Something different!!

I have a field and it’s all mine, but sadly I have to share it with some horses along with random walkers who can walk along the public footpath. I like to woof at the randoms as if they’re trespassing but I don’t think they’re very scared of me.

This is me sitting on the bench that we put at the top of the field. It’s a bit scruffy but it’s a bench and we like benches a lot. I think there should be a lot more benches in the world, especially along the footpaths that we go on. We let the randoms sit on our bench as it’s almost at the top of the hill and a good spot to catch your breath.

The horses have a very nice view right over to Badbury Rings and we can even see Tarrant Rushton Airfield and lots of farther away places. I don’t think horses appreciate views much.

Hmm I thought there was a horse in this picture but it seems not.

There’s not even a horse in this one. But I’m in it and I’m far more important than the horses.  There’s also a barrow of regular horse poo – now, pay attention to what regular horse poo looks like, I’ll be asking you questions later.

And as we’re doing strange things, this is a whizzy new electric fence tester that mum won from Electric Fencing Direct She says it’s really good because it’s not got a wire and earth stick to put in the ground so is much smaller to carry in your pocket. It’s also better than the pocket tester that beeps when you get near an electric fence – that one also beeps sometimes for no apparent reason. If anyone from Electric Fencing Direct is reading this, thank you very much – we love it. It’s very satisfying seeing that there’s a good amount of electric going through the fences.

Anyway, Thursday 21st March was declared fluffy poo day. It was a little bit fluffy on Wednesday, but on Thursday they were pretty much all exploded and jam packed full of little beetles.

Underneath the poo we found big holes, well, big in comparison to the size of the beetles, maybe a tad under 2cm across. Do the beetles live in the holes?

This is the wheelbarrow full of all the exploded poo. It took up lots of room and had to be squished down a lot to fit it all in.

Here is a little video of a close up of the wheelbarrow contents that were actually moving.

When the wheelbarrow was emptied there were thousands of beetles left at the bottom. They have nice shiny backs but we haven’t identified which beetle they are as it seems there are lots of different types. You can look here if you want to.

Today when we went up to the field, this is the poo pile where the beetle infested poo was. It doesn’t normally look as smooth as this! Those beetles have been busy little bugs.

Here I am on the other side of the manure clamp, as you can see, it’s quite lumpy and looks much more normal.

I’d better not go without showing you who produces all that poo. Heavens, I wouldn’t want anyone thinking it was me. They eat and poo all day long… I’d be happy to eat all day long but I’d probably get a very round tummy.

Well, here endeth something different. We’d like to know what causes this phenomenon – we’ve seen it lots of times before but usually only a few exploded poo, not practically every single one. There are always beetles too, but never as many as there were on Thursday.

Is it like the flying ants that always seem to appear for just one day every year? Was it the weather? The moon? Answers on a postcard please or in the comments below.

And just for fun, here are some interesting facts.

A 1,000 pound horse will defecate approximately four to thirteen times each day and produce approximately nine tons of manure per year. The 1,000 pound horse will produce, on the average, 37 pounds of faeces and 2.4 gallons of urine daily, which totals about 50 pounds of raw waste per day in faeces and urine combined.

There are lots of different names for horse manure. Horse manure is sometimes called horse buns, road apples, horse pucky, horse chips, horse hooey, and horse apples.

Horse manure should be aged about six months before using on gardens. Manure tea made with fresh horse manure can be used to feed vegetable and flower gardens, or fresh manure can be used to build a “lasagna garden.” It doesn’t burn the plants, so even if you don’t let it compost for six months, you’re not going to kill your plants.

Last Deerpark Walk

We have to go home tomorrow so this afternoon we had our lunch out at The Plough at Duloe – well, I say we, but I snoozed in the car while the humans had lunch. I was quite tired and sometimes they say I’m a bit of a nuisance when there is food around! What do they expect when I’m starving hungry?? Anyway, it gets 5 big golden stars from them, the food and service is really excellent. So if you’re passing by, or staying at Deerpark, do go there!

Storm Freya is here today, so it’s been very windy but after we got back to our cabin it was dry and not too windy so we went for our last walk in the woods at Deerpark.

This is The Hub which is where it all happens… reception, shop, café, restaurant and the place to go if you need to know anything. They have quizzes twice a week and organise lots of things to keep the small humans occupied. The quiz is quite fun, we did the Tuesday quiz and ‘Team Teagan’ came 5th out of 8. They really are completely useless when it comes to television and music!

We just did a short walk this evening as we’re pretty much all walked out after being out and about all week. There are lots of dogs staying in cabins so I find it hard to keep up with all the p-mail.

The footpaths are all really good, not too muddy and even after the rain I didn’t get too mucky.

There’s another one of those old stone bridges.. I think I posted a picture of this bridge with me on it when I first came here 10 years ago!! That was my very first holiday!  But maybe I didn’t, who knows. I was very young when we went to Looe, Polperro and Cliff which you can see here if you didn’t know me back when I was a mere puppling.

Deerpark is down in a valley with a river at the bottom so there are bridges to get from one side to the other.

