On
the walk down to the train station I pass the swimming pond. The pond is now frozen over and soon the ice will be thick enough to skate on. But on hot
summer days it is full of locals enjoying the cool waters. This is
not a swimming pool as we Brits know it. It is fed by water from the
local brook and is a place for nature as well as humans. In the
spring and autumn the water is sometimes disturbed by carp rising to
the surface and returning to the depths or by flies breaking the
surface as they take their first flights. Occasionally a heron
patrols the shallows and for a while an enterprising fisherman had a
boat moored at its side.
I
remember how there used to swimming ponds in England like this one.
There was a ruined one a few minutes walk from my Cotswold town,
where the more adventurous kids used to swim even though
it was silting up. The rest of us would cycle to Stanway, where there
was still an open-air swimming pond, with wooden changing cubicles
and mown grass on the water. These attractions have all gone, no
doubt considered unsafe and unhealthy.
A
year or so ago I was walking past the pond when I was amazed to see a
black stork wading in the water. Whilst white storks are a common
sight in villages and fields throughout the country, the black stork
is an altogether rarer sight. The black stork is a shy bird, avoiding
humans and restricted primarily to the forests and lakes. I suppose I
should not have been as surprised as I was, after all my village
borders the Boletice forest, which for many years was a restricted
area. But still I had never seen a black stork at the pond or indeed anywhere
else before, and I have not seen one since.
