What on earth is a bat tower?

OK, so as Arthur is feeling a little better we went to Toys Hill in Kent.  It was very misty but also very lovely - great with kids as you get to places early enough that there is hardly anyone else there!

It was so lovely - apparently the views are meant to be great......clearly too misty for that.  It made me think of that poem by John Keats:

To Autumn, 1820:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

And it made me feel much better - it's good for the soul being out in the great outdoors with all those lovely colours.  I've had a few PND wobbles recently - think it's maybe tiredness (after the chinese takeaway? - MSG?) and those thoughts about how relentless it is keep creeping in, so being able to run around outside made a real difference.  I hate being stuck inside.

Anyway, whilst at Toys Hill we came across a bat tower - which excited Isobel a lot as she thought it was a castle with a gruffalo inside!

So, the good old National Trusty has turned this old water tower into a bat tower to provide a place for them to hibernate.  We had a peep in but nothing....then again, according to the rubrick it's only now that they start coming to hibernate there.  Think it was for pipistrelle and some other bats....