A Mill, a Muntjac, and a Dog Named Larry

Tonight we find ourselves in Bath, England, after staying with Fiona's sister Mabel in Flitwick (pronounced Flit-ick, you don't say the "W").  There is an interesting old mill there across the road from Mabel's house, you can see the guy in the picture above carving the millstone. 

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We went for a walk last evening.  There are footpaths everywhere around this area, and before very long, we entered some woods with shady trails.  

There were some fields spread out interwoven into the woods, and in one of those fields and we were surprised to see a rather unusual looking animal. 

It was a ways off and the sun was going down, so it was hard to identify what kind of animal we were looking at.   Was it a sheep?  A deer?  It seemed to be neither fish nor fowl. 

In a couple minutes another walker came by with a dog.  Actually he wasn't walking, he was in sitting down on one of those wheeled trolley things like they have in Wal-Mart, and we was tooling down the trail.  He was quite talkative. 

He explained to us "It's a Muntjac!"  We were not exactly clear on what he was saying, he had a thick British accent.  Hunh?  A MunkJack?  A MunTack?  What, is it like a deer?

"Yes, it's sort of a short stubby deer. They were somehow released (or escaped) from a local wildlife refuge named Woburn Abbey." Do Abbeys have deer?  Like Downton Abbey?

Anyway I have included a picture of this beast, it's not the most impressive animal, frankly it looked kinda funky.  They're feral and kind of wander around nibble on plants.  

Like I said, the guy that was explaining this was riding along on his little motorized trolley with a dog.  The dog's name was Larry.  And Larry barked and charged at the "deer" and tried to chase it.  The man shouted out "Larry, come back here!  Get back here NOW Larry!"  

But the deer was completely uninterested.  The Muntjac looked at Larry, ignored him, and kept chewing his cud - if deer do that sort of thing. 

So the dog stopped and stared at the deer.  Larry seemed to be weighing in his mind: "If you're not gonna run, I'm not gonna chase you!" and eventually lost interest.  He turned and trotted back to his owner and they rambled off. 

All in all, it was a somewhat curious episode, both the weird animal, and the man on the trolley in the woods with a dog named Larry.

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Historic Bath England, where we are staying tonight, is the home of an ancient Roman bath site, hence the name.  This place goes back a few hundred years.  Apparently there were some thermal hot springs next to the river here, and the clever Romans converted them to a sort of public bath.  

There are still some existing bath pools, but you can't use them, they are now just a tourist attraction.  

  
  
We took the train to get here, which entailed a couple of changes during the journey including the London Underground subway.  It was a pleasant trip.




We are making our way to the trails through the Cotswold Hills, where we plan to do some hiking in the next week.   In the meantime we went to dinner in an old restaurant in a cave below the ground.  It was super cool.  

Tomorrow promises to be interesting, as we begin to hike ... hopefully.  Fiona's sister Mabel is traveling with us, and she is good company.  Unfortunately she is not up for much "off road" hiking, and Fiona is struggling with a knee injury.  The hiking may be rather limited.  They may end up shopping instead, although this place is a major homeplace and theme for the classic Jane Austen novels.