Today's theme is nature reserves so a fine opportunity to visit our nearest - Walthamstow Wetlands. This is a large expanse of reservoirs - still a fully operational Thames Water site and the main source of water for 3.5 million people. Up until recently that's all it was and only anglers would really visit it. You could also put £1 in a coin box to buy a day pass to wander round.
But in October 2017, it opened as a nature reserve widening access to more people and providing visitor facilities. You can also walk or cycle a green way between it and Woodberry Wetlands further west. Down sides, you can't just go in (having paid your pound) at any time as it has proper opening and closing times (though we never did that more than a couple of times anyway) and you hope the large visitor numbers don't disturb the wildlife. Birds will have been stopping off here well before its nature reserve status, it being such a large landscape of water sources. But they do regularly close off large sections of walking routes through the year depending on what's breeding, nesting etc.
I cycle through here regularly but in the spirit of wild, I got off the bike and walked round the southern reservoirs and it was a lovely sunny day for it. Birds were tweeting, herons poised on the bank, egrets on the island. Cow parsley, mallow and bird's food trefoil were the most common wild flowers. Elder flowers coming out too and damselflies flitting about the streams. Didn't spot the kingfisher going to and fro from its nest I'd heard about from a couple of birders.
Ian