Colourful Berries

Friday 29th November 2013

There's been a lot of talk about it being Black Friday today, well,  we went to Romsey this morning and after tackling the queue in the bank and the crowds of shoppers we went to the Memorial Park for some peace, quiet and colour.  It may be nearly December but there is still plenty of colour to be seen.

I have looked this very stunning shrub up on line and it appears to be beautyberry.  The close up that I took was out of focus, but the berries are very tiny, very beautiful and very purple.

Yellow and purple, perfect.

Cotoneaster - the birds will be glad to have these berries to munch on in the depths of winter.

And that is that for today!

2 Million Steps!

Wednesday 27th November 2013

Twenty three months ago I was given a pedometer for Christmas.  This pedometer is fantastic, it records steps, aerobic steps, distance and calories burnt and I can download all the info onto my laptop. This year I have tried really hard to get out walking most days and I wear the pedometer only when I go out specifically for a walk.   I was aiming to walk a mile a day or thirty miles a month, well, I have well exceeded this target and today I achieved a milestone which I feel the need to record.  I have achieved 2 million steps in total, 1.3 million steps are from this year so far.  I am feeling quite epic!

23 months worth of walking!

East (Andrews) Park - Southampton

Tuesday 26th November 2013

After an attempt at Christmas shopping we left the crowds to it and went to look for three geocaches in East (Andrews) Park.  We had to use our best stealth skills to find the tiny magnetic containers hidden on or under park seats, but then we are getting quite good at being stealthy!  

The parks in Southampton are really worth a visit - back in the summer when we were out hunting Rhino's on the Go! Rhino's trail we said we would be back for another visit, well today was one of those days.

This information about East (Andrews) Park comes from Southampton City Council's website.

A Green Flag award winning park, East Park has the highest concentration of trees, shrubs, rose beds, herbaceous plants, spring and summer bulbs, bedding, ferns, grasses and bamboos of the Central Parks. It has a wide range of Alpine plants in the 1930’s built rock garden. The planting is typical of the Victorian’s love of plants brought in from all over the empire and beyond. This has been instrumental in the development of public parks across the country. 

A riot of colour and I love the building behind.

The wisteria pergola is still green and leafy and it's nearly December!

The Queen's Peace Fountain - with not a great deal of fountain action happening today!

The fountain was completed in 2001 and marks 56 years of peace and the service to the nation by Her Majesty the Queen throughout much of that time. 

The rockery garden.

Maybe we'll have a look around one of the other parks another day.

Lyndhurst and Longdown

Monday 25th November 2013

We had a mooch around Lyndhurst this morning, something I haven't done for years.  I was very surprised by the number of coffee shops and tea rooms, there's definitely no shortage of places to eat and drink that's for sure.  The shop window displays are looking very festive and the high street looks ready for the Christmas lights switch on this weekend.  

We attempted to find a geocache that required us to find out various things around St Michaels churchyard but we obviously did something wrong as the eventual co-ordinates on the sat map would have taken us to the middle of a field!! Ah well, you can't win them all!

Whilst in the churchyard we came across this grave.

St Michaels Church (at an odd angle because it's on a hill and I was down it looking up!)

The wind was very cold, whipping across the church on the hill so it was good to get moving and get back to the warmth of the car.   Talking of cars, we saw this for sale in the Ferrari garage, yours for £89,995 - very nice too!  

We then moved on to attempt cache number two near Longdown.  We saw about fifty dogs of all different shapes and sizes, most of which were being walked by dog walking services (five vans emptied out loads of dogs that seemed to run in all directions - I'm sure the people were in control really!) 

 We have been to this area before and it looked a bit like this;

but since then forest operations have been in full force and it now looks like this;

quite a sad sight.  However we did find the geocache so all was not lost!

Hale and Woodgreen - Between Downton and Fordingbridge

Saturday 23rd November 2013

Today we walked in an area we don't visit very often, mainly because we wanted to do a circuit of about nine geocaches in an effort to get our numbers up on a par with last year.  Hale and Woodgreen are north of Fordingbridge in an area of woodland to the east of the River Avon. We started off our walk in brilliant sunshine and blue sky with pockets of frost thrown in here and there.  We parked close to the River Avon so we had a quick look at the river before walking in the opposite direction.

The River Avon with swans on the bank.

Up a steep slippery footpath a short distance from the river was St Marys church, a very unusual looking place.  Luckily the church was unlocked so we had a quick look round then walked on past Hale House in Hale Park

St Mary's Church - Hale.

The footpath took us through Hale Park where there was a long avenue of lime trees which were covered in mistletoe, I have never seen so much in one place.  

Mistletoe in a lime tree.

A stitched photo of the avenue of lime trees loaded with mistletoe.

Looking down the avenue to Hale House in the distance.

Picket Well at the side of a small lane.

There was another cache close to this well.  Geocaching takes us to all sorts of places and unique structures.  We couldn't find out much about this well other than that it is a covered well and apparently the word picket in the New Forest area is used to describe something conical in shape, often a mound or hill.

Gorgeous sheep.

We completed a few more caches, frightened a male pheasant who was sat within a few feet of one, seemed to upset a beagle in a garden and passed these lovely young looking sheep, who also didn't seem too pleased to see us.

Back at the River Avon the sun and blue sky had gone. A very pleasant three mile walk.

Southampton Common - Empty Lake & Heron

Thursday 21st November 2013

We haven't walked on Southampton Common for a couple of weeks and since then the change in the colour of the leaves has been quite dramatic.  We found a tree with enormous leaves, take a look at this!

