Waxwing in Denmark at Christmas

Super fast rabbit catch by a Harris Hawk

Hawking with ferrets on a sunny scottish hill

Lancashire/Yorkshire real ale trail

After watching Oz clarke get in a right merry state on TV, i decided to follow in the great mans footsteps and travel from Dewsbury all the way back to Manchester. I would be accompanied by my good mate and real ale connoisseur Chris " The moores" Moores.
We both live in Atherton Lancashire so the best tickets to buy are a Greater Manchester Day ranger at £4.60 and a West Yorkshire day rover at £6.20, these allow you to hop on and off the train whenever you like all day, just don't loose them as its around £5 per stop between stations. The train from Manchester Victoria takes about an hour so you might want to take some snap, you travel trough some fantastic scenery including the beautiful calder valley, passing through Todmorden and the now flooded Hebden bridge.  We arrived at Dewsbury for lunchtime and the bar on the station was already overflowing into the car park so we got directions from a star trek extra and wondered into the town. If i was led blindfold into the first bar i would have said i was in a geriatric ward for ugly fuckers, so we supped up and moved on, by the time we got back to the station a few beer monsters had moved on so we had a pint of Taylor's Landlord and jumped onto our train .

You get 40 minutes between trains so sit near a door and rush to get in or you might end up waiting twenty minutes to get served. The choice is yours were to get off as there is a pub at every station, but i must suggest The Wellington in Greenfield, about a ten minute walk away but full of real characters and the landlord has a cracking lunchtime menu. I won't bore you with the details of every other pub just go and explore for yourself, but not on a saturday when all the stag and hen parties are out its a fucking nightmare. The one thing i must recommend is to sit in the bar at Stalybridge  station and take in some of the fine surroundings before a load of men dressed as banana's ruin it. Well chin chin and enjoy xx

A quick mooch on the moors

This was another £3.90 return special to Greenfield with mi good mate john and 18 month old Lizzy, we walked from Dove stone reservoir up past the old grouse butts and onto Ashway moss. Once you get to Ashway stone you will see the path leading to Chew reservoir, a GPS is handy here as the path is not well used and the heather grows pretty quick. You also need to watch your footing as John found out when he went up to his nuts in a bog ( even the bloody dog laughed ).

We gave lizzy a bit of dummy training in the reservoir and walked back down the hill and into Greenfield , were we stopped for a quick pint in the King Billy. I walk this area at lease once a month but i suggest week days as the trains are like the Bombay express on saturdays, one good thing about traveling with a cute dog on a train full of drunken women is you do get a right eye full :) and it makes time pass a little easier.

Swimming in Easedale tarn 4/5/12

Pen life, today chorving dads canaries

Red kites and corvids being fed at Gigrin farm Wales

Views from welsh mountains

Our first stay at plascurig hostel and four unpronounceable peaks

On saturday 24th march 2012 my good mate  Shaun and myself set off for an overnight stay in Snowdonia,  we usually stay in run down bothies or so called youth hostels but i left shaun to do the booking this time and he did us proud. The plascurig hostel has not been open long and you can tell, everything is so clean and unspoiled but you still have a good relaxed atmosphere. The dorms which are £22 a night have eight beds in them and the curtains pull across so you get a good nights sleep, but if you don't want to share with six other swedish girls { god only knows why not } you can book smaller rooms and even family rooms. The hostel is in walking distance from the village of Capel curig were you can get all the supplies you need. Our first two peaks were pen Llithrig y wrach and Carnedd Llywelyn which i'm not going to talk about just enjoy the pictures. These were completed by four o clock at a steady pace setting off at ten, the weather was in the twenties with a nice cool breeze and it would of been rude not to stop a the local for a couple in the beer garden in those conditions. The second day after talking to a rock climber at the diggs we decided to climb Carnedd Dafydd which has some great scrambles and well worth it for the views of Tryfan and Snowdon peaking above the rest. This climb takes around five hours following the track down Ffynnon Llugwy back to the roadside car park. There's some great wildlife to see along the way from wild goats and ponies to flycatchers, dippers and pie crust eating ravens. Give it a go its a great place. ;}

View of Dragor harbour with band playing

The party in Hovedgaden hall after the horse festival

Putting the owl box up 11/02/2012

Lizzy and the Harris hawk 20/01/2012

I have reached the point were Lizzy my 13 month old springer has been introduced to most livestock and completely ignores Sheep, horses and my ferrets, so i thought it would be a good idea to take her out with my friends harris hawk. The weather wasn't the best with high winds and light rain forecast for later but we decided to crack on. At first both bird and dog were very wary of on another, but once lizzy's attention was focused on the cover and what was in it they started to work as a team. The ferrets also worked well flushing over a dozen rabbits. We gave the bird a rest in the afternoon and and netted half a dozen good sized rabbits, one for the hawk, one for the ferrets and the rest in the pot { lizzy had a dawsons pie} The whole day was a success and the only near miss we had was when lizzy went to sniff the rabbit that the bird was eating and got a peck on the nose, no harm done and a lesson learned.

Beautiful Liverpool

Windermere round trip via Kentmere and Troutbeck 6/1/12

This was my English springer spaniel Lizzy's first trip to the lakes and so i eased her in with a train trip to Windermere. We arrived by train and set off up the not so glamorous A591 for about a mile until you see a sign for Heaning, theirs a number of tracks you can take but we decided to make our way to Kentmere Hall so we trekked over the heather covered tops of High Ho { must of been were the seven dwarfs came from} . The track is quite clear and theirs a good few photo opportunities on its decent into Kentmere, The village is very remote and my dads old saying of " where theirs a church theirs a pub " was blown out of the water as they don't even have a shop ! We sat and had some lunch at Badgers rock then as the lakeland weather set in ie rain we set off along Garburn pass into Troutbeck. This is a much smarter village with plenty of community activity,  we did not hang around but instead took the national trusts route to Orrest head which brings you out on the road opposite the train station. The next train to Wigan was in ten minutes so i didn't have time to get a couple of real ales from Booths but just managed to give lizzy { very wet dog} a rub down with the towel that i brought. By mistake { honest } we sat down in first class and the conductor was so taken with the dog that he never even checked our ticket so it was the lap of luxury all the way home.