From England

 I really like this card from Andy in England. Season freak that I am, this is a perfect card for me as it shows seasonal changes, some ‘wild’ animals, and historic buildings.  A great combination.

New Forest

Even I have hear of New Forest ponies , which I had rather thought were wild, however these ponies, although they roam where they want in the forest, actually all have owners, and also a kind of caretaker called an Agister who is responsible for their health and wellbeing.  Once a year they are rounded up counted, marked and checked. The ponies are known to be hardy and friendly.  New Zealand has its own population of feral horses known as Kaimanawa horses  (or check here.)  These roam free in the Kaimanawa mountains area in the Central Plateau of the North Island, and are truly wild unlike the New Forest ponies.

 The right for the animals of locals to roam in the area of the New Forest has existed since the reign of King William 1^st  in 1079.  William was the first Norman king, after defeating the Anglo-Saxon King Harold in 1066 in the Battle of Hastings depicted in the famous Bayeux Tapestry.  Petty soon William wanted to hunt for deer and wild pigs and didn’t want any fences or anything to stop his hunt. So the people who lived in the area were not allowed to fence in their stock, but in exchange the stock were able to graze on Crown owned land.  The ‘forest’  wasn’t  then, and is not now, a forest in the sense of land covered with trees.  The term is used to describe an area of land which has been ‘afforested’ – purchased under law for the purposes of royal hunting. 

The New Forest has areas of wetland and heath lands and areas that are actual forest including trees that are 300-400 or more years old.  The two lower pictures on this postcard show some of the variety of landscapes that may be seen in the New Forest. This website – New Forest Images  – has more superb photos of the New Forest – well worth a look  whether you are a photographer or not!

The two buildings that are shown are the Palace House at Beaulieu Estate, and Breamore.

At Beaulieu Estate  , in the village of Beaulieu, on the Beaulieu River in the south-west of the New Forest National Park you can visit the National Motor Museum and the ruins of the Beaulieu Abbey as well as the Palace House!!!  Apparently you may encounter a ghost of the original Cistercian monks in the abbey ruins.

Breamore   is another historic home located on the edge of the New Forest. It is in the village of Breamore (strangely enough!) and there is also an historic Breamore Church which has been around since about 980AD.

One Blog or Two…..?

 As some of you will realize this started out to be my geocaching blog, but pretty soon, became my geocaching and Postcrossing blog, and then pretty soon morphed into a place for everything.

What I would like to know – is do people mind?  If you are a Blue Heeler fan, say, do you mind dog posts being mixed in with everything else, or if you are a Postcrosser, do you read the entries about other stuff?

I’m curious. 

I’m considering moving the Postcrossing stuff to its own blog, because it is different in that it’s not specifically about stuff I’ve been doing personally, it’s more research and facts and so forth – which some folk possibly find kinda boring.  I’m wondering if it might be better to have its own blog, where I could write more and longer posts with the history and research type stuff in them.

Or is it OK here, and people are happy with just skipping over the posts which don’t so much interest them? Or maybe you all read every post any way?

What do you think are the pros and cons of one blog or two? 

 If you have never commented before, now’s you big chance. You know you want to!!! And if you have commented before – I’d be glad of your opinions.

Raining. Again.

 The builder has been, put in a beam, and gone again.  If it would stop raining, he would get the Gib-board and do that.

Out the office/craftroom window. There should be hills in the background.

So we have been:

Sitting on the window sill

Sitting on window sill. Glaring at dogs.

Snoozing under the big desk (a kind human kindly rearranged her belongings so that there was room for two dogs.)

Snoozing Neve

 

Finishing off some Christmas gifts.

For a friend

Gifts for collegues

Now that the builder has gone, some of us will do housework. I guess the others will continue with sitting and snoozing. 

Tennis Ball Troubles

 Usually on a Thursday afternoon Ruger, Neve and I, with our friends Kaz (the human) and Tylar ( the canine) go to the dog park to play.  But not when it is pouring with rain. As it is today. So we didn’t go today, but I’ve been meaning to post some photos from another trip.

The general turn of events is that Ruger snobs the girls – certainly the canine girls – and devotes his complete attention to the true love of his life, his Frisbee. And the girls spend their time chasing and swapping tennis balls, while Ruger keeps his nose out of their games.  So the week that we went to the park with no Frisbee was a total disaster.  (See here for a lost Frisbee report.)

Ruger kept stealing the tennis balls off the girls (a tennis ball will surfice when there is no Frisbee avilable) and trying to carry two or three in his mouth at the same time. Which he can’t do.  So one or two would always get dropped, the girl dogs would not want to go and fetch them back, then Kaz or I had to go trotting down the field to do the fetching. And, as you know, that is NOT how the game is supposed to be played.  