Some of the cabins are right on the edge of the lake. I wish we’d had one of those!! I could have gone for a dip first thing in the morning and then rushed indoors to jump in bed and wake the humans… ah, maybe that’s why they wouldn’t like a cabin on the lake…

It’s a lovely big lake with ducks and geese living near it.

They’re very noisy creatures and to be honest they look a bit ferocious! Maybe they’ve met unfriendly dogs and don’t realise that I’d probably run away if they chased me!

This is one one of the Golden Oak cabins that comes with an attached treehouse!

A bit more of the lake.

And the old mill wheel and buildings that are now part of The Hub.

The little stream is quite full after the recent rain.

It’s all quite churned up and mucky looking… but that doesn’t put me off having a quick paddle.

It looks like someone had a birthday yesterday… I don’t suppose it was the lawn tractor’s birthday.

And this is our cabin, number 40.

We liked this cabin a lot and we’ll probably come back to Deerpark for another holiday!

 

 

 

I’ve been to Jail!!

I bet you didn’t guess I’d been to jail! Mum has a thing about jails, she’d really like to go to Alcatraz.. and dad never knew about it… so she suggested that we go visit Bodmin Jail. It’s dog friendly everywhere except in the Governors Hall restaurant and entry is £10 for humans and free for small humans and dogs.. a bargain.

We walked round the ground floor first and then went down to the two lower levels  which meant walking down some steep narrow stone stairs and then up again to the top levels. There was a lot of information on the walls which the humans could read and lots of displays in the different cells and rooms.

I can’t remember what they all were but they were mostly very bad people who had killed someone or done something to a sheep or a horse, or stolen something. Lots of people were hanged there for murdering people, one was a woman who fed her husband arsenic sandwiches!

This is a plan of the old Gaol. You might be able to see it if you make it bigger.

The prisoners used to get a lot of food, like a pound of bread, a pound of potatoes and a pint of gruel.. sounds un-yummy, but at least they weren’t hungry.

I’m not sure what this horrible thing was – but it’s not a very fashionable outfit and whoever wore it last obviously had no one to help them get undressed!

This poor chap is Samuel Glasson and he seems to have liked Bodmin Jail because he broke records by spending 31 Christmas’s in prison and over eleven years there.

This was one of the job adverts back in 1833.

It was a little bit boring for me but the humans really enjoyed their visit. We didn’t see any other canine visitors but I’d give it at least 6/10 for dog interest as there were quite a lot of things to sniff. I wouldn’t recommend it for dogs with bad joints as the stairs are quite steep. Dad said the Governors Hall restaurant looked very good, so he’s bookmarked that for a future visit. Meanwhile, the humans said the café downstairs which is dog friendly had a really tasty menu.

There was a lot of building work going on because some of the main wings with all the cells in are being converted into hotel rooms! It’s going to be a luxury hotel with 63 ensuite rooms the size of three cells. You can read about it here, or google for yourself. It might be a fun place to go and stay when it’s all finished! Do one of the scary after dark guided tours and then sleep in a cell… spooky!!

Cardinham Woods Walk

On Saturday morning we went for a walk at another place my friend Twiglet had been – Cardinham Woods  [that was a clicky link in case you want to have a look]. Twiglet does seem to go on exceedingly good walks so we knew we were going to have a lovely time.

We were a bit worried when we arrived and found a huge car park that looked very busy with families and people on bicycles.. although mum was very pleased to see some toilets, so that was the first destination.

I then got really really worried when I saw this… a washing machine for dogs? I counted my lucky tripe sticks that it was behind bars and not working at the moment.

Time to set off on the trail, just in case someone comes along and says they’ll open the dog wash for me. I’m much happier having a wash in a nice clean stream. We needn’t have worried about all the people because after just a short while we were on our own and only occasionally passed people with dogs or children. Not a lot chose the trail we did.. perhaps they’d been before and knew how steep the hills were!

There is some forestry work going on at the moment so there are some diversions and changes to the walk routes.

We’re doing the grey trail and, you guessed it, that’s the one going up the hill.

Luckily we found a generous sprinkling of benches along the paths and mum had at last remembered to bring my ‘posing treats’, so I was a bit more enthusiastic about standing still and smiling at the camera.

We had taken the path to do the Wheal Glynn walk which followed the river before a “short, strenuous ascent to reach the old lead and silver mine of Wheal Glynn before descending down an intimate valley side returning to the Lady Vale Bridge”. [quick cut and paste there].

This is a huge chimney which was cunningly disguised by a cloak of ivy helping it to merge into the background.

I think someone has been trying to divest it of its ivy as the chimney was easy to see from the other side.

The water was lovely and clean and cold.. I took time out for another quick paddle.

There was a lovely old stone bridge.

We were walking along this bit of the trail when mum went to the verge and lifted a slice of tree trunk… only to find a geocache! That’s the second geocache she’s found on this holiday just because it looked like a good spot for one. This one was a bit of a puzzle though as it wasn’t showing on the map but as it had a trackable in it we retrieved it so we could find out which cache it was by logging the trackable. It turned out to be a cache called Stumpy and it had been temporarily taken off-line because of the forestry work going on.

