A couple of weeks ago I went on an organised bike ride with a load of other women one Sunday morning. We gathered in the town centre and cycled out along the river to a nature reserve.
In fact, we passed through two other nature reserves before we got to our final destination, which I was rather excited about as I remembered I had a plan (a long time ago) to visit all the Sheffield Wildlife Trust nature reserves, and I only ever made it to six - the last being in 2015. I'm pretty sure there were only eleven when I started, and it seems there are now thirteen.
This is cheating slightly, as we only really skirted the edge of Blackburn Meadows, but I'm still claiming it. We also cycled through Salmon Pastures, the smallest of the Sheffield Wildlife Trust reserves (I've cycled through there before).
Our final destination was the Centenary Riverside reserve, number eight on my list. It's on the site of a former steelworks, and you can see more pictures of the development of the site if you click the link. Apparently at one time during the war they used an ex circus elephant to haul steel around the site.
Our final destination was the Centenary Riverside reserve, number eight on my list. It's on the site of a former steelworks, and you can see more pictures of the development of the site if you click the link. Apparently at one time during the war they used an ex circus elephant to haul steel around the site.
It was a bit of a grey day, and apparently the site looks much more beautiful in the summer when the meadows are full of flowers.
I did get a good look at a dragonfly though.
We cycled about eighteen miles together, and I'd already cycled two to join the group at the start, so once we got back to town I was very ready for a lift back up the hill to home. Sadly (for me) I had stupidly left our only car key attached to my own key ring, so Peter couldn't get into the car, and I had to cycle another two uphill miles. I wasn't in the best of moods when I eventually made it home, and the rest of the day didn't involve much activity at all.
I've got five Wildlife Trust reserves left to visit, and it would be nice to tick them all off before we move out of Sheffield (we're not going far, and I'll have to come back to the city for work anyway, but it seems wise to visit while we still live here).
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