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The Dusty Roads Of Incompetence
Something strange is happening. We’ve been back from the Philippines for 17 days now and we haven’t seen a drop of rain – and I mean, not a single drop. And this is late March and early April, a time of year which historically brings in England the characteristic blustery winds of the former and the sharp, soaking showers of the latter, usually with a helping of hailstones like ping pong balls and often with the winter’s last throw of the snowfall dice. But no, none of it. Not even a day of drizzle. Not a drop. The earth is dry, the garden dusty. The cricket season has started in…
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Sun, Sea & Safari: Notes From The English Seaside
A short walk from our home – in fact, a very short walk, less a mile – is a dead end ditch-lined track known as Braggs Lane, which winds its way through farm fields to the edge of the woods between Herne Bay and Canterbury. The dead end is at what is known as Bleangate, one of the main entrances for hikers and ramblers to enter Blean Woods. Blean Woods, a large area of ancient woodland dating back centuries, is a designated area of special scientific interest due to its unique ecology and flora and fauna. Crossing through the centre of the woodland is a droveway which has been traced…
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Hungry for more……
It’s nearly three weeks now since we returned from our Costa Rica and California trip, three weeks in which we’ve visited family, spent time with Michaela’s Mum, hugged granddaughters and taken in a couple of football matches. In other words, three weeks in which we’ve covered most of our reasons to be in England and so now we’ve started to once again get itchy about travel. It goes without saying, now anyway, that the two years since we retired to travel the world haven’t quite gone according to plan, but we think we can look back and say we’ve been pretty resourceful and, in fact, the travels we have managed…
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Nesting Season Is Here Again
Along the stretch of coast between our home in Herne Bay and Birchington to the east, lies a sand/mud cliff rising almost vertically at the back of the beach. At this time of year, as reliable as clockwork, something happens here which makes this walk a little bit special. The colony of sand martins arrive here at the completion of their intercontinental migration, returning to their customary nesting holes in the sandy cliff. Nesting season from start to finish sees much activity, and from the nesting function itself through to so the frenzy of feeding feed the hatchlings. That time is here, and Michaela caught some of the action on…
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Pandemic Perspective
It’s hard to get through a day at the minute without hearing somebody somewhere say “it is what it is” in one situation or another. Whilst we don’t particularly like hackneyed phrases such as that one, we concur with the philosophy that if you can’t change something then there’s no point dwelling on it. We would hope that one thing which comes over on our blog is that we are both of a positive disposition; neither of us, thankfully, are prone to depression or similar, and neither of us are even what you would call worriers. So for the most part we have managed to stay upbeat over the 17…
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Lifted Spirits
Things are definitely looking better. The UK’s vaccination programme is racing ahead impressively quickly, and last Monday the Government released the so-called roadmap to recovery, with “earliest possible” dates for a number of the stages of the route to normality. For those of us waiting patiently to resume travelling the world, this is music to our ears. With some kind of perfect symmetry, these announcements coincided with some beautiful weather as early Spring sunshine brought clear blue skies and glorious days throughout the week. We even had a spectacular full moon – the “Snow Moon”, the second full moon of a calendar year. Living both near the coast and in…
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Cold Snap
Is it just me, or is anyone else irritated by the fact that, in the context of COVID, the world is referring freely to the “British variant” or even more geographically specific, the “Kent variant”, when ex President Trump was consistently vilified for referring to the pandemic as the “Chinese disease”? It’s called “COVID” because phrases like “Asian flu” and “Spanish flu” have been outlawed by the WHO as racially divisive, so how come the “British variant” is acceptable? Maybe it’s just me. Anyway, just as we sit here confined to quarters unable to travel, we get a little bit of the world – indeed a little bit of the…
