New Year 2015

My new year’s blogs seem to get later and later! 
This year I have 2 reasons, one is we were in Bruges for the New Year and then the next weekend we were at Centre Parcs. 

The year started as mentioned in last year’s blog with my nephews wedding on New Year’s Eve. They celebrated their 1st wedding anniversary with a meal at Panorama in Liverpool and also by moving to a new house in St Helens - it does make me feel old.

Helen and I had a busy year as usual both with work and free time. Helen is still at Newcastle College but the job still seems to cause more unhappy times than happy times. She is now based in some modular units (aka portacabins) and the new library is on hold so that didn’t go down to well. It does mean that we have got to know some of the drinking and eating establishments in Newcastle though and also attend a few interesting lectures that the college has put on with the Lit and Phil Society. (We are looking forward to Robert Winston this year in May!). Helen was heavily involved in organising a conference in Brighton - quite a feat from Newcastle.

I am still at the Wildlife Trust and a linked-in message recently told me that I have been there for 17 years! With the state the economy is in at the moment we have had some difficult times and had to make a couple of people redundant. Part of my role still involves looking for funding and I spend quite a bit of time filling in grant applications. We have had a few successes recently including some 5 year projects. Our website, Facebook and twitter accounts seem to go from strength to strength but I am still unsure about their true values visit www.teeswildlife.org for more info. I was also involved in organising the 2nd North East Wildlife Photography competition which seems to go from strength to strength including a very successful awards night at the Great North Museum -Hancock in Newcastle. I was also involved in the revamp of the trust garden and entered it into a competition in Birdwatching magazine and to my surprise we won the Best Community Innovative Garden – it’s a mixture of wildlife garden and a growing food garden with lots of fruit for staff to pick as well as a bird feeding station and small pond – you can see what it looks like here.

 

We had another wedding to go to in March when my cousin’s daughter Sarah got married in Lutterworth and it turns out that her husband works for the same company as Chris (nephew) who got married at the New Year. It was a good chance to meet up with all the family yet again. We made a weekend of it and visited Brandon Marsh nature reserve.

Culture wise we had a mixed year with the intellectual and pure pleasure. There was a scramble for tickets to see David Attenborough at Middlesbrough Little Theatre – he was very good, taking about his trip to Easter Island. We also went to see Stuart Marconie as part of the Durham Literature Festival who was not quite as intellectual as Attenborough but very entertaining - he did a bit about his visit to locations in Durham and played some music and linked some of his talk to his book Songs of the People. We also had a trip to Hexham to hear Bret Westwood talking about Tweet of the Day and Patrick Barkham about his book Badgerlands. Musically we had an eclectic year as usual highlights being Steve growing his hair long again and going to see Rick Wakeman doing Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Bellowhead and in November we went to see Peter Gabriel at the Newcastle Arena - throw in Evita and the Lion King all in all it was busy year!

To make up for or lack of holiday at New Year we decided to go with our friends to cottage on the edge of the Lake District at Allithwaite. It was a very nice cottage with a table tennis table in the garage and a pub 100m down the hill. We did lots of walking, saw lots of bluebells and spring flowers and visited Cartmel with an impromptu lunch with chees from a very nice Deli and beer from the brewery. We also had a butterfly filled day at Warton Crag and a good session birding with friends at Leighton Moss.

 

Holiday wise our big holiday was to Mauritius - land of the Dodo - not that we saw one well not a real one anyway. We had a great time staying in a hotel in Trou d’Eau Douce on the east of the island which was good base for the island. However due to an anti-cyclone it was a little windy, but we made the best of it. We did a bit of relaxing by the pool, a bit of snorkelling and swimming a bit of eating and drinking! We managed to track down the island brewer called – yes you’ve guessed it – Flying Dodo Brewing Company. We managed to fit in a few trips and eventually hired a car for a couple of day to get a bit further afield. The Republic of Mauritius was once home to perhaps the world's best known bird species, the Dodo and is now home to some of the world's rarest species, the Mauritius Kestrel (at one stage the world's rarest bird - the population went down to 4 individuals in 1974) and the Mauritius Echo Parakeet, another critically endangered species.

We were lucky, we managed to see both. We had excellent views of the kestrel at an area being managed especially for them, La Valle De Ferney, where they still do supplementary feeding. We found the Echo Parakeet on splendid walk through the Black River Gorge. Like lots of places the wildlife was limited to national parks and nature reserve; the rest of the land on this small island was being used for growing food and sugar. We had a day trip to an Island reserve Ile aux Aigrettes run by the Mauritius Wildlife Foundation to see another endemic the Pink Pigeon. Other highlights included the botanic gardens, a boat trip to see dolphins and a chance encounter with sperm whales watching them from land as they worked their way up the coast.

We had a very interesting visit to Grand Bassin or Ganga Talao a sacred lake, and temple which is about 1800 feet above sea level and is one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage sites outside of India. It was a relatively idyllic and calm atmosphere whilst we there but between the end of February and the beginning of March crowds of pilgrims head to the lake: when Maha-Shivaratree is celebrated, more than 400,000 believers make the pilgrimage to make sacrifices to their gods. According to a legend the Crater Lake is connected with the holy river Ganges.

New Year this year was a little different because we decided to venture further afield and with our friends booked a cottage in Bruges and we went via Eurostar. The journey went really well with no hiccups and the cottage was excellent, 5 minutes’ walk from the main square and all the action. We did lots of walking and sightseeing, lots of culture interspersed with a Belgian beer or two (actually 39 according to my list editor: Helen). The cottage had wi-fi and sauna both useful for the relaxing times in between drinking. New Year’s Eve found us out for a nice meal moules and frits followed by few beers and then in the main square dancing on the ice rink to bring in the New Year. No bird list but we did keep a tally of the 39 beers we tried between us with Bruges Zot Blonde and Karmeliet triple coming out on tops with Helen preferring her Hoegarden Rose. We managed to see the Madonna of Bruges by Michelangelo which is notable in that it was the only sculpture by Michelangelo to leave Italy during his lifetime and we did the manage the 366 steps to the top of the Belfry to get good views over Bruges and hear the bells go off at the same time!

So another year over and another blog written. Hope you all had a good 2014 and I raise my glass of Leffe blonde to a happy and prosperous 2015! 

Steve (and Helen)

If you need to contact us the best way is probably by email we always welcome occasional guests!

helenandsteveashton@btinertnet.com