Always nice to find a surprise cache.. and we’re off now to join the Deviock walk which is a long loop leading off the Lady Vale Walk.

The mountain bike people could choose to cycle up this trail… the Bodmin Beast... rather them than us!

We seem to have been going up and down the zig zag trails, with more up than down.. but dad says that’s not possible. The ups have to equal the downs. Anyway, I think this is where he was checking his map as we were trying to find a geocache that wasn’t on the official trail but he said it was only an extra half mile, probably.

Yay! Another bench for a little sit down.

And another one, a slightly more sophisticated type of bench, with a back on it.. and a lovely view down a steep drop to the river below. We’re on the last leg now and it’s all down hill.

Meet Zog. This wasn’t an optional photo stop, mum said that Zog wanted a photo with me so I had to sit and try to not look too worried. This is my *worried ears* look.

The total walk was about 6 miles and we found 3 geocaches. We did track the walk but as usual mum forgot to set Endomondo off when we started so it’s only logged 5.74 miles. As you can see, it was quite a wiggly zig-zag walk!

We stopped for a little something to eat at the Woods Café but sadly it was rather busy and the likelihood of actually being delivered a sausage roll or suchlike seemed a bit remote, so dad just purchased a takeaway slice of cake for mum and bought a hot chocolate from the little ‘Hot Chocolate’ hut outside. I had a few biscuits and a minuscule piece of cake.

On our way home we stopped off in Lostwithiel where the humans had a super snackerooni at ‘White Light Gifts & Tasty Treats‘ – if you’re in Lostwithiel we can recommend it as being very dog friendly and they do a lovely cream tea, great coffee and a yummy brownie. I had some more very tasty dog treats to stave off the hunger.

Now.. puzzle time.. what do you reckon we did in the afternoon??

A walk up the Luxulyan Valley

Huge thanks to my twitter pal @thetwiglet who was here on holiday in 2015 and blogged about her holiday including a walk in this fabulous valley. After a late start we drove to Ponts Mill at the bottom of the valley and parked the car – it’s in the bottom right hand corner of the information board, right next to my nose!

The walk started off alongside a smallish stream on a very well maintained pathway. I had a look at the water but didn’t want to go for a paddle just yet.

Further along, it became quite a wide fast flowing river. I had a proper swim in one part where it was quite a strong current and I had to do proper doggy paddle to swim to the side.

This was a strange sort of waterfall with a little pool at the bottom.

We tried to do some geocaching but we’d forgotten to download them before we left and there was mostly ‘no service’ so we kind of gave up on that. A bit further along the path we came across this huge chimney and a long thin building where they used to do things with china clay.

Here you can see the whole chimney – it was really tall!! We could walk all through the old buildings which was really interesting.

In one ‘room’ there was another room at the end which looked very interesting.. the sign on the gate told us that it was the ‘filter press house’.

I’ve no idea what this bit was about but we like to think it was lots of little bread ovens where they used to bake the bread for their lunches. Maybe they were the kilns.

This was a little bridge across the river.

And here is another bridge.

After a while we came to a spot where there was a pathway across a field.. up a hill, of course. Dad said this would take us up to the viaduct / aqueduct, so off we went, up the hill.

And sure enough, at the top of the hill we found the aqueduct, which no longer has water going along it, well, only a bit of rainwater. The aqueduct needs some leaks mending and that will cost lots of money so they’ve not yet started doing any work on it.

This is me on the viaduct which was also a horse drawn tramway! The water used to flow in the aqueduct which is below my feet.

And underneath the viaduct is the railway.

This is the other end of the viaduct. I’m looking down at one of the sluice gates which is shut, this one hasn’t been used for a very long time because it’s all full of leaves.

In  case you are interested, this is where we are.. the Treffry viaduct. It’s the Treffry family that still live in ‘Place’ which we saw yesterday down in Fowey.

We walked along the path a bit further and then turned around. We will try and come back another day and do some different walks here as there are lots and lots of paths.

A piece of granite with a ‘T’ for Teagan!

We took a different pathway back. This is the ‘upper tramway’, we could still see sections of rail and some of the fixings.

They really did like to manage the water here, there are aqueducts running alongside the tramway, these still have water in them. All the water used to end up going down to the Wheel Pit where they used the water to wind trams up the inclines and to operate the china stone mills.

It was really fascinating and we could walk around all the old bits of equipment and imagine how big the old wheel was. You can see pictures of the original wheel in the poster right at the beginning of this.

When  the aqueduct was working there would have been lots of water pouring out of the square thing at the top which would fall down and make the huge wheel turn.

They certainly were very clever back in the old days to build all this. Anyway, we are now on our way back to the car and walking along another really pretty pathway. I found a very nice stick but got bored with it after a while. I really loved this walk and the humans loved all the old industrial buildings.

Here are a couple of pictures of some posters on the information boards, explaining about the Wheelpit and the problems with the Aqueduct.

This is a really interesting place to visit and I am sure we’ll be coming back here again very soon.