Day Out in Newport, Shropshire

I have been for a while thinking of making memories and recording them, what better way to start a blog… Here goes, Today i met up with a friend and we spend 5 hours walking around Newport, Shropshire. We parked up in Waitrose car park, this only allowed maximum of 2 hours parking. This was challenge to make sure we got back to before we got a ticket. We went exploring and found ourselves down by the canal. It was all flat and very dry.

We decided to head back to the cars to move them to a housing estate nearer to the canal to continue our walk. We didn’t go out to photograph anything in particular, as we had not been here before. So really didn’t know what to expect.

We came across 3 swans nests some with eggs which hadn’t hatched. Then we saw the swans were going up and down the canal with the cygnets that had hatched..

Swan Nest with eggs that haven’t hatched.

Proud Swan & her Cygnets

Family Outing

We carried on along the canal, there sun was beaming down, it was getting very warm. We spotted a lot of lily pads on the canal, we stopped for a while and spotted a terrapin amongst them basking in the sun. There were lots of bright yellow iris flowers along the canal, stunning.

Lily

A terrapin hiding

Iris

Walking further around the side of the canal, we saw a beautiful Red Admiral Butterfly, lots of wild flowers, the smell and the colours were outstanding. We stopped and sat on a bench, had a spot of lunch watching and listening to all the wildlife. We were only about half way around.

Red Admiral Butterfly

Cuckoo Flower or Mayflower

Greater Celandine

After lunch, we walked back along the otherside of the canal. There were a huge amount of tadpoles in a big group called a shoals, this is to lower the risk of being predated, i tried to take an image of them. There were a group of children doing some pond dipping.

There were also a large amount of common blue damselflies mating. The blue are males and the brown are females. As we were heading back to the cars we noticed a broad bodies chaser which is the most common dragonfly sitting on the leaf, it didn’t hang around for long but i did manage to get a photo. This one is a male.