Well, with Fiona and Clifford but not Miles because he was zonked with a nasty cold we did the first walk of the holiday a glorious 8 mile pad around York. Fiona loved Homestead Park gardens and they have a new wildflower section there and after enjoying that we trekked into the center and on to the York Uni campus. The weather was sultry and this was reflected in the very quiet and calm ducks we saw at Derwent College lake and when sat down having a rest I unsuccessfully tried to get one of these ducks to put its head in my old Cornish Pasty bag so it could nibble the crumbs . No chance , ducks are not daft ! Good fun though and the activity was terminated by my youngest son telling me quite affectionately " Dad I'd better take that off you now" Which he did . Ahhh hes treating me like an old man. Ummm. Further down the lake we saw a Great Crested Grebe a young one , so they had nested somewhere on the lake after all but whilst viewing this bird with the binoculars we looked up and saw a huge seagull through this transparent roof and what looked like a fish . "Ignore the seagull" my little brain said but then there were several short stabbing thumps and the seagull had a live fish up there and was busy stabbing the thing to death. Isn't nature so nice !? There was a fair bit of red flesh showing and as we moved further down the lake we saw the seagull wolfing down the fish in chunks. Its never boring . Trotting off over the Walmgate Stray we saw a gorgeous Bullfinch and it was doing its single short tweets , not those tweets , because this little bird was in a tree and it is well known that our feathered friends only access the net when perched on phone lines . And yes they are recharging their batteries when they are perched on power lines. Oh, must get this in on the way down that very unnatural nature reserve called the A19 motorway we saw a huge Buzzard circling in a cornfield . Nice . Anyway back to the Stray; the allotments at the end were full of birds and overgrown with produce on its way to what looks like a good harvest . A good , humorous and fit warm up for the rest of the holiday and Fo was pretty tired when we got back to the car and slept most of the way back to Darlington! Start as you mean to go on!