Bluebell Walk at Beacon Wood Country Park

Here are some bluebells pictures, taken at Beacon Wood Country Park, Bean, Kent, taken on 22 April 2012. I love bluebells, it just looks so lovely, and once the bluebells are out, you know spring is in full swing.

Here is my friend Claire (also a keen photographer), being ambushed by our dogs Fefe and Bonnie

Alien snowdrop circles and searching for spring

Alien Snowdrop Circles in Kent??????

Chestnuts                                                            The frst snowdrops

The weather was just beautiful today, and I couldn't resist taking the camera out with me and go in search of the first signs of spring.

Others have crop circles... I  have found this strange 'circle' with snowdrops right in a middle of a field ... no idea how it got there in that strange formation right in the middle of a field...made me laugh and I had to take a picture.

Walkies again - for Bonnie and me

I finally started to go out with Bonnie again - boy, I was missing that. See, with a 35kg Labrador, I was really scared to walk with her and that I might not be able to hold her with my fresh abdo scar. Usually.... she is quite well behaved, but if she sees another dog - or anything which takes her fancy, she can pull me quite badly - and I really didn't want to risk my scar opening up again.

Out came the HALTI head collar again! I used to use it when we first got Bonnie. Her previous owner never really walked her, she was only kept in the back garden, and they only had a choke chain for her. So when I took her for a walk first time - all proud new dog owner - it was a nightmare. But the head collar changed her into a different dog, walking reallyle nicely with me and I was easily able to control her. I than stopped using it when she appeared to be a bit more settled with us, as SHE really hates the head collar. But now it is saving me again, as I find it really easy to control her with it, and Yeah, I am finally able to walk her again.  Slowly but steadily life returns to normal for me.

Btw, we've only had the slightest dusting of snow, as can be seen in the pictures, and even that is melting quickly in the winter sun. Bonnie easily broke to ice in that puddle to have a drink.

Lazy Saturday and my first walk

Weekend is here - not that it makes a difference to me at the moment. I had a bit of a scare last night when I realised that my scar is bleeding. Not badly, but... I hope this is not a setback, it's now 12 days after the surgery. I didn't lift anything heavy or anything like that, basically all I did was sitting here on my desk with the laptop, and sitting in the armchair stitching. All that sitting must have done it LOL.

The weather is really mild here at the moment, around 11 degree C,and nice winter sunshine. After some 'gentle' persuation on my part Nafees agreed to go out with me to walk Bonnie. I am really missing walking the dog, not to mention the look Bonnie gives me every time I walk past the closet with the 'dog-walking' stuff, her leads etc. But she is much too strong unforunately for me to walk her by myself. If there is no-one else around, it's fine, but if another dog appears on the scene...different story, than I won't be able to hold her in my current past-OP state. Here are a few impressions:

Nafees with Bonnie Honey outside our house, making a dash for it.

Across the road from us.

Out and about

Beacon Wood Country Park is turning out to be a favourite of mine, so much so that I now come here every Sunday. It is much quieter than Shorne (no Cafe or visitor centre here) and no car park charge. And the forest is dense, well as much as one van expect in the south east of England .




-- Post From My iPhone

Shorne Wood Country Park

We went to Shorne Wood Country park today - that is Bonnie, Dan, Imran and me. Yes, I could talk my two teenage boys into coming with their old mum on a ramble through the woods. The boys came because they wanted to have a look at the fishing lakes in the park. And -- they liked it and want to come back!

The park is massive, and it was very very busy. We had trouble finding parking and had to cruise for ages on the (massive!) carpark. There were so many people on the main walk ways, it felt like London Bridge for rush hour!! But once we were into the deeper woods, it was a bit better and I saw the first wild primulas - right in the middle of the forest - beautiful.

Why are the weekends always sooo short? My Saturdays are usually filled with doing the shopping here and there, cleaning the house, taking Ruby to swimming. Not much left for anything else. Last Saturday we went to Bluewater (big shopping centre near where we live) and bought Danial's birthday present). I have given him the choice of having a 'smaller' present and a large party, or a big present and just us as a family having a meal - latter option is what he went for and we bought him the desired X-box 360. I'm not into gaming whatsoever, and can't understand why he needs/wants an x-box when he already has a Playstation. Apparently two completeley different things. go figure... I'll never understand.




