neil.baldwin – Page 44 – Neil Baldwin's blog : Warning contains walking, technology, photography, holidays.

Fungi exihibition

At the Aylesbury museum today there was a Fungi exhibition organised by the Bucks Fungus Group http://www.bucksfungusgroup.org.uk . Helen and I headed down with John and Sallie. We did not know what to expect, and we were pleasantly surprised, they had a long set of trestle tables, covered in samples of mushrooms, there must have been over 100 types there and they had all been found this morning with a 20 mile radius.
We had a good look round and John found an expert to identify the samples he had bought along. The people from the group were very knowledgeable, very willing to share their knowledge.
There was one that they had under a plastic bell cover, it was the famous Deathcap, apparently one mouthful would be enough to kill you. The poison is not filtered by the bodies organs, so the toxins circulate round the body doing more and more damage. After some time 10 to 16 days you die. One cure is to get a liver transplant, which has it’s own complications!
I bought a decision tree guide that takes you through the process of figuring out what is what.
It was well worth the effort of going to Aylesbury museum.

The devils pinch part deux

You may have read my blog post about the devuils pinch? Well it seems you don;t need to do much to get up high in the google ranking. After the post there was an entry in google 8th in the list. SO my theory goes that if I do another post I should go up the list, hence this post.

Made in Dagenham (****)

This is a film set in 1968 based around the strike by the female workers at the Ford Dagenham plant. They were on strike demanding sexual equality and equal pay for women. The film has some really great moments, and it really well filmed. They seemed to have gone to a great deal of effort to make the scenes as authentic as possible. I particularly liked the aerial shots of the factory behind some blocks of flats, they seemed to have coloured a black and white phot up and animated the smoke from the factory chimneys. The cast were really good I particularly like Sally Hawkins in all her films.

All in all a great film not quite 5 stars but well worth a watch.

Tenderness (***)

A Russel Crowe film, with an original script. A guy that killed his parents, is stalked by a girl who is abused, and they are both pursued by an almost retired policeman who thinks that the guy will kill again. The policmans also has a wife who is dying of some wasting disease.

If all that sounds cheerful this is the film for you. Some great shots, an original story line, and a good score.

Defiance (****)

Set in the forests of Belarus, during the German occupation. Jews are being rounded up and and transported to camps or killed.Three brothers end up living in the forest, and slowly more and more escapee Jews join them and they become a defiant community. One of the brothers joins the russians malitia and their two stories run in parallel throughout the film.
Based on true events the film gets the 4th star for being such a good story.

Mad dogs …

… and englishmen and women, go out in the Norfolk rain and wind. After the early start for the seal trip we had some time on our hands, so after coffee we decided to go for a walk out on the marsh in the wind and the rain.

Down the high street of Blakeney then at the quay turned right toward the wildfowl pond the take the restricted byway toward the sea, you then cross over the sea defences and can head out on to the marsh. On a nicer day there would have been lots of birds to look at, but today was not the day for that. We got soaked on the front side walking out and then the backside got wet on the way back in.

Back at the hut we had cheese sandwiches, and spent the afternoon watching a film. You might even get a film review later.

Panorama picture

Here is a panorama from some of the pictures that I took last night. I used the open source software called Hugin which you can get here.

Beans seal trip

We saved our seal trip till the end of the week, just as the weather turned. We wrapped up well and all wore water proofs, as it was pissing down with rain. We were all ready for the trip down at Morston Quay at 09:20 ready for the 09:30 boat trip.

There were some clearings in the clouds but they were not heading our way, the weather was coming from the NW and it looked grey, from that direction. We got under way and listened to the safety talk, the two crew were ones Helen and I had done a trip with before.

Every so often a wave would break over the bow of the boat and get us a little wet. There were plenty of birds on the move across the marshes and flying low to the water. The boat headed past the old lifeboat station on the point, then out towards the end of the point itself.

The seals all congregate at the end of the point, there were about 60 lazing around on the sand bank and every so often we could see some floating in the water with their heads visible. After a few loops around the boat sped up and headed back to the quay. In all the trip lasted just short of an hour, which given the weather conditions was long enough.

We headed back to the hut for a well earned coffee and biscuits.

Mixed bag day

The weather so far had been great but this morning it did not look as good as it had been. We got the bus t0 Stiffkey with a plan to walk back to Blakeney. The bus as usual was on time and we were soon walking out to the sea on the foot patch that runs from the antique lap ship, in the centre of Stiffkey. It was dry.

Once we got to the marshes it started to rain and continued all the way to Blakeney. On the path we saw quite a lot of birds, including a flock of I think Golden Plover and two Spoonbills. We emailed the Spoonbills in to Bird Guides dot com and got a polite email back thanking us.

We had some lunch back at the hut then we all went separate ways, some went shopping, but Helen and I went to Salthouse for a short circular walk via the Quag, where we have seen some interesting birds on the past. When we parked up we noticed that the old post office at Salthouse was now open as a shop/butchers, previously it has always appeared closed, and derelict. We walk down the lane to the Quag not much about apart from a flock of Goldfinch. Once up on the sea defences the going got tough with all the shingle, and Helen spotted three seals or the sane seal three times. It was a very pleasant walk over familiar ground.

When we got back I had a shower then noticed that the sun was out, and very low, looked like there could be a nice sunset, so I headed down to the quay at Blakeney to get some pictures. The sunset was not as good as it could have been because there was some cloud low on the horizon. I made the most of the low sun light and tried a series of pictures which I home to turn into a panorama.

All in all despite the weather a great day out in the fresh air, better than work any day.

Canoe trip

If it is Wednesday it must be canoeing day. We set off at 10ish and stopped off first to book Beans Seal trip, then at the Blue Sky Thinking shop for a look at some tat.
Finally we were on our way to Fairhaven gardens to meet up with the canoe man. We were early, so we we had some lunch took at the cafe then took a stroll round the gardens which were free as part of the canoe deal. The gardens are kind of man made managed but do a good job of looking like natural wood land, there were quite a few mature and tall oak trees.

We met the Canoe Man, and headed on down to the landing point for a safety short briefing, then once kitted out with a buoyancy aid we all got into the canoes. The dog was a bit of a challenge but soon settled and was fine for the rest of the trip. We headed across the broad under the guidance of the leader and we all soon got he hang of the steering and paddling. Out of the other end of the broad we headed down a narrow creek and a bit of adventure having to duck under branches and push through reeds. The whole conoe trip lasted 2 hours. It was great fun and I would do it again, but would just rent a canoe and do my own thing.

Back at the cafe we had coffe and cake before heading back to the hut, we had a fun day out.