Rutland Revisit

The Rutland Birdfair is over for another year. It was as good as ever, better even than last year. Unlike the journey from Sussex to Uppingham. There is no other choice than to follow the route M23 on to M25. There are then choices: M40, M1 or A1M. But the M25 is a nightmare. Slow moving or stationary four lanes of traffic. In places overhead gantry signs instruct to use the hard-shoulder as well, increasing the queue to five lanes...

The journey of little more than 150 miles took five hours. Google's estimation was 2 hours 45 minutes! It was a joy to leave the motorway system and drive country roads through Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and finally Rutland. On arriving at The Crown Inn we dumped our luggage and patronised the bar, consuming pints of Everard's award winning Tiger ale. 

The evening was pleasantly mild so we wandered off to the market square and managed to get a table at the brasserie Don Paddy's where the ale was good and the food was excellent. The cask marque awarded Timothy Taylor's Landlord ale is a terrific pint. A great atmosphere here with friendly staff serving really excellent food.

Wandering around the Birdfair is always enjoyable, often bumping into old friends and wildlife celebrities like Simon King, who had his own marquee:

Essential visits included the optics marquee, the art marquee, the clothing stands of Rohan and Country Innovation and the Shetland stand where I bagged a load of information on these sceptred isles, which I plan to visit before I conk out.

It was another enjoyable weekend and I hope to visit next year again for my 5th visit. Will definitely go by train though as we faced the same horrendous traffic on our return journey...

British Birds

Those lovely people at British Birds have just sent out the August 2014 edition of the journal (a must for any keen ornithologist) and included the full 80 page Official Programme 2014 to Birdfair which means that I can plan my visit well in advance rather than having to buy a copy on the day.

This will be the 26th annual Birdfair and this will be my fourth visit, staying as usual at the wonderful Crown Inn, Uppingham which has won many awards for the traditional ales it serves including Tiger Best Bitter brewed by Everards and serves excellent pub grub. I don't know what I look forward to most - the visit to the Birdfair or the Crown Inn!

Simon King Wildlife is an associate sponsor of Birdfair and I look forward to meeting him again along with many other personalities from the world of bird-watching and wildlife conservation. Simon King has worked in the field of natural history film making for over 30 years. He is the creator and presenter of many award-winning productions including Springwatch, Big Cat Diary, Planet Earth and Blue Planet. Simon is current president of the Wildlife Trusts.

Simon King

This year Birdfair has added a new Authors' Wildlife Forum Marquee offering the chance to meet the authors of some of this year's top titles. 

I just need to be careful not to splash out too much cash; easily done here particularly in the optics marquee. Nevertheless I shall have to take a look here: www.swarovskioptic.com and here: www.hawkeoptics.com .....

The Journey North

On Thursday 15th August I set off on my journey to Rutland with my best mate Graeme, to spend a long weekend in Rutland and a visit to the 25th annual Birdfair held at the Egleton Nature Reserve on Rutland water. Our journey started at Brighton station on a First Capital Connect service to St Pancras International. St Pancras is known for its Victorian architecture and is a marvel of engineering and construction, remarkable when you consider that it was opened in 1868. When it opened, the arched Barlow train shed was the largest single-span roof in the world.

St Pancras escaped planned demolition in the 1960s (thank goodness) and the complex was renovated and expanded during the 2000s at a cost of £800 million. This now includes a security-sealed terminal area for Eurostar services and domestic services operated by East Midlands Trains, First Capital Connect and Southeastern High Speed. The travel writer Simon Calder  has described the redeveloped terminus as "the world's most wonderful railway station", a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.

For our onward journey we joined an East Midlands train service to Sheffield and alighted at the first stop - Leicester - where we transferred to a Cross Country train service to Oakham via Melton Mowbray.

A local bus took us to our final destination of the Crown Hotel in Uppingham where we thought it would be rude not to have a pint of Everard's Tiger ale before checking into our rooms.....

More to follow about Rutland and the Birdfair.