I didn't fancy going anywhere in the car on Sunday for our walk, so I took Bonnie down to the Thames. It is about a 20 mins walk for me to the River - but it is not a very pleasant walk. There is a path, but it is very lonely, no-body ever seems to walk there, and the bushes/undergrowth is very very dense, creaking. It freaks me out and I'm not easily scared. there are a few fields with horses in the middle, so that is a bit calming, but apart from that... I like it down by the river. It was on low tide. I was a bit scared Bonnie might decide to jump into the River - but she didn't. She isn't overly keen on water anyway, would just go to the edge and drink. There was also a lot of (manmade!!) mess, e.g. rubbish / flytipping everywhere, from plastic drink bottles (sooo many, everywhere) to 3 piece suites! Disgusting! I walked back home in a loop a different route, which is not much better, because there is a motocross-track and a shooting club - the noise! And cars were going up and down on the path, I felt like on a Motorway. As much as I like it down at the River, I don't think I'm going back soon there.

Beacon Country Park

I took the maps out again, and looked on the Internet - and came up with another country park near to Dartford. I wonder why it never occurred to me before... So, on Sunday, I went with Bonnie to Beacon Country Park in Bean/Kent, which is a lovely small village outside of Dartford. The park is, in my opinion, the best one I've visited so far. I found it very easily (it was indeed signposted with one of those brown signs! - very helpful), and parking was straighforward. Near the car park, there were already plenty of dogwalkers, but Bonnie was well behaved. The woodlands are mainly birch, and quite dense. There are walkways, some with wooden boards, and I would probably feel a bit awkward to stroll into the denser wooded aeras. And there was indeed a sign in the car park 'Do not pick the mushrooms' LOL. I did let Bonnie off for quite some time. There were so many different paths to choose, and I was really surprised that at the end, I ended up indeed again at the car park where I started - I just sort of walked into the general direction of a loop.

Bonnie, Ruby and me went to Darenth Country Park today. It's just on the outskirts of Dartford, about 10 mins drive from our place. First we couldn't find the car park - if it is not absolutely clearly signposted, I'm not good at finding places - stuff like that annoys me. So we just parked in the middle of the housing estate behind the park which always makes me slightly nervous. (sort of think people in the estate will realise there is a car which does not belong there!)

Anyway, we walked back from the estate to the park. Despite the rather dull weather (at least it was not raining) there were plenty of people around, with and without dogs. So Bonnie only came off the lead occassionally, unfortunately I still cannot rely on her being 'good' with other dogs - she will run up to them, bark und 'circle them', and there is no way she will listen to me shouting to come back.

Parts of the park are large fenced fields (for horses I guess as a riding centre is part of the park). But there is also a wooded area which we walked right through. It is not large, but that was my favourite bit. I'm looking forward to coming back in Spring and Summer when there will be more plants to see - and in autumn for fungi possibly!

I picked Ruby up from a sleepover at a friends house today. Her friend recently moved to an area called Joyden's Wood, just outside Dartford. Joyden's Wood is an acutal woodland, managed by the Woodland Trust. I took Bonnie along with me and thought I could take her for a walk in the woods. Didn't quite know what to expect, I don't quite trust it when they call it 'woodlands' here, sometimes I found that th ey mean an area of about 10-20 trees arranged in a square - I guess I'm used to different woodlands from Germany. But Joydens Wood was loveley - gosh, it almost reminded me of Germany, like a 'proper' woodland. I've made a promise to myself to come back to this place more often, can't wait for spring to start. And just think of autumn and fungi foraging! Acually I should make more of an effort in any case. I live in Kent, and all I ever see is the area close to our house. What have I got a car for - I should use my weekends to explore around and hopefully will make a start next weekend!

