Six swans eggs

Took a trip out today with a friend and en route stopped to look at this:


The swans nest is situated almost below the bridge that I walk across everyday whilst walking the dogs, (more about them another day). This picture was taken 28th April owing to the fact that I don't have a camera at the moment, Mike has it in Sweden. I took my grandson to see this nest last week and the swans were having a changeover. As one swan returned to the nest from down river the other swan vacated the nest. We counted 6 quite large eggs, pearly grey in colour. When recounting this tale to his mother, my grandson said "there were, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 eggs." He's only three and had to do the counting instead of just saying six. Not sure how long the incubation period is, but they've been sitting a while now. A mallard had a nest behind the swans but it seems to be vacated now, so I need to look out for the new family on the river.

After viewing the nests we visited a museum specifically to view some paintings, those of the Ashington group.http://www.ashingtongroup.co.uk/home.html Although I had seen the paintings some years earlier, Mike and I had gone with my friend to see the play back in the autumnhttp://www.wansbeck.gov.uk/index.cfm?page=viewsnews.cfm&id=454

Following on from the arts we went for an ice cream and a plodge in the north sea, only to find we couldn't see the sea for the fret http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/surfing/sites/pages/seafog.shtml.

This is how the beach should have looked!

It was windy too,

and cold.

But once back home we found that it was still warm and sunny, and we'd only travelled a few miles.