A National Truss – sorry, National Trust – day and a bit of a conundrum. Beside the village of Oxborough lies Oxburgh Hall. Why the different spelling, I wonder? Go figure, as Amerispeak would have it. Along with woodland walks, the property and grounds advertise a river running through it and a moat, so perhaps something for everyone.

We parked and a very cheerful NT lady scanned our cards to let us in, pointing us to a handy-dandy map of the grounds with the various walks available. She told us otters had been seen in the river so I toted my camera, just in case.

Naturally, no otter offered itself as a portrait subject. A small bridge crossed the river where some dragonflies were active but again, they didn’t seem intent on offering themselves up to be recorded on pixels. One of the problems is that I’m so familiar with most of our UK species that I now only press the shutter if I think the picture would be at least very good, or for species with which I’m less familiar like the Scarce Emerald Damselflies (Lestes dryas) of yesterday.

We stretched our leg around the extended version of the woodland walk and ended up back at Oxburgh Hall itself. The hall is absolutely clothed in scaffolding. [Perhaps then, National truss is closer to the mark.] This renovation must be costing an absolutely mint which, with an annual income [2020] of £680m, the National Trust can probably well afford.

Remember the moat. Clothing a large building surrounded by a wide moat in scaffolding is no easy task. Concrete support plinths had first to be installed to support said scaffolding beside the hall and its watery footings. Though it did, of course, rather ruin the appearance of the building , it made for an interesting sight. On balance it was slightly less bothersome than travelling all the way to Cambodia only to find Angkor Wat clad in scaffolding and tarpaulin.

There was quite a good collection of dragonflies calling the moat home; I think I counted five species but, once again, it really wasn’t worth using the camera as anything more than a telescope for identification.

We had a second failure at finding a decent pub. That is, we found a very appealing looking restaurant/bar with nicely shaded garden tables in the village of Oxborough but were met at the garden gate with, “do you have a booking with us?”. “No, do I need one?” Apparently I did – they were fully booked. Clearly this establishment had pretentions above that of bar.

All I wanted was a blasted pint. Whilst there are some real positives from our lockdown/pandemic situation, this is not one of them.

This always makes me think of 101 Dalmatians; Pongo, if memory serves, was the father of said batch of painfully cute Disney Dalmatian puppies. Ya gotta love ‘em.

A pingo, on the other hand, is “a periglacial landform”. So there! To use another wonderful piece of gobbledegook, they are “intrapermafrost ice-cored hills”. Wow! No, I have little idea what that really means, either, tough, with a dictionary, I could probably work it out. In more simple English, a pingo is a depression in the soil, caused by some Ice Age action. Most are of modest size. Though it is a pond, pingo is apparently Eskimo-speak for hill. In short, and if I’ve understood this correctly: ice hill forms, gets covered in soil, warms up, ice melts and the soil collapses into a hollow which gets filled with water. Pingos can be found in many places including Siberia but those remaining in Norfolk – many fell victim to the plough – are important wildlife sanctuaries.

Thompson Common is a Norfolk Wildlife Trust site littered with pingos. The pingos, being excellent fresh water breeding habitat, are littered with dragonflies and damselflies. One of the damselflies is a bit of a rarity that likes the specific sort of habitat offered by some of these pingos and that I can’t see anywhere near home. Hence our British summer trip.

We are just a handful of miles from the village of Thompson where there is a waymarked 8-mile trek called the Pingo Trail.

In common with some other Wildlife trust sites, the NWT Thompson Common site is less than obvious – one might almost say hidden with no sign declaring its presence. First of all, it’s tucked behind a lay-by on the A1075. One has to drive through the lay-by onto a rough track whereupon it still isn’t obvious. Immediately right, surrounded by trees and bushes, is a secret car park for about 10 vehicles, if all the vehicles park considerately. From here, begins the waymarked Pingo Trail. The ardent dragonfly enthusiast, however, should ignore this and instead look for the almost concealed entrance, buried in vegetation, to the NWT Thompson Common reserve itself.

After a hundred metres or so, you come across a few pingos in woodland. I have been here once before but I can’t remember for the life of me how I found it that first time. Access then seemed somewhat easier. Now I found myself searching for quarry whilst balancing on the rounded trunks of trees fallen beside a small pond, a pingo. I may have thought I had my balance sorted but when I put my eye to the viewfinder, all visual reference went and I wobbled alarmingly. Surprisingly for me, I managed to avoid taking a tumble into the pingo. Even more surprisingly, whilst wobbling, I did manage to get one or two keeper shots of my Scarce Emerald Damselfly/Robust Spreadwing (Lestes dryas) quarry. It must be said that I did better on my first visit.

