Soggy Birds - An Adventure in London's Wetland Centre

28/05/2019

After a very hot and sticky week, we found ourselves on a sunny Saturday with an urge to get out and enjoy the weather. The next questions were, where and how we wanted to enjoy the sunshine. We could have gone for a wander around Streatham Common and up to the gardens of the Rookery, however, both of us knew that this course of action would ultimately end in us having way too many pints in the Earl Ferrer's (I swear that place has a stronger gravitational attraction to us than the sun). 

John had a bright idea to go for a leisurely drive out somewhere, windows in the car down, the breeze in our faces and a carefully curated playlist. This sounded like a great idea. The reality, however, became apparent somewhere on Clapham High Street. Locked in traffic, sweating profusely and subject to some of John's more questionable musical choices (he maintains that it wasn't just screaming and that there was a song in there somewhere). I started to maybe regret our decision to go for a drive. 

Luckily for us the traffic was not too bad and we finally started moving fast enough to get a breeze on our faces. For the last week at John's work, roadworks had forced him to take a different route home, and he had been driving through the Mortlake and Barnes area along the Thames. We decided to head in that direction, as it was leafy green and pretty. It was whilst I was researching somewhere we could park near to Barnes Common that I stumbled upon the London Wetlands Centre. 

We were aware of its existence, but not being Twitchers and the Google images of the place making it look like a flooded field, we had never had a desire to go there. But it was sunny and we had a picnic in the boot of the car, so we took a gamble. 

We arrived and walked over a bridge across emerald ponds full of ducklings, reeds and a very fine statue of Sir Peter Scott. The entrance price was £15.50 each including Gift Aid. We refreshed ourselves with a coffee, because on such a hot day this made perfect sense (it wasn't because they had run out of iced coffee at all, no no no) and with that we entered the Wetlands. 

Passing by several gaggles (is that a plural of a plural) of geese we made our way to the otters. Ellie with her penchant for all things small and cute, was squealing with adoration within moments. The otters were, like us, enjoying the fine weather, but (sadly unlike us) were floating on their backs or darting in and out of their very pretty pond. One seemed content to be running around in small circles in and out of the water, and the other lazier otter was alternately preening on a rock or slowly swimming around in the reeds. 

After the otters, we wandered through the other habitats, each of which, for reasons we could not work out, was cordoned off with a small gate. Because you know gates are great at stopping winged, flying creatures! 

We saw herons, swifts, and more ducks than you could shake a stick at (seriously we saw black ducks, blue ducks, orange ducks, baby ducks, grumpy ducks, loud ducks and ducks which quite simply looked liked they would peck your face off as soon as look at you). The most impressive birds we saw that day were two enormous cranes. They bobbed, weaved and danced around each other, spreading their beautiful smoke grey wings to show off to one another. They did however, seem confused and less than impressed by the aeroplane flying overhead.

Our favourite part of the Wetland Centre was a winding maze of pathways in between tall stands of reeds and grasses. The website for the Wetland Centre describes itself as an "urban oasis just ten minutes from Hammersmith". Standing between the reeds, with dragon flies buzzing and not another soul visible the description as an oasis seemed very apt. You could not believe that you were in a city, much less the capital city of Britain. 

If time had allowed there was a whole other section of the Wetlands we could have explored, but with our impromptu visit and being too birded out, we decided to save this until next time. We did really enjoy our time, despite our lack of knowledge and/or interest in flying things. The Wetland Centre is a lovely escape in the City, and a great place to stroll on a sunny afternoon. 

So with happy thoughts, sweaty backs and Enter Shikari banned from John's playlist, we made our way back home. 

P.S I vetoed John’s idea to title this piece “Soggy Birds and Wet Chicks”.

Thanks for reading,

John & Ellie x

#adventuresofjellie