Herons, coots and goslings - grooming, housekeeping and babysitting

Coot Nest in Victoria Park

pencil and coloured pencils in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

On Thursday I decided to take my sketchercise in the early morning and headed out for the walk up the Regents Canal to the Ecology Park Ponds and Victoria Park.

I was waylaid by some very demanding red poppies in the meadow grass of the Art Park but arrived at the Ecology Pavilion Roof at the same time as the heron arrived at Heron Bridge. Below you can see my photo of the heron coming into land on the bridge - he never gives me much warning and I was lucky to get this!

Bert comes into land on Heron Bridge
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm afraid I have a habit of giving names to animals and birds that I see often. This Grey Heron has been named Herbert the Heron - or "Bert" for short. I think it's the same heron I see each time but I could be wrong.

He then proceeded to give himself an all over groom - all the time standing on one leg!

Bert takes personal grooming very seriously pencil in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

It took a couple of minutes for me to realise that this was going to take some time and that I could try sketching him as he changed posture - so I did - and you can see the results on the right.

I found when watching him that he had a number of standard moves - and a lot of it depended on how he held his neck and whether or not it was folded or in twisting mode

Tomorrow I'll post the drawing I did inbetween his changes of posture.

The second drawing (top) is of the coot nest which is right next to the Pavilion Cafe in Victoria Park. I can sit with my cup of tea on one of the outside benches and sketch this little family which are only about ten feet away. The most difficult bit was trying to work out how the ripples worked as the Mum and Dad busied themselves with housework and looking after the nest - which was of course now needs an extension as their kids are growing up fast and now need more room.

I love the way coots seem to find the largest things to put between their beaks so they can add it to their nest on the water. They are the soldier ants of the water birds!

Greylag Geese Goslings with Mum and Dad
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Finally, a photo of the other group of birds which I've grown very fond of in the last few weeks and that's the greylag geese families which live in Victoria Park. The Mums and Dads are most attentive and are often found standing around their brood on one leg, while the babes have a quiet snooze. I think this brood outgrew their nest a while ago!

My Sketchercise totals for Thursday were 7,548 steps or 3.57 miles

Links: Ecology Park Pond project plus RSPB links to each bird

• RSPB - Grey Heron
• RSPB - Coot
• RSPB - Greylag Geese
  

Formans and Fish island

Talking Exhibitions
8.5" x 11.5", pencil and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Our final stop on the Drawing London Group outing to East london last Friday was to Formans on Fish Island.

Fish Island

Fish Island is an area which is a real backwater in East London - east of the Old Ford area of Bow and north of Old Ford Lock on the canalised River Lea.

Fish Island is bounded by the River Lea, the Hertford Union canal and the East Cross Route, and is so-called because of its street names (Roach Road, Bream Street, etc).
Hidden london - Fish Island

Formans

We were visiting Formans which is a brand new restaurant and part of a family of companies all dedicated to smoking and selling fish. How apt therefore to find that it's located on Fish Island!

We had the pleasure of visiting their new building last Friday. It's absolutely amazing. The whole building has been constructed on the principle of it being the shape and structure of a slice out of a salmon - and it's a very vivid pink on the outside!

What's interesting about Formans is that their previous home used to be situated right in the middle of what is now the new Olympic stadium. They were the very last company to leave the site and Lance Foreman the Chairman conducted a very long battle to stay as long as they could so that the business would survive and relocate into the new building which was specially built very close to their original site. The process was recently the subject of a BBC2 programme and has also been the subject of a number of newspaper articles such as this one from back in 2005 Up in smoke: The firm that lost out in the Olympics.

I guess, at the end of the day, due to the fight they put up they probably didn't lose out. Although apparently at the end, the construction people started building on the site before the firm had left and all the Forman's employees had to be escorted in and out of the ground - in hardhats!

H Forman's is Forman's Smokery. It's the oldest established smokery in the UK. It also smokes the salmon differently from the way it's done elsewhere. They use a very traditional London Cure which many think is the best there is. We could see down into the commercial kitchen area where they were prepping fish.

We were given a guided tour of the operation by Lloyd Hardwick, the restaurant's Executive Chef. and learned that there are three other companies - the restaurant which is new, a venue facility (also new and attracting much interest as it's the nearest one to the Games site!) and an online food delivery for its gourmet food products which has been going for a little while (check out the smoked fish!).

So what you may say. Well I would do too - until I recognised a packet of their salmon - which I'd last seen on display in Fortnum and Masons in Piccadilly and they only stock the very best. It turns out that Formans also ship their smoked salmon to top class hotels all around the world all round the world from Bangkok's Oriental to Sandy Lanes in Barbados. So if you've ever been fortunate to eat any this is where it comes from!

This is the legacy we are getting in advance. Formans is a shrine to smoked salmon
Boris Johnson,London Mayor

Lunch

Lunch was simply wonderful - as you can see from the photo. These were the starters and they were followed by a Gourmet Fish Stew with mustard mash for my main course. For which I have one word - Yummy!

Having eaten a simply splendid lunch I wasn't at all surprised to learn, when I looked at the website later, that Lloyd had learned his craft from the Roux Brothers and subsequently became the first Executive Chef of The Tate Modern.

It was great to see a photographic exhibition in the restaurant - photographs of all the industries and companies which were displaced when the Olympics moved in.