Further along, the track opens out into heathland where there are more pingos. An end of term school outing was just having lunch after finishing an organized pond-dipping trip. They were no problem, happily. I searched a couple of these more open pingos but most of what I found were “regular” Emerald Damselflies/Common Spreadwings (Lestes sponsa), of which I have plenty at home. These two species are quite tricky to distinguish and having both in the one habitat makes life awkward.

We ended up chatting to two of the responsible adults who were clearing up after the kids exploits. Then we decided to go in search of an appealing pub for some refreshment. We found the refreshment but the pub, which was actually hidden from the road otherwise I’d have driven past, was less than appealing, offering nothing more than a gravel car park and brick wall as a view. Just the one drink, then.

Successful but not staggeringly so.

We’re back in Nelson’s county, good ol’ Norfolk, but not anywhere near the Broads this time; we’ve come to Thetford Forest to enjoy the English summer which, this year, appears to be about a week between 15th and 23rd July. Let’s hope we may be treated to a bit more later.

The Caravan Club has a campsite situated in Forestry Commission land; an area that was, in 1944, the base camp of the 7th Armoured Division, better known as the Desert Rats. Following the division’s heroic exploits in the North Africa campaign against Rommel, the division was in England for only five months of its existence to prepare for the invasion of Hitler’s Europe. Most of their training seemed to be concerned with becoming familiar with the Cromwell tank.

A Cromwell tank named Little Audrey I, somewhat sadly a replica, now stands guard on a memorial plinth at the entrance to the approach road. It looks small, as if a German Panzer would’ve made mincemeat out of it. Driving in past the tank is just a little surreal. Today’s campsite is secluded being surrounded by trees but the approach road feels decidedly military – flat, straight, utilitarian concrete.

Arriving just after midday, Guillaume found a very pleasant, tree-shaded pitch that didn’t stare at other units. In worse weather this would’ve been a very drippy pitch but given our forecast, we felt very lucky to find it vacant, shady as it was.

A 2-mile memorial walk has been created through the forest that now surrounds the modern campsite. After the business of getting installed, we went off for a leg stretch to follow the Desert Rat symbol; really a Jerboa (it says here). The jerboa itself left after that first signpost, the remainder of the walk being marked simply by arrows.

There’re a few information boards scattered along the early part of the route, though nothing terribly scintillating. What I found most interesting were the couple of earthworks remaining showing where the army’s favourite Nissen huts had been. It was fascinating to see an example of nature reclaiming territory after the disruption caused by the construction of an army base, or any other human activity, has gone.

A couple of Nissen huts remain to remind us what they were like. This is what remains of the NAAFI as was.

The remainder of the route was really just tracks, gravel roads and concrete paths that led us on a loop back through the surrounding forest to the campsite. A pleasant enough leg stretch, except maybe for the gravel road.

Just to complete the saga, our last day was a bit mixed with a fairly stiff breeze but occasional spells of sunshine (plus a rain shower).

We met with a friend who used to belong to our photographic club, who now lives in Norfolk, and introduced him to another boggy slice of his adopted home county, Alderfen. Having found Variable Damselflies (Coenagrion pulchellum) at How Hill NNR yesterday, I was keen to see if any had emerged at Alderfen, just for the county records.

After a VERY slow start spotting just two fleeing Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula), things looked up a bit when I spotted two Variables in a grassy patch just as Francine spotted two more beside a small inlet. They were keeping very low down in the vegetation to shelter from the wind and I don’t blame them. Male Variables generally have a broken antehumeral stripe, said to look like an exclamation mark. This one has such a broken stripe that it looks more like a full colon. Well, they ARE variable.

Further along the stream track at last a Large Red Damselfly posed long enough for for those of us who wanted to to get a crack at it; it  still kept low down but at least it wasn’t obscured.

Almost back at the cars an unusually cooperative Orange Tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) sat on a particularly photogenic dandelion clock and that got all three of us excited. Francine even managed to catch a glimpse of orange with the wings partially open.

It had eventually been better than expected but ‘t was time to retire to the pub and reminisce over a pint or two. Well, the pub is right next door to our campsite.