Ashden woodland trip 2013

Just back from another camping trip to the woods, this time joined by friends from work and their families... A few intrepid campers started the outing on Saturday, and it was lashing it down with rain, so we opted to walk to a pub for dinner. Thankfully the rain paused for a few hours after that, so we did get to light a fire, drink beer and Jesse even entertained us with the guitar for a while!

The following morning (when the weather had dramatically improved!), our numbers were swelled by the rest of the group, and we went on a tour of the woods, looking for signs of wild boar activity and other wildlife...

Once back at the camp, it was time for lunch, and Sarah had brought along a Toyola charcoal stove. Toyola is one of our past winners at Ashden, given an award for production of efficient stoves in Ghana and a novel way of helping people to pay for them. It certainly did the job here, and we cooked some sausages in a pan on it!

It wasn't all about eating though, there were some woodland crafts going on too - here's Carla using a side axe while making a wooden mallet:

Time for a quick group photo...

Chainsawing is a bit antisocial, from a noise point of view, so we waited until most of the day visitors had gone before getting out some spare safety gear (PPE) that I'd brought, and having a go at cutting up some logs... So that was five people getting their first go on a chainsaw - when you live in a city, there's not always much opportunity to try this, but they all did very well!

The fine weather held right through until today, so we had one more chance to sit round the fire into the evening before the end of the trip...

Looking forward to the next time!

Mike

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August in the woods: logs and bugs

Thankfully it's been much sunnier this summer than last year, and there have been some good opportunities to photograph insects in the wayleave. I was particularly pleased with this shot of a male Souther Hawker dragonfly:

I got some more of another type of dragonfly too, but not sure what type it is:

Butterflies are also back in reasonable numbers, such as this Meadow Brown:

and this White Admiral (which was near our camp, rather than in the wayleave):

We've made use of the dry weather to finish moving logs back from further parts of the woods to near the camp:

We also squeezed a few chunky holly logs into the car to fill up the last little space in the firewood store at home:

Finally, here's a few views of sunshine in the woods, which was quite rare last year!

We've also have a few camping weekends, photos to come shortly from the most recent one...

Mike

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Airbourne 2013 - Eastbourne Air Show

We had a great day yesterday at Eastbourne Air Show, otherwise known as Airbourne.

The Red Arrows were the highlight of course, so here's the best of the photos I got (just using a Canon compact as well!):

Yes, this picture IS the right way up!

A Belgian F16 Fighting Falcon did an impressive show as well:

This picture was taken as it did an incredibly slow fly-by, very close to stall speed - impressive control from the pilot!

He let off a few flares as well, seeing as there weren't any fireworks...

There was of course a Spitfire, doing some impressive acrobatics:

And also the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, with a Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane:

A more quirky, but still impressive, show was put on by two Breitling 'wing walkers', which involved two people doing acrobatics while fastened to the top wing of two 70-year-old bi-planes!

And beneath all of this, a lifeboat was waiting - fortunately their services were not required!

Lastly, we also saw a JetLev...

The video shows how it works, it's a water-powered jet pack!

Looking forward to going to Airbourne again next year...

Mike

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