In the words of this person I sent a message to about their lens: “It’s an absolute minefield!” Overview When summer started here in Warwick I started to notice so many more insects about. Maybe because it was summer, but also because I installed an app called iNaturalist that can identify anything which led to trying to identify everything. I’ve always…
Hampton wood was the first Warwickshire Nature Reserve I cycled to and is one of my favourites. It has over 25 species of butterfly and a mix of different environments which range from woodland to riverside to meadows, and the reserve is only 12 hectares! Unfortuantely the only time I’ve visisted so far is in Summer, so the other seasons…
After climbing Ben Nevis, our next destination was the Cairngorms. We wanted time to dry out so we stayed Aviemore youth hostel for the first night. I shared with three other people in a dormitory. They were mostly fine to share with other than the one who thought it was acceptable to snooze his alarm twice between 6.30 and 7.…
For my early summer holiday I caught a flight from Birmingham International to Inverness in Scotland. Our plan is to walk up Ben Nevis and climb as many of the Munros as we can. I’ve only been to Scotland once before, and that was bicycle touring around Skye during an unusually dry week. The success of that trip meant I…
The Warwickshire Wildlife Trust flagship nature reserve is Brandon Marsh, its 220 acres of large, woodland and meadows. In the winter you have wintering birds on the pool, spring welcomes hundreds of froglets and the return of the song birds. In summer it is overrun with birds, dragonflies, butterflies and the occasional grass snake or lizzard. And autumn brings an…
Way back, when I was younger and lived in Cornwall, my brother and I used to go down to the bottom of the garden and dig up the clay we found there. We used to make clay balls for throwing at trees (and subsequently got into trouble for covering the neighbour’s garage wall in lumps of clay). More recently I…
The final Snowdonia walk over the Easter holiday was local to where we were staying. We started from Blaenau Ffestiniog and spent the afternoon climbing up through the slate quarries and old waste heaps. Plot-a-route route It was miserable weather when we woke up on the Friday morning. The mountains surrounding us were shrouded in cloud and heavy rain filled…
The first thing we did the day after arriving in Snowdonia was walk up to the top of Mount Snowdon. It is 1085 metres high, and the highest mountain in England and Wales. A bit of research beforehand revealed that there are 8 main routes to the top, ranked from hardest to easiest these are: Crib Goch – lots of…
My Easter holiday this year was to Wales with a couple of friends. We spent a day in the Wye Valley (and spotted a family of boar!) and then carried on to Snowdonia where we spent a few days walking in the mountains. I investigated the route from the Wye Valley to Snowdonia beforehand and found that Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall…
I was in Newcastle for work and decided to take my camera along in case the opportunity arose to do some photography. By the time I finished it was dark but this meant instead of sleeping I could wander around a strange city in the dark and attempt my first go at night photography. Starting from the hotel in Gatehead,…