Author Archive
14 Aug 2010: Food for free
Hedgerows on the local footpaths are bursting with fruit – the expected blackberries, but also sloes, wild plums, apples, greengages and elderberries. Who could resist?
15 Apr 2010: The Chiltern Hundred
This is the story of a challenge that is quite different from, say, walking the South West Coast Path or some other long-distance trail. Nevertheless, it needs planning, persistence and ingenuity as well as the ability to complete a walk of around 26 miles, although that can be sub-divided into three shorter sections if you so wish.
21 Mar 2010: Reed-cutting
In this part of the county there’s very little wetland – so one local patch is looked after by the council’s countryside management service to ensure that this important habitat is looked after properly.
10 Jan 2010: Grand Union
Some pictures from a wintry walk along the Grand Union Canal in Milton Keynes. No snow on the ground but quite cold enough for the surface of this shallow waterway to be frozen.
29 Dec 2009: Making plans
We’re in the midst of terrible winter blues here. Short days, freezing weather, perpetual rain and gloom – this really is the climate of the British Isles at its worst and we could well have to wait two months for it to break and signs of spring to appear. It hardly bothers to get light before dusk is falling again. Time to plan a holiday…
29 Dec 2009: Flying west to Exmoor for the winter
Thoroughly fed up with the snow, the cold and the grey skies in the east of England, we fled west. A four-day break on Exmoor has given us an abundance of clear blue skies, mild weather and sunshine before we had to return home to the cold and damp and the refrozen slush on the verges.
12 Dec 2009: Stargazing
People who are interested in astronomy and the night sky are in for a treat in the next day or two as the Geminid meteor shower passes overhead on December 13-14.
12 Dec 2009: Geocaching catching on again
Geocaching is catching on again around here. It’s an activity we have a love-hate relationship with – sometimes we want to do nothing but, sometimes it drives us mad, sometimes we desperately want to avoid it and all who sail in it.
25 Nov 2009: Out and about in Fenland
Yesterday we visited a corner of the country that’s not often been on our itinerary – Fenland. The reason: to take a look at one of Britain’s most unusual hillforts, Stonea Camp.
15 Nov 2009: Coppicing
Time for the second of this winter’s conservation activities in our neck of the woods. A particularly appropriate phrase, that last one, since today we will be coppicing some hazel growing in a corner of a local nature reserve.
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January 10, 2010: 