We think this is a Norway Maple leaf?

Scenic.

It was quite a surprise to find that the boating lake has been drained apart from a very shallow bit at one end that the ducks were making the most of.  There is a great deal of silt and rubbish in the bottom of the lake so maybe a bit of clearance is about to happen.

The swans are on the ornamental lake now and the cygnets are going white at last.

A heron was not too worried by us at the other end of the lake on the island.  Not a good photo but I had zoomed in beyond the point of no return!!!!!  At least it looks like a heron shaped blob!

Near Burley - First to Find - Sir Dudley's Ride III

Wednesday 20th November

We are officially feeling EPIC today, having achieved our second ever 'first to find' geocache. The cache was published yesterday evening and as no-one had been there by lunch time we decided to forgo tidying up the house and go for it!  The wind was icy and the ground as ever was soft, sloppy and muddy following rain this morning.  We were meant to be following a track of some sort according to the Sat Map, hmmmm there was no visible track anywhere just more mud.  Still we followed  roughly where the 'track' was meant to be and we got to our destination before anyone else - first to find at last - a difficult thing to do around our area as one particular person bags most of them at first light it would seem!  

First to find!!!  

Yippee (951 caches found and this was only our second ever 'first to find')

The name of this cache is Sir Dudley's Ride III - hence the title of this post today.

Not far from the cache, we crossed a waterlogged footpath.

Evidence of controlled burning.

A short section of decent track - all leafy and autumnal.

Testwood Lakes near Totton

Tuesday 19th November 2013

There was a freezing wind this morning as we walked at Testwood Lakes near Totton and it came as a bit of a shock as it's been so mild of late.  We walked a couple of miles, to the bird hide and back.  

Walking alongside one of the lakes to the bird hide, it looks idyllic but the wind was freezing.

Across the board walk.

The view from the bird hide.

The side windows in the bird hide look out over different types of bird feeders, one of the best visitors was this greater spotted woodpecker.  It stayed for a good five to ten minutes quite happily pecking at the peanuts in this feeder. Sorry about the quality of the photo, it was taken though a grubby window!

These are the birds we saw in just under an hour.

Green woodpecker                                               Chaffinch

Coot                                                                        Tufted duck

Moor hen                                                                 Mallard

Cormorant                                                              Great crested grebe

Canada geese                                                       Blue tit

Great tit                                                                   Wood pigeon

Black headed gull                                                  Blackbird

Magpie                                                                    Crow

Robin                                                                       Greenfinch

Pheasant                                                                 Starling

Goldfinch                                                                 Greater spotted woodpecker

Grey heron

and, lots of rabbits (sunning themselves out of the wind)  and a grey squirrel.                                                             

Warnford

Monday 18th November 2013

I found out today why we usually go out walking in the morning at this time of year.  We parked in Warnford and were aiming to complete a three mile circuit of about fourteen geocaches. Little did we know that the first few would be tricky little numbers that proved difficult to find but we are not quitters and find them we did!  Once we were in the mindset of the person that set the series we found life a bit easier (despite the clues being of no use whatsoever - in fact once we had found the caches,  the clues still didn't make sense!)  We were surprised that we managed to find all fourteen especially as at the last two or three we were under pressure from the fading light and by the time we got back to the car it was quite dark and there was rain in the air.

Opposite where we parked there was a field of watercress which smelt a bit odd!

One advantage of the trees and bushes losing their leaves is that little gems like this birds nest are easier to spot.  This one is very close to a barbed wire fence (see bottom of pic) a bit dodgy I would have thought!

Old man's beard and mud!

More mud - this is the footpath!

I wore my wellies, luckily, for this walk - great for keeping my feet dry, not quite so good in sloppy slippery mud as they don't have a great tread and I was doing my best dancing on ice impressions along a lot of it!

In the fading light we came across this perfect thatched cottage in Warnford.

One other highlight of the walk was a deer pronking (I love that word, it's so apt) very elegantly through a field of young veg plants.

Andrews Mare Pond Near Stoney Cross

Saturday 16th November

Today's walk was from Bratley View car park near the Canadian War Memorial at Bolderwood. We walked on a three and a half mile circular walk towards Stoney Cross to Andrews Mare Pond where we found a recently placed geocache and had a bit of lunch.   Here are a few photos from the walk which was mostly across heathland today.

We started out in sunshine.

Crab apples anyone?

Andrews Mare Pond - it's clouding over.

Looking a bit more threatening!

Plenty of holly berries at the moment.

A memorial in the middle of nowhere which reads;

This passage was made in memory of Admiral Murray who was killed whilst hunting in the New Forest 7th September 1901 on Backley Plain.

More destruction, this time the faller is a large beech tree

......and back to the car for a well earned coffee.

Anderwood Near Burley

Friday 15th November 2013

We are having our traditional Christmas family walk and picnic in a few weeks so today we went to the planned location at Anderwood to sort out a treasure hunt and get ideas for our walk.  

The leaves are gradually changing colour and the beech trees looked especially good today.

This pony came over to have a nose around, usually the ponies are a bit wary of humans but this one was lovely and friendly.

A New Forest scene.

And another one!

Funky fungi

We came across this fallen tree and fungi as we walked cross country to escape the mud and splodge of the track.

 The impressive colours of the beech leaves.

We walked a couple of miles, sussed out what we needed to for Christmas and had a picnic lunch.  As we sat eating our lunch we spotted a red admiral butterfly flitting around the outside of the car in the sunshine, it seems a bit late to see one now especially as it was quite cold first thing this morning.