RobboJan's Naturetrek: New Year’s Day Walk

Thompson Water – Thursday 1^st January 2015

Drew & Dawn (our Son and Daughter in Law) shared a lovely Roast Beef New Year’s Day lunch with a difference. After the main course and before dessert we went for a walk. We chose Thompson Water at Thompson, which is quite near to Watton. I drove them to the Range Gates at Thompson and while I waited in the car they set off to find Thompson Water, which none of us had visited before.

If you are wondering why I didn’t go with them; the answer is I have mobility problems and I can’t walk very far so I am always a little anxious about going anywhere where I haven’t been before but I really wished I was going with them.

I saw them disappear down the Peddars Way footpath while I scanned the surrounding area for any wildlife. I saw plenty of Corvids and Pheasants and a couple of Grey Squirrels including a very small one, which I presumed, was one of this year’s young. I did hear a Buzzard call but I couldn’t see any sign of it.

They eventually found Thompson Water and found a partially frozen expanse of water, which is part of The Pingo Trail and managed by Norfolk Wildlife Trust. A Pingo is also called a hydrolaccolith and is a mound of earth-covered ice that can be up to 70 metres high and up to 600 metres in diameter. Our area of Breckland in Norfolk is famous for its old Pingo ruins; Pingos, which have collapsed, are sometimes called Kettle Lakes. They were formed at the end of the last Ice Age, as the glaciers retreated they took the soil with them but left a layer of ice that when melted left a depression in the soil and filled with the meltwater forming a pond. The mystery is that some of these Pingos (the Eskimo word for hills) appear to empty and fill for no apparent reason. Breckland has by far the most of these ponds in the UK simply because in most other parts of the UK these landforms were simply ploughed up.

Thompson Water

They had Thompson Water to themselves apart from a family of Mute Swans, two adults and three cygnets. The cygnets appeared to have trouble with the ice; after all it would have been their first experience of it. Whereas the adults just crashed the ice the cygnets looked as if they were a bit confused as to what to do. Eventually they flew out of the ice, safely and unharmed. They took some good footage of the Swans, which can be seen on our YouTube Channel.