The Buchans 2012: December 2012

In and around Ringwood in early December we had quite a lot of flooding close to the River Avon. Unfortunately, the river flows close the town centre so quite a few properties were affected. Here you can see ponies on the meadows struggling to find something to eat.

Flooding across the meadows

Ponies by the gate

Flooding in the Bickerley

Making the most of a sunny day – a walk around Mill Lawn, north of Burley. It was very wet and wellies were a necessity.

The route we took – about 2 miles in total

Tony and Ellen visited us for lunch. We went in search and found 2 local geocaches.

We were invited by Glyn and Sue to their very nice new home in Portchester and then on to Eastney Cruising Association, Southsea for lunch.

Joy, Sue, Sue, Sybil

Geoff and Glyn

On the 12/12/12 there were a few geocaching events to celebrate the last calendar alignment this century. It was a flash mob type meet (or should I say ‘flashcache’) arrive exactly at 6pm flashing a torch. About 30 cachers turned up which was a good turnout for a winter’s evening. We dispersed at 6.15pm and some people went to the pub. Guess where I went? Some cachers had been to an event earlier in the day which was at 12 minutes past 12.

Keeping to the geocaching theme, Sue and I went geocaching on the next sunny day. Sue just about to have her packed lunch.

This is a map of all the caches we did. Wimborne Minster town centre is towards the bottom right.

On Tuesday 18th I took the motorbike to Calshot on Southampton Water. There is somewhere to stop and watch the ships, boats, ferries etc. go by. There is a RNLI station here and the semi-rigid was out of its boat house. The survey vessel was also rushing about which I think might have something to do with the positioning of the buoy for the lifeboat.

Also at the end is the old coast guard tower which is now run by volunteers attached to NCI Coastwatch. For more information on them the website is www.nci.org.uk/calshot