I am currently being sad becuase Alaric has just headed off for yet another week in London but I am also feeling really hopeful as the builders may infact be starting tomorrow on our house. Woot!!!
Unfortunatly this isnt quiet as good as it sounds as it all depends on the weather - they currently have an outside job which is weather dependent so if it rains we get the workmen if it doesnt we wont see them until the earliest mid Feb :/ Still things are once again moving.
So for the first time in a very long time (ie since being in Kenya) I find myself hoping for rain :/ A bit ironic really when you consider this was all cuased by the rain in the first place - oh welll what goes around comes around 🙂
Way back in the fog that was last year we had a day out at Slimbrigde Waterfowl Sactuary, becuase of everything that happen I never got round to posting this and as a result I've sort of forgotten what half the birds are :/
We went along with Alaric's friends Ben and Jenny who have membership and so had a vachour to get us in cheap. It was a really nice and slightly too hot day.
These are Himalayian geese.
This is a Goose.
A coot, a bird that I always get to wind my cousins up about it being their surname 🙂
More geese.
This is a picture of the birds grooming.
This is a Moorhen
A black swan which I think was from Australia.
This one is a white swan.
Flammingos, they had I think at least three types there and this has resulted in me writing a childrens story thing that I just need to do the illstrations for. The food pellets of the Flamingos contain the carrotine they need to remain pink. They also have gay flamingos that hatch spare eggs 🙂
There where lots of chicks and duckling and in this case sygnets 🙂
I also found out that the southern hemisphere doesn't have any true geese they are instead basically shell ducks - one of these photos is of such a 'goose' but I can't remember which :/
We also went into the hatchery and got to look at all the baby birds which was great and really instructive some of the birds where so sweet and other pretty I have to say the smell of rotten fish from the flamingo enclosers was a bit over powering but it was a really nice day out.
It keeps pouring down at the moment here and it is so heavy that you can't really see through the rain - I tried to catch one of the medium showers in this photo - hasnt really worked but thought I'd post it anyway.
The work men have been sorting out the water falls tunnel which they have been putting metal joist things in to keep it from collapsing. The two guys doing the waterfall look remarkably like they belong in either the RSM or the caving club or as is often the case both!
I asked them if I could come down and take photos - they put a step ladder in the dry water fall for me but I didn't realise (yes I know its a large thing not too notice but then this is me) and clambered down the actual waterfall - when I say dry I mean that there isn't the normal cascade of water flowing down it however most people would consider it actually quiet damp still.
Here are my photos of the tunnel.
The tunnel is at least 400 yrs old and is basically dry stone walls with stone slabs on the top - one of these ceiling stones appears to be a urinal - or so I am informed and is probably Roman in age (or though that is quiet along time period in the UK). Most roman sites in the area where canabilised for other local structures so this seems quiet likely. I actually went straight past the slab as it is in the ceiling and even when they first pointed it out to me without saying why the rock was special I got side tracked by calcified worm casts on its side :/
I did however then see that the rock was cut and the interesting funnelly bit i spotted by myself!
I am quiet excited by this as its sort of like having Time Team in my back garden, but it is a bit laughable that the one really old thing we have (thats of human origin before any of you remind me about all the fossils we have in the garden!) just so happens to be something that men relieved themselves on about 2000 yrs ago :/
I had to take a photo of these nobely calcite deposites 🙂 There where also lots of the little coral type growths that I orinial mistook for teeth when I did the work in the anthropology lab in paleo! (I can not spell the word so it is staying abbreviated but its the place with the fossils at the Natural History Mesuem).
Also I just had to take a photo of this being a geologist. The urinal pics where all taken in a cramped space with me having to lay down on my back so apologies if they are wonky angles!
I really really enjoyed this as I got to where my hard hat for the first time since Kin Loc Leven! But it did unfortunatly cause my pelvis to remobalise for three days :/
Within the last week we have had high winds, snow that blanketed the landscape and and more torrential rain - we are once again on flood warning etc...
The water has been divirted from the waterfall yet here you can see it looks worst than normal with the amount of water running through it :/
the diverted water is running straight into the trout pool behind us - from the pictures ypou can see just how much it is churning:
the levels are really up again resulting in the river bank dissappearing under water - believe it or not there are flood defenses under there diverting the river :/
Gilbert Barbaras little statue that sits in the water cress pond has already been washed away and we are hoping is once again lodged in the weir.
The gully where the water came through to flood us before is still holding up but we are hoping that the work thats been done in the waterfall tunnel is going to hold - the tunnel is now held up with metal joists but as they said we almost lost the thing in the last flood - we are a bit worried as if it collapses we are lickily to loose our garage and possibly the end of our house :/
A new stream trickel has also started up around the side of the Mill - not sure it really comes out in the photo but this didn't happen last time.
Sigh - the last record of flooding of the Bakery is 1750 I think my bad luck field has kicked in here :/
Building Maintenance | sarah | 
Sun 27th Jan 2008 8:55 pm | 
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