 5210 is pretty useless as a phone but not bad as a torch! As a phone it constantly cuts out and has appalling reception everywhere, but if you take the “express-on shells” off the top and bottom to reveal its silver underbelly an array of very bright LEDs is revealed. This small amount of light helped us pack everything away and gradually make our way back to the car. I had to pretend I wasn’t afraid of the dark while we stumbled across uneven ground and lauperr jumped out of her skin when something rustled in the bushes. Finally we made it back to the car, had a quick cup of sweet coffee and made our way back home.
The all important coffee
Darkness setting in
How light it SHOULD be when you
go to the woods (Taken Monday)