The restaurant is very interesting as it's just a javelin's throw from the new Olympic Stadium - which is very visible from floor to ceiling windows. They also have a very good fish-eye (what else?!) webcam on the roof of the building from which you can see the Olympic Stadium. We just made do with the view from the balcony where we sat to sketch after lunch

At the top and below you can see a couple of my quick "after lunch" sketches - when everything suddenly seemed to simplify much more easily into large shapes!

Drawing on the Balcony at Foremans
8.5" x 11.5", pencil and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

All in all it was a splendid day out sketching, walking and eating.

...and at the end of the day out, all that was left to do was for me to walk home - down the very peaceful and almost rural Hertford Union Canal.

Links:

• Formans - the restaurant. Stour Road, Fish Island, London E3 2NH – Free Parking available.
• H. Forman and Son - the parent company and smokery
• Forman & Field - the fine food mail order company specialising in fresh, traditional British produce from small, independent producers.
• Forman's Fish Island - the closest independent venue to the London Olympics 2012 site
• The Forman's Live Fish Eye Webcam on 2012 Olympic Stadium
• The Forman and Field Blog
• Previous posts: Sketching the Olympic Park and Old Ford Lock - and some ancient tales

Old Ford Lock - and some ancient tales

Old Ford Lock, River Lea, East London
8.5" x 11.5", pencil and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This is a really ancient spot. There's evidence of both Bronze and Iron Age settlements along the River Lea as early as 2400 BC and also of a late Roman settlement around about Old Ford.

Old Ford is an area in Bow in East London and it takes its name from the place where there was a natural ford. In Roman times this was the most downstream crossing point of the River Lee. It was very important because at this time the Lee was a wide, fast flowing river which flowed into the River Thames and the extent of tidal estuary stretched this far up river. There are in fact a lot of rivers in this area and the Olympic site sits in the middle of them.

The Bow Back Rivers are a mass of river channels which is said to have formed when King Alfred dammed the River Lea in order to trap the invading Vikings upstream.

Old Ford is also where a pre-Roman track crossed the river. This track went all the way from modern day Oxford Street in the centre of London all the way to Colchester in Essex which is 56 miles north east of London and is also the oldest recorded town in Britain and used to be the capital of Roman Britain for a time.

The River Lee was used to deliver agricultural products and pottery from Hertsfordshire and places further north to Roman London. At Old Ford the goods were transferred so that they could to continue their journey into London along the paved road by wagon.

In other words "Old Ford" is just about as old as it gets round here!

It gets better. The story goes that in 1110, Queen Matilda, wife of King Henry I, fell while crossing the ford while on her way to to Barking Abbey - more or less at this spot.

As a result she ordered that distinctive bow-shaped, three-arched bridge should be built over the River Lee - but a mile south of the area where she fell which meant that the roman road now turned south to go to the new bridge. The new bridge was a huge innovation and was described as The like of which had not been seen before.

around 1100, Queen Maud, wife of Henry I, commissioned the construction of Bow Bridge – which landed on the western, or London side of the River Lea at Stratford-atte-Bow (now Bow) and on the eastern side at Stratford Langthorne (now Stratford). One of the first arched bridges built in England since the Roman occupation, this bridge was a technological wonder for the period. The original bridge was demolished in 1835, at which time the great Roman Road from Colchester to London was diverted through Stratford.

In medieval times, "Stratford" means 'paved street over ford' - thus the 'bowed' design of the bridge led to the area where the bridge stood becoming known variously as Stradford of the Bow, Stratford of the Bow, Stratford the Bow, Stratforde the Bowe, and Stratford-atte-Bow' (at the Bow). It's now simply known as Bow but forms the eastern edge of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

For those of you who know Chaucer's Canterbury tales, you'll remember that Geoffrey Chaucer immortalised Stratford atte Bowe in the Canterbury Tales

Ther was also a nonne, a prioresse,

That of hir smylyng was ful symple and coy;

Hire gretteste ooth was but by seinte loy;

And she was cleped madame eglentyne.

Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne,

Entuned in hir nose ful semely,

And frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly,

After the scole of stratford atte bowe,

For frenssh of parys was to hire unknowe.

Basically this means that the local priory had nuns who spoke French with a local accent. I suppose this could have been the forerunner of Cockney!

Old Ford Lock

Old Ford Lock is a paired lock and weir. It separates the River Lee Navigation (beyond the lock) which is the canalised river from the old River Lea (foreground). It's sited more or less where the ancient Ford used to be.

(Confusingly, there are also a whole series of locks on the Hertford Union canal which are also called Old Ford Locks - but more of those on another day as I walked home that way and I think I'll be going back to the sketch them!)

More prosaically, for those who can remember, it's also where The Big Breakfast House was located where The Big Breakfast was filmed. It was subsequently sold.

The show's greatest novelty was it's setting; a former terrace of 3 cottages in East London, once lived in by the lock keepers of the Old Ford Lock on the Lees Navigation Canal.

You can just see its roof above the trees on the right hand side - and you can see more in this slideshow which I found on the Internet. As the final slide says - just imagine Deep Purple played in that garden!
____________

This is the second of the sketches from my outing last Friday with the Drawing London group. I did it sat at the end of The Greenway - looking north. Hackney Cut (currently closed because of the Olympic Park development) is off to the right.

The first one was about Sketching the Olympic Park. The next one is about a property just past the trees and bang opposite the Olympic Stadium where we had lunch.

Sketchercise count: 29th May - 10,061 steps!

Links:

• East London History - how Bow became Stratford
• Wikipedia: River Lee Navigation; Old Ford Lock; Bow; Bow Back Rivers