tree diary

Here are some pictures of the beautiful late autumn in Kent. It is not yet too cold, temperatures are mostly around 10C. It gets dark around 4:30pm, so when I work later and then walk with Bonnie it is often already very dark. I kind of got used to it now, but as nice as it is when there is no-one around so Bonnie can have a free run, I do feel a bit scared when it's dark. Silly really, because when I walked her in the summer at 5pm, in sunshine, I never got scared walking alone. Just because its dark now shouldn't make a difference. The area is not huge anyway, and there is a main bus road within 'shouting distance' The building work keeps going on, by the way. A new school is going up. We had a look at some of the new properties, I so like the 'Town houses'. For those who are not familiar with this phrase, they are 3 storey houses. Love them, and the location is perfect as well, near where we are now, and on the edge of town. But financially, it is just too risky. Even if we could afford to double our mortgage, but with such a big house, all other costs rise as well. And already, last year my utility bill for gas/electricity has doubled! No, I'm not using more or wasting the stuff, it's just the increased prices. Crazy. So how much would I pay for such a big house! And... the children are growing up, give it another 5 years or so and Dan will probably be away to University, and Ims and Ruby are pretty close in age too, so then Nafees and me will be sitting on our own in a big house. And ... there were 4 bathroom/toilets. Gosh, is bad enough having to clean my house with 1 bathroom and 1 downstairs toilet. Imagine 4!

An idea came to me today while walking Bonnie today : I will make a tree diary. Every week, I will take a picture of the same 2 trees and show them here, to show how they change throughout the season.Many of the trees and shrubs still have beautiful colours, but it is definetely thinning. I wish I would find time to update the garden a bit as well. was reading a gardening mag while walking with Bonnie. In this months' issue, there is a feature on a 'long thin garden' design, I love it! It starts out from a couple who move into a house, and the garden is basically just fences with lawn in the middle and one raised bed. It looks so pretty afterwards.

I have rearranged our bedroom, and created an area for my stitching. I took the old office chair from downstairs with the ripped fake leather and tried some soft furnishing... what I did is I took one of my leather jackets apart ;-)) and fixed it as a new chair cover. Hey presto, I've got a new chair, here upstairs in my brand new 'stitching corner'. I put our old TV in, I don't mind that I can watch only 5 channels. Great, I've got my own little area upstairs.

Every day I walk with Bonnie in the area which is basically right across the street from us. You have to cross a footbridge to reach it, as it runs right past a busy A-road. It's the area from our houses right down to the River Thames. The old Joyce Green Hospital used to stand on this site, but it was pulled down in 2000 (if my information is right, this was before we moved to Dartford in 2003). There is also a Powerstation on the land, and a sewage plant. After the hospital closure the area became a bit of a wasteland and was claimed by groups of teenagers who used it to ride their motorbikes and ..aehm, whatever teenagers do I suppose! (All I know is that in the summer we saw fires ever so often over the site, burning cars etc).

About 2 years ago, developers moved in and the whole site will be re-designed. They will build many residential houses and flats, even a school and a leisure centre and lots of office buildings, they call it a mixed-use site.. It's being advertised as 'sustainable living'. I guess because the developers kind of build around the small lakes which are on the site..I bet they didn't tell prospective homebuyers about the sewage plant LOL .Anyone who is interested can have a look on: http://www.thebridgedartford.co.uk/. It's great that they made pathways which we can walk on now, but unfortunately, mostof the wonderful green space which we have now will of course go... not much point then for me to go walking there, I might as well walk the streets of Dartford.

I absolutely love wildflowers. I love watching them and taking pictures of them, for me wildflowers are much more beautiful than, for example, cultured roses and similar. And I like them best were they belong - in the countryside or where-ever really. For most people, and especially developers, I suppose their are just weeds. And I'm always so disappointed when I go for my walk and find that another row of wildflowers has been ripped out. They usually put lawn, very short and very uniform... Or worse, it gets concreted over. All I can do for the meantime enjoy it while I can. Oh, I just wish I could move to a house where I'm just surrounded by countryside and lots of wildflowers with no-one to 'develop' the area.