Bills Posts

About this time last year, we went to Thursley Moat, a nature reserve nearer to Guildford than us, with the objective of photographing dragonflies. I can assert with a high degree of confidence that photographing dragonflies without the right equipment, and lot of patience and even more time is pretty much impossible (the right equipment is debatable e- what is that). I think with patience and time I might be able to get a lucky picture. I didn’t, by the way, get any pictures of dragonflies.

What we weren’t expecting and what I did manage to get a few pictures of was the family event of the Elstead Paper Boat race. This is where highly competitive families build boats made entirely out of paper & other non-polluting products and put them on the lake to see whose lasts the longest before disintegrating. We weren’t expecting the place to crowded, luckily we had arrived in time to get parking spaces.

We did have a lovely walk around the area with the other members of the Gosport Camera Club, and after that retired to the Three Horseshoes Pub in Thursley for a (in my case) a lovely lunch of roast lamb and all the trimmings, followed by what I can only describe as the best key Lime pie I can ever remember eating. A deliciously limey flavoured almost mousse consistency on a cholcolate cookie base. Absolutely delicious.

This picture is there for two reasons; It is a living creature, it is not a spider. I do have a picture of a spider in my collection. It’s one I caught with a glass.

I had to get the lawn more out. To do that I had to move a couple of sets of shelves. Before I could do that I had to clear away the spiders webs. Which comes to the heart of the problem, I’m afraid I really don’t like spiders.

I will go out of my way to catch one if I find it in the house. This is not about that though. It’s fairly early in the year, and yet the spiders are going wild in the garden, there are webs all over the place. I had to brush some of them away, even that I don’t like doing, but I am sure that they will have built something by the morning.

As much as I don’t like them, I can’t help admiring them, and a proper spiders web is really quite beautiful. I just don’t like running in to them, and there are loads of them in the garden.

This walk will be a bit different because I have to organise it for The Gosport Camera Club. The plan is through the summer quiet period before the 25/26 season kicks off, I think in early September the club will suggest a few activities, including a number of walks.

The next walk (not mine) will be around the Allotments in Alverstoke. Mow they should be quite interesting; perhaps some old sheds built in weird ways and opportunities for macro pictures.

I had the idea of celebrating the different styles of architectural styles on the high street.

I’m really sorry, I’m not going to type any more tonight, I’m falling asleep as I type this.

There were two Egrets at the Cockleponds this morning. One of them a bit nervous, and flew off when I was within about 20 yards. The others seemed much less bothered and let me get about 5 yards away from it. Quite lovely. Definitely my reward for getting up for the morning walk.

Parts of the rest of the walk were a bit of a disappointment, McDonalds has gone back to slow progress – in my eyes at least. I’d hazard a guess and say that in normal construction terms, things are progressing normally, but I don’t really know.

Definitely disappointed that demolition of the bus station hasn’t started. They had many opportunities whilst the machines of demolition were on site, but they were never used, and have now gone. Of course, they could have come back today.

Not much happening on the high street itself, but that’s OK.

There’s something about trains that I love. Pretty much any train is very photogenic (this is all my opinion of course). It doesn’t matter if they are in motion or stationary.

If I’m on a station platform, and there are no barriers in the way, I enjoy walking the length of the platform. It’s just interesting to explore. I feel sad that the days of the mechanically operated semaphore signals have nearly all gone. I enjoy watching them work.

Over the holiday, we travelled on the Eurostar which was a very smooth ride, Once we had transferred across a very busy Paris to board an SNCF train, which took us to Basel touching on occasion 300km/hr.

The DrachensfelBahn was an enjoyable experience, which I am really glad we did.

I’m reading an article about a chap called Paulo Freire. Paulo was a Brazilian educator. He developed a “philosophy of education” . Based on his experiences of working with people in Brazil who had very low literacy rates.

My very simple understanding is there there is conflict in conversation. Paulo talked in terms of oppressors and oppressed, and what needed to be done was to challenge the social order by getting the oppressed to think critically and ask questions.

Why am I talking about this? I was thinking about community media and the need for communities to have a voice. I think Gosport’s voice could be better. I have to say that I found the article to be quite interesting, and my attempt to paraphrase could be better.

OK, I hope this post isn’t too political. It is a little bit incoherent, but hopefully some of it does make sense.

Today’s picture bears no resemblance to the topic. It’s one from yesterday’s trip on a boat. As we were heading towards Old Harry, we were accompanied by a lot of small craft, all determined to get to see the lonely stack. The transit through the narrow straight covered by the Studland ferry is a bit of a free for all, and a race to get past the ferry, which has an absolute right of way.

By all accounts the transit through the entrance to the harbour. Notwithstanding the chances of collision with the ferry, the thing to avoid being sucked under which has apparently happened in the past.

Apologies, I’m having the occasional font issue, tonight’s post is a bit all over the place.

As per the title of today’s post, we had our first BBQ, and accompanying the meat was a very fine salad prepared by Elayne. Very nice it all was as well.

Well, most days do start like that, and each day in some subtle way is different, and this one was no different, in that it was different, look I’m beginning to confuse me, so let’s just get on with it.

We had a taxi booked for 0720, that took us to the Fort Blockhouse car park, where we boarded the coach for the Gosport WI (Women’s Institute) and Men’s Shed Day out. The trip took slightly longer than expected, we had to go an alternative route due to an accident on the A31. But we still arrived at Poole Quay in plenty of time.

To board the Fortuna a boat that runs pleasure trips around Poole harbour, and around to Swanage, which was where we were supposed to be heading today. Except we couldn’t as the sea was too rough. It wasn’t really that rough, but for some people on board the prospect of getting off a boat that was bouncing up and down by a couple of feet just wouldn’t work. So, we ended up getting as close to Old Harry as we could before turning around and heading back to Poole.

The outbound and inbound parts of the tour around the harbour were both very interesting. It would have been nice to have gone ashore at Brownsea Island, but it couldn’t happen. Seeing the Sandbanks ferry from the seaward end was fascinating and would I want to live on Sandbanks Millionaires row?

We returned to port and boarded the bus for the trip to Swanage. I think the highlight of the journey giving my sister, Meg, a wave as we went past. The travellers were well made up with it.

We had a good chunk of time in Swanage. The pasty for lunch was very nice, a bit of a walk around and shop browsing (yes, of course I bought a book – what would you expect)?

Boarding the train to Corfe Castle the journey only takes about 20 minutes, but it is always enjoyable,

We boarded the coach for the journey home. This time, the other side got to give Mag a wave, it was really lovely that every one got involved.

We got home just after 1900, have had a slightly tiring but really enjoyable day out.

St Pancras Station is very photogenic. We had a bit of time before processing through border control. I really quite like the colour and lines in the picture.

I’m starting to think about getting g back in to the normal swing of things, so that means what to consider for this blog, and also re-starting my Facebook entries. Luckily there are still a few things from the holiday that I can talk about.