Strike a light.

It's easy to neglect some of the basic bush craft skills. Walking today I gathered the materials required to build a fire, lit from a spark. I had my 'Strike Force' fire starter, for the bulk of the tinder ball wind dried fern (any remaining moisture rubbed off in a pocket), peeled and gathered a small amount of the papery outer bark of Birch (high in resin), some honeysuckle bark (papery) and a small bundle of graded (bone dry) Birch twigs. On finding a suitable gravel stream bank we had a fire going within 5 Min's; a skill worth keeping up. It was only damp today, add wind and rain and it's something else again; practice now and save the pain later.

Robin Hood?

Any old iron?

The coastline here was protected through World War Two with a thick layer of defences, scaffold, barbed wire, mines and pillboxes; every year remnants of scaffold bar and joint along with re enforcing bar and barbed wire fixings are dredged from just beyond the intertidal.

Fallen defenders

Soon to be lost to the elements, gone from sight, lost from memory. A hand full of concrete 'Dragons Teeth' slowly tumble down the cliff side in a line, as if following each other to oblivion. There once were over a dozen of these pyramid topped defenders blocking the shallow leading inland, now only these three and one other badly eroded in the intertidal remain.

Winter Solstice Morning

By Yule the Holly kings' reign is done; the Oak kings' reign is just begun.

Longest night yields longer days; the Sun reborn returns our way.

Gather round family and friends; to celebrate now darkness ends.
In our hearts, beneath our feet; the seeds of futures dreams await.
Our march to spring is just begun; wassail to all 'till journey's done.

5000 people gathered at Stonehenge to welcome the new Sun and the beginning of the Oak Kings reign, we were not let down, the Sun rose beautifully; a good omen maybe for the coming year?

Solstice Moon

Solstice card 2011

Burley Old Winter

Picket Post clouds

Three Counties

Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire and maybe beyond.

Linford shade

The late afternoon threw long shadows across Linford Bottom from a low winter Sun, through the scene Linford Brook flows again, replenished from recent rains; inland an ominus grey blanket threatens the forest.

Making a splash

The winds blew white capped waves towards the shore at the beach today, as banks of bubbly cloud crossed the distant horizon, moving with purpose.

Sex

Graffiti never ceases to illuminate, educate and more often than not surprise and entertain me. Off a track through Wilverely enclosure (1809) is this masterpiece in human expression. On seeing this literary wonder a broad smile over took me as I thought about the motivation behind its creation; grateful, desperate or obsessed were my conclusions.

Old graffiti small tree

1856 reads the date, scribed inside a box with other, now illegible, words or figures; old graffiti, on what would appear to be a much younger tree. The graffiti, in style and form, is definitely 1800's, so the tree must not have grown with the vigour of its contemporaries.

Hengistbury

From Highcliffe the Sun goes down over Hengistbury Head, with the faint line of the Purbecks visible in the far distance.

Misty Holmhill

This spooky scene wasn't created by rolling mists nor was it taken it early morning or at twilight, rather the smoke from huge fires, the result of timber harvesting and clearance. A section of Holmhill enclosure, first created in 1681, is being cleared of a much later crop of mature coniferous trees; felled, stripped and stacked on the track side the bare trunks ready for removal.

Pollards past

Pollarding of trees in the New Forest was stopped in 1698 under the direction of the Royal Navy needing the Oak and Beech timber for shipbuilding in the ‘Act for the Increase and Preservation of Timber in the New Forest’. So, when you see trees of this nature they are well in excess 300 years old; these majestic Beeches at Mark Ash were already a good few years old when this act came in to force.

Fossil folly

Found a fossil, picked it up, tried to be clever and came unstuck. The autumn seas have reshaped the fluid clay cliffs of the Barton Beds; fossil rich deposits some 40 million years old laid down when the region was a expansive inland sea. Scouring the freshly exposed clay horizons I spied a fair sized sharks tooth from striatolamia macrota; a good example, it had survived unscathed throughout its geological journey. Trying to be clever I thought it would make a good photo placed amongst the shells and pebbles of the intertidal; and it would have, had a rouge wave not swept it up and returned it from whence it came all those millions of years before. I had to laugh, but will I have learnt the lesson?

Barton Beach

The common