This is a photogaphic blog with a particular focus on walking the Spanish Caminos. Also included are walks in The New Forest, Wales and Southern England.




29th March. Nearly consumed by a quivering bog!!

A quivering bog is a stinking pool of unknown depth covered with a 'skin' of moss and grass, a little like the skin on a rice pudding.
So, I was walking along quite happily when I had a 'I've just entered a minefield' experience, swore loudly and retreated quickly. Upon regaining composure I gingerly walked back onto the bog and moved  my legs to make the whole of the area 'quiver', and it really does wobble like a water bed! This photo looks rather innocuous. I pushed one walking pole into the 'skin' and the other one right through it. It didn't get to the bottom!! It's like something out of an old Tarzan film or Hound of the Baskervilles. Hmmm.... Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived (and is buried) near here.
 
















Foam ripples in the stream.
















Holly


















Bomb crater pond.
















Half the ponies were laying down. Is it the weather?

26th March - WW11 archaeology.

On a recent walk in the New forest I found this. It's a WWll direction marker for the aircraft that tested bombs in the thousands of acres around Ashley Walk. Here's a link with more information:



Next to it is a compass with 2 metre high letters made of chalk. They have lasted so long because the local plants are acid loving and can't grow on chalk.

















This picture of cattle I took a few weeks ago. Behind them is a hill which looks like a huge burial mound and confusingly is close to Iron Age burial mounds. The next photo shows the hill from a different angle and the third photo shows the pond again.















































The picture above shows the same area in 1945. The concrete structure is about 100 metres x 50 metres and is an exact copy of a German U boat pen. It cost £250,000 to build during wartime and was so immense it couldn't be blown up using explosives so it was buried instead and created the hill. I don't think either of the craters are the current pond. It was made by another Tallboy bomb which made the smaller of the 2 craters in the photo. The large crater in the photo was made by a  10 ton Grand Slam bomb and both have been filled in.

On the same day I walked through areas of gorse that have been burned to restrict their growth. This pony was happily crunching its way through the carbonized wood.


















This is some of the unburnt gorse, smelling strongly of coconut!!

Wales - Brecon Beacons 19th March

Oh joy! - the sun didn't stop shining. Wales is not unlike Galicia - hilly and damp, but not this weekend.
It took less than 3 hours from Salisbury in the Friday rush hour and with the lighter evenings it makes a weekend trekking in Wales an easy option. Oh, by the way, the pilot walked away from the crashed plane with only minor injuries!!
























4th March 2011

For the first time in about a month I was able to do a long walk. The weather was glorious - cold air temperatures but very warm in the sun. Looks like the first signs of Spring are here! As usual the walk was in the New Forest.