Sunny Christmas

The weather on Christmas Day was exceptional, with bright sunny weather, unfortunately the temperatures remained low.

Here is Sue on Christmas Day with everything done and dusted for lunch.

Jane, Ron and Margaret joined us for lunch and we all had a great time.

The weather remained the same for Boxing Day so we took a picnic to the promenade at Bournemouth and ate our sarnies in the sunshine. There was a keen wind so it remained chilly. These are the beach huts at Branksome Dene Chine. Just around the corner someone was having a BBQ at a beach hut with lots of friends.

The beach at Branksome, it was very busy with most of Dorset and Hampshire promenading with their new bikes, scooters, roller skates and all things dangerous.

Another Christmas walk and another crop of photos. The next 2 photos were taken on Rockford Common just north of Ringwood.

Please note that this is the last post (sounds ominous) for this year's blog.

Next year's blog can be found at http://thebuchans2009.blogspot.com/

Winter Ramblings

This is the New Forest ramblers (shadow of) walking through Pennington Marshes.
This area was used for salt production many centuries ago. Pans were formed by building rudimentary sea walls on the mudflats and salt water was allowed in and left to partially evaporate. Complete drying was done in boiling vats. As this industry declined local farmers used the marsh area for grazing livestock.

This is a photo of the forest just north of Burley.

Winter is a good time to go to the coast, its possible to park the car without too much trouble. The structure is the new Boscombe Pier. One has to ask 'Is it finished?' It's very basic and I think they must have run out of money when buying the benches. Next year the new reef for surfing will be finished nearby.

Choose your beach hut. I think these might be the new design/colour that are available for sale.

The RNLI jetski - not a busy day.

There was no one on the beach and even fewer in the sea brrrrrrrr!

Sue and I were invited to join our Portsmouth friends help celebrate Christmas by joining them for ONE of their Christmas dinners.

This is me completing my 850th geocache. It was not in one of the best positions - next to the A338 spur road. That is the main road into Bournemouth.

Cirencester - November 2008

The Romans invaded England in 43 AD and built a fort on the site of Cirencester (Corinium). Soon a civilian settlement grew up nearby. The soldiers in the fort provided a ready market for goods made by the townspeople. The Roman fort was dismantled around 75 AD.

St John Baptist is one of the largest parish churches in England and has been a place of Christian worship for well over a thousand years.

The UK's tallest yew hedge. It costs £5,000 for a trim. Two workers will spend two days in a cherry picker cutting back six inches of growth from the 50ft high green giant at Lord Allen Apsley's 14,500 acre estate at Cirencester, Glos.
Nearly a tonne of clippings is produced and this is used as an ingredient in a cancer drug.

This sculpture of a Jacobs Sheep caused a stir when it was unveiled. Apparently the local residents would have preferred a sculpture of the local Cotswold Sheep, but the Jacobs looks better.


This is me doing an interesting geocache on the line of longitude, 2�W. It is the only line of longitude that coincides exactly with one of the lines of the Ordnance Survey National Grid. It's line 400000 of the National Grid, also known as the Central Meridian. It also runs the entire length of England: from just outside Berwick-upon-Tweed on the north-east coast to a couple of miles south-west of Swanage on the south coast - a total of 359 miles.

The cache is on this line.
Sue had an appointment at Salisbury Hospital so we drove down from Cirencester and had a few hours in the centre. This is 'Arundells' where Sir Edward Heath used to live.



Salisbury Cathedral - The cathedral has the tallest church spire in the United Kingdom (123m/404ft).

Bibury
The picturesque Arlington Row cottages were built in 1380 as a monastic wool store. This was converted into a row of weavers' cottages in the 17th century. The cloth produced there was sent to Arlington Mill on the other side of Rack Isle. The cloth was then hung on wooden timber frames on Rack Isle after being degreased at Arlington Mill. Rack Isle is a piece of land to the right of the photo.

New Geocachers? We met up with Jean and Graham Lee, Sue and I were at school with Graham (just a couple of years ago.....), for the day. We visited the Savernake Forest for some geocaching and to show Graham and Jean what it is all about.

Christmas Newsletter 2008

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