So we had to mail order him a new Frisbee ASAP. We only got a few  pictures of the first day we went and played with it, but here are a couple:

i don't mind the grass really ...

I'm going to carry it all the way home and I'm not gonna drop it.

 Some dogs have  a different idea of fun…..

Mud?? Nope... not me. No sir-ee. I did not see any mud. At all. Not even one teeny tiny patch in the whole big paddock. I swear, I did not see any.

Tylar, looking laid back as usual. She is one cruisey Hunterway/Lab cross.

Dog Day Discoveries

A dogs’ eye view of renovations on Day One:

• Our water tastes really good now that our bowl is in a new place – we’ve been testing it every 10 minutes so we’re really sure.
• Mum – I don’t like that noise – but listen, I can make a louder noise – aren’t I clever???? Mummm… don’t you think I’m clever???? No?
• I do like this big desk Mum, only Neve could fit under that little computer table – I like this one more.  There’s plenty of space for a big dog like me.  Anyway, she’s too busy guarding Dad’s socks  to be bothered about sleeping under here.
•  I’m OK – I’ve got socks. I’ll be fine. I’ll just stay here under the clothes airer and guard Dad’s socks … I’m not too sure about that builder guy. He might want to borrow them.
• Hey, where have our biscuits gone … oh, out there in the hallway … yep, they’re still there…. Ok they are still there now… yea, they haven’t gone yet …. Alright, they are still safe out there now…..  yep…..that builder guy didn’t steal them yet…. It’s alright, they’re still fine ….

The reason why…

…. the office needs to be in a state such that people (and dogs and a cat) could function in there is …..

A beginning...

the builder actually arrived today, about half an hour after my previous post.   So now we start on round two of our renovations. 

He torn off a couple of bits of wall, drew some pictures,

Drew some pictures

measured some stuff, interrupted me about ten times to ask questions that he mostly had already had the answer to, went away to get some wood, and will be back again bright and early tomorrow morning, and every morning there-after until Christmas.

So  there goes any plans I had to sleep in from now until Christmas.

Stamp Collectors….

I  possibly have something you want …..

Stamps looking for homes

 

In the quest to restore my craft room/office/storage of teaching resources space into something resembling …. well, I’d setttle for a room where I can actually FIND stuff ….. I came across a pile ( hmmmm – truthfully – several piles of )stamps.  They used to go to a mission group, but the group doesn’t want them any more.

But if you want some of them I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. Because you’ve got something I want –Postcards!!!

So here’s what we’ll do. The first five stamp collecting people who leave a comment on my blog telling me that they want stamps will get some of them.  Similar to, but not exactly the same as, the example below –  around about 15-16  New Zealand Post stamps of different denominations with a couple of double ups, and a couple from the other random stamp creating companies we have here.  What you see is what you get in terms of the sort of condition they are in.

Similar (but not exactly the same) assortment to this.

Closer View 1

Closer View 2

Your email will be on you blog comment when I recieve it, so I will email you back and we will swap addresses. You will send

me a postcard – linkie here to my Postcrossing profile which explains what kinds I like.  And I will put your stamps in a little plastic baggie (geocachers have lots of those!) and in an envelope, and send them to you!  So you’ll also get a bonus stamp or two on the envelope.

If this experiment works I will do it again early-ish next year, as I will have more stamps by then due to the iminent arrival of Christmas cards.

Let me know what you think?

From Malta

 Today’s postcard is a private swap with Leena who joined up with Postcrossing almost the same day as I did, and contacted me to do a swap.

Blue Lagoon - Comino

This amazing blue is the ‘Blue Lagoon’ of Malta. The water between  the small Maltese island of Comino and  an even smaller island – or large rock – called Cominotto,  is so clear that it is an excellent spot for snorkeling.  Comino has – apparently – a permanent population  zero, three, four  or eight people (depending what you read), but is a very popular tourist location  with one 4 star hotel, so it seems that there is usually more than four people there!  Comino is also a nature reserve and bird sanctuary  today.  The Mediterranean climate on Comino has temperatures  ranging between 30 degrees Celcius in summer and down to 15 decgrees Celcuis in winter. There is very little rain so nothing much grows  there apart from wild thyme and a few other small plants.

