Christmas Day with a difference

Following my visit to the hospital I was expecting my next appointment in 5 weeks. On the 23^rd Dec. I was contacted and offered an appointment on Christmas Eve (cancelled appointment?). After this 2-hour visit, for the removal of sun damage, I left with 5 stitches and various pieces of sticking plaster holding me together.

That evening we had our Christmas meal so we could have festive sandwiches on Sandbanks beach on Christmas Day! In the slide show you will see that the weather was excellent and that we weren’t the only people on the beach.

If you hover your cursor over the photos in the slideshow you will see a caption and will be able to slow/stop the show.

On Boxing Day I went rambling with the New Forest group and Sue went hunting for bargains in Ringwood. The forest recently has been very wet and the ramble had to make many detours to avoid the deep bits. On the 27^th we went walking with the neighbours and managed 3 geocaches, which the children enjoyed. We all had a very nice lunch in the Red Shoot pub which was heaving with people and dogs.
On the 29^th, a very rainy day, I went rambling again and Sue sensibly stayed at home. There were about 14 hardy souls who took part in the 5.5-mile walk.


Below you can see Lyn and David the walk leaders and other sodden ramblers.

This is the last blog post of 2009.

Sue and I should like to wish all our readers a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

The 2010 blog can be found at http://thebuchans2010.blogspot.com/

Christmas Time

It's the 23rd December today and after a night of ice and the closure of the M27, due to the number of accidents, it is now raining, the temperature is just above 0 degrees C.
Yesterday I had an appointment at the hospital which turned out to be on the spot treatment to zap some sun damaged skin. This consisted of freezing the offending areas with liquid nitrogen, temperature minus 196 degrees C, a bit chilly. I need another appointment to freeze some more bits and a little bit of surgery which shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
The highlight of the visit to Christchurch was a picnic at Hengistbury Head on this beautiful day. We walked up onto the head and were rewarded with views all around.

Christchurch Harbour

Southbourne with Bournemouth in the distance

View towards Mudeford Quay - beach huts in the foreground

The old ironstone quarry on Hengistbury Head

As smuggling ended around here a local coal merchant found a way of mitigating the loss of profit on returning empty coal barges. He gained mining rights from the Lord of the Manor who claimed foreshore rights and exploited the iron ore doggers found at Hengistbury Head. These were initially used as ballast on the barges back to Southampton. They were then transferred to the larger coal ships trading from Cardiff (again as ballast) and finally delivered to the blast furnaces of Merthyr Tydfil and the Rhondda in South Wales.

Mid December

Please note that the post before this one has our Christmas Letter, front and back.


We left Littlehampton after a wet end to the holiday, only to have a very wet November in Ringwood. Along with the rain were some very strong winds which brought down 4 panels of our back garden fence. This then kept me busy for a few days. In between all this Sue had to have a colonoscopy at Salisbury Hospital which gave her a good excuse not to stand out in the cold and help. To be fair she did help shift the heavy panels. The panels are up and still standing, thank goodness. 

In between all this the trap door to the loft fell off and missed me by 2 feet, lucky or what! It's very heavy! I was measuring up to do a repair on it when it dropped. It was very badly fitted (screws into plasterboard don't hold) so a week later I am still fixing it. The other highlight was the removal of  a neighbours' leylandii from the front courtyard. It is now lighter in our dining room and easier exiting the courtyard with the car. In the following slideshow you will see how the removal went. The blurred photo was taken as I was doing a runner as the tree was falling towards me (if you watch Axemen on Channel 5 you know what I felt like).

The following slide show is hosted by Slide.com so hope it works.
I'm going to stop there because I am having problems writing on the other side of this slide box. I haven't an answer to it yet so will stop whilst I'm ahead.