TWO FOR JOY AND AN OWL DRAWING

It's an absolute joy to be able to photograph birds now and this pair of magpies were sitting obligingly in a tree nearby. I find all the crow family incredibly shy so have never managed to get close before. This camera seems to be pretty good at ignoring the double glazing and focusing pretty well on the subjects. If we were to rule our lives by the old magpie rhyme, our fortunes would change by the minute we see so many of them. Here are a few more:

And a chaffinch

and some of our cheeky flock of sparrows feeding yesterday

I took these few pictures yesterday; it was windy but fine, unlike today!

Hound Tor and Haytor; two lumps on the horizon

Long shadows in the early-ish morning

Rock formation at Kestor

After lunch today, Snippet and I went down to the river and over to Scorhill stone circle to take some pictures for my stone circle post....a long time coming - sorry! I will get there eventually. I took these on the way over there:

The North Teign in winter mode as Origami boy would put it

Looking over towards Fernworthy Forest from Scorhill

Having had a kind of request for a drawing of an owl I managed to get one done last week. Ponies and sheep are much quicker to do than birds....all those feathers! This took about six hours but I'm pretty pleased with it. I asked Paul Riddle who writes a blog about owls if I could use some of his images and he very kindly said yes. His pictures are staggering and well worth a look. He might want to consider changing the name of the blog in the light of recent events though! Do have a look at them at http://owlsaboutthatthen.blogspot.co.uk/ . I'm really enjoying the bird drawing challenge and am going to crack on with some more next week I hope. I love the loose feather that was sticking out of this Little Owl's head, about to fall off I'm assuming.

The school bus is due any minute with a very hungry schoolboy on it so I'd better stop now. Until next time, have a great weekend and here's a Snippet on the lookout for rodents.

FINGLEBERRY TOM FOR PRESIDENT?

The picture above is not relevant but I thought it was lovely.....carved by the friends whose Halloween party we went to last week. My main point in writing today is that this morning at breakfast, we were delighted to find Origami boy taking an interest in the US presidential election when he asked one of us to stay up tonight to watch the results come in. However, he went on to say he wanted to know who the winner would be: 

"Between Barack Obama and, er, what's his name......Fingleberry Tom?"

I'm laughing as I'm writing this and it's the funniest thing I've heard in ages; I thought perhaps those of you over the pond might find it so too! I even found myself chuckling in the dentist's chair earlier today despite the devastating news that I need a crown which will cost around £850! Goodbye savings. 

While I'm here, I downloaded pictures from my little camera today from the last week. Here are a few of them:

On Meldon Hill last week

Herding sheep on horseback today. They were about half a mile away

Foal number 1 in the mist

Cosdon Hill looking ominous behind the closer, sunlit hills

Meldon Hill from Meldon Common

Angle Shades moth (thankyou BB); It was on the Dentist's wall this morning

The ponies at a distance by Kestor

Number 10 chasing Snippet

Right.....time to go and read other people's blogs in the small window of time before bed. We'll see whether it's Barack or Fingleberry tomorrow morning. Until next time.........Snippet on his favourite rock today. 

DRAW RESULTS AND A DUSTING OF SNOW

Congratulations to Gail whose name Origami boy pulled out of the bowl this morning. Gail - if you could get your address to me, I'll get it off to you as soon as possible. I just hope you like it! I love Gail's work. If you're not already a follower, her blog is artbygail.blogspot.com. I think next time I might offer to draw the winner's pet.......

When I opened the curtains this morning, I was genuinely shocked to see snow in the garden. It was very localised; when I took Snippet out at about 8.30, I could see it hadn't fallen on the hills a few miles away. It was all gone by 10.00am in the glorious sunshine. Here are some pictures:

This one is the view from Trigger's field. 

Just a brief one tonight - we've spent all day at a theme park for a friend of Origami Boy's birthday so will be off to bed soon! Until next time......a very sweet Snippet.

MORWELLHAM QUAY

It was tipping down with rain on Monday but we decided to venture forth anyway and I'm glad we did; it was a lovely, if damp, day. Origami boy's companion told us he was a bit scared of the dark but said he did want to go on the spooky mine train ride. This was not a good move and thank goodness I had a torch in my pocket. Snippet was even worse and panicked as soon as we went into the tunnel too, much to the amusement of the very calm Labrador in the same carriage I'm sure. At one point I thought both he and the friend were going to jump out onto the rails. I don't remember much of the ride as I was clutching onto an eight year old boy - not my own - who in turn was clutching my torch and shaking. We felt terrible about it but he recovered very quickly and is now apparently saying he had a fantastic time.

In the 1860s Morwellham Quay was known as 'The Greatest Copper Port in Queen Victoria's Empire'. It lies in the centre of the Tamar Valley Mining District, three miles below the tidal reach of the river. The George and Charlotte copper mine was the only open copper mine in Britain and being only 23 miles from Plymouth and 6.5km from Tavistock and with transport links with both, made it strategically very important. It was exhausted in 1869 having opened in the mid eighteenth century. You can see the remains of the iron rails running across the site everywhere. The Quay's history goes back much further. In 974 AD Benedictine monks founded an abbey in Tavistock, and these monks constructed the quay at Morwellham on the Devon bank of the Tamar from where they could transport goods safely to and from Plymouth downstream. When the abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in the sixteenth century the Quay passed on to the Russell family who became the Duke of Bedford family who owned it until 1956.

Minerals and ores actually began to be transported through the quay in the twelfth century when the mining of tin deposits began followed by silver and lead ore in the thirteenth century.  Copper followed soon afterwards and until the canal to Tavistock was constructed by 1817, it was all taken to the quay by pack horses. The canal ended 237 feet above the quay, so an incline railway, powered by a water wheel, was constructed (this one is a fully restored version on the site of the original):

Manganese was also found locally and the ore was crushed to a powder at the quay using water powered crushers and shipped out in wooden casks made at the cooper's workshop next door:

Sailors from all over the world stayed at the quay in the Ship Inn and bought supplies at the chandlers. Queen Victoria visited in 1856 on her way to stay with the Duke of Bedford. The ship below is the Garlandstone, the second last wooden merchant ship to be constructed in Southern England. Built by James Goss, she was launched in 1909 and has been at the quay since 2000. 

This is the Assayer's Laboratory where he would test and analyse the composition and value of the ore:

Outside the Cooper's Workshop, looking at the Forge:

I love these round pillars holding up the cart shed:

All the glass in this greenhouse, which I vaguely remember from the Edwardian Farm programme, is in the form of tiles; I've never seen anything like it:

A cobweb on the mast of the ship:

The weather on our way home was NOT nice and made the landscape look all smudgy, like a painting:

Dartmoor Prison looking ominous at Princetown:

My partner made a bird food perch for me last weekend; here are a few of its visitors - I love my camera!:

Sorry I haven't been visiting all your blogs this week - it's been a bit full on and it's taken me four days to get this post out! Origami boy will be drawing the winner of the sketch on Sunday so good luck. Incidentally, I hadn't realised I had the word verification thing activated so many, many apologies for the last seven months of verification hell. It's off now which should make things a lot easier. I also enabled anyone to comment and within hours I had a HUGE list of loan companies appear on the infamous "FRISKY FOAL NUMBER 2" post. I've switched that off now! Have a great weekend. It hasn't got above three degrees centigrade here for the last few days so I've given up listening to the forecasters who said it would be 8-14 degrees. Grrrr and brrrrr. Until next time.....the moon from the other night.