The most prominent building on Comino is Santa Marija or  St Mary’s Tower (the white building in the middle of this picture.) It was originally built in the 1600’s as a watch tower in case of invasion, and was used again for this purpose during WWI and WWII It has also probably been used as an isolation hospital, an outpost to send misbehaving knights to, and a farm building.  It appears to the property of the Maltese Armed forces, but is being restored by the National Trust of Malta and one of the purposes it is used for is a watchhouse to guard against illegal hunting of the birds on Comino.

The most odd thing, is that never having heard or read much about Malta before, I’d picked up a novel at the library a few weeks ago but hadn’t started reading it until last week – to find that it was set in Malta!!!  The book is ‘The Brass Dolphin’ by Joanna Trollope writing as Caroline Harvey.  It’s an ok book – probably if it wasn’t set in Malta, and I wasn’t reading it at the moment, I probably would not enjoy it as much as some of the other Joanna Trollope books that I have read though.

Hosting Our First Event

We have been to a couple of other events and enjoyed hanging out with other geocachers, and it seemed like it was time to have an event in our local area. There are quite a few new cachers about, and there had not been an Event here for awhile. 

As it happened we had only a few locals, and just as many visitors (but we were pleased to see them anyway )  If we repeat the event next year, we will have to get it published sooner so that people have more chance to organize their time!!  It was a good learning experience anyway.  

Checking out Travellers

Hanging out in the Backyard

A Christmas Event seems the right place for these travellers.

We had a perfect weather day, sunny but not too hot, and a good spread of food thanks to everyone who contributed to the “pot-luck.”  After a couple of hours of eating, looking at coins, exchanging stories and picking up hints – with a few little Christmas gifts thrown in – some of us went off to learn about Wherigo and others to hunt out a few Coast caches that they had not done yet.

Getting our Wherigo instructions.

'Teacher' & 'Student!'

PB's first time with a Colarado

The Wherigo was at one of our West Coast historic mining areas, and our “task” was to use the coal and clay to make a brick to add to a chimney. Only a few people had a GPS that was capable, so these were shared around – along with their owners, and the rest of us got to experience not only finding a Wherigo cache but using a Colarado or Oregon.

View over the mining area. The chimney is on the left in the distance.

The Historic chimney

Bridge View

A little bit of scenery

Happy cache finder

 Later in the day some gathered again to clean up the rest of the food, and then a group went off to do a new local night cache in the company of the cache placer. I didn’t go on that little mission, but I am assured that a good portion of mud and creek crossing was involved.  I believe that at least one cacher went slip sliding away near to the final also!!!

Checking co-ords

Off into the darkness ........

This Week’s Postcards

From the USA

Common Loon with chick

This is a Postcrossing Official card from Five Pucks. The picture is a “Common Loon with Chick.”   As you can see on the postcard the loon has very dramatic plumage highlighted by bold red eyes. The winter plumage is not so vivid being more grayish and dull.  The Common Loon  is one of five loon species.  Common Loons   breed or migrate throughout the larger part of the Northern Hemisphere. They breed inland on freshwater lakes, then migrate to the ocean during winter. Loons seldom come on land.

As Loons are aquatic birds, they eat  mostly fish and small water creatures, which puts then high on the food chain of the lakes. The effects of chemicals from air and water pollution become concentrated in the loon which affects their behaviour, breeding and  consequently population levels.

From Germany

Another Official. This lovely family arrived from Hella in Germany. Now the most important fact one needs to know about the Dalmatian  is that it is one of the dog breeds that was used to develop the Australian Cattle Dog or ‘Blue Heeler!’

From the USA

This beautiful postcard comes from Kala, who has included quite a bit of information on her card already. More facts about Lake Superior can be found: here!

From Belarus

And last but not least is this awesome postcard from Pankk in Belarus. I have to confess that I didn’t really know where Belarus was so PB and I really did have to Google this one, and then actually went to the bookshelf and got down the big atlas!!! Pankk has been waiting patiently no doubt, as this postcard took 24 days to get to me.

The picture is of the European Bison (Bison bonasus).   The Belarus/Poland border is one of few places in the world that these animals live naturally in the wild.  There are around 300 on the Belarus side of the border and slightly fewer behind an impenetrable border fence, on the Polish side.  The wild population is descended from 54 zoo specimens from Germany and Scandinavia, as the original natural population finally died out in 1919.  The European populations are officially the ‘Lithuanian Bison’  rather than the ‘Caucasian Bison,’ as this sub-species is now extinct. Apparently there is some debate over the matter, but in general these bison are considered to be a different species to the American Bison.

So not only did I have not much idea where Belarus was, I had no idea at all that there were or had been bison in Europe. This Postcrossing  thing is really educational! (I know, I’m strange – I like learning about all kind of random stuff!!! :0  !