Margate revisited!

So this time when we went to the Margate Train, it was open!!! (As opposed to last time). Well, it was mostly open. Oddly enough there were still some shops closed.

While we did go through a few of the shops, we ended up here:


I had a good chat to the guy running it who wasn't there in 2009, but had since taken over the shop and started on a quest to convince other shop owners that it might be good to be open during tourist season.

We bought a refreshing drink:

which was rather tasty. Well, a sweet soda taste (reminded me a little of creaming soda). Rather pleasant and I'd get it again. According to Wikipedia, the Dandelion and Burdock soft drink recipe has been going since around 1265.

The main booty which we brought back was:

Mulled-wine flavoured lollies (top left), dolly mix (top right), soor plooms (the green ones at the bottom; apparently first invented in 1337), a Kendal Mint Cake, and the Nipits (licorice pellets) as well as Tunes (they just looked tasty). There was a lot in that shop. Yes, I was a kid in a candy store.

Animals along the way

These are some of the characters we ran in to on the walk around Coningham. No idea who this little chappy was, but there were a lot of them and they move quickly Glad to get even a vague photo.



We were lucky to see the pair of these twice and get some happy snaps. It's suggested that it's a Swift Parrot. That makes me feel quite privileged (although happy to be corrected).


And finally, here's a shiny beetle:


Hopefully more photos soon!

Vistas from Tasmania!

All of these photos were taken with a (BlackBerry 9800) smartphone, and then pasted with the current version of Hugin. Hugin did well to paste together the rather badly taken photos. I have to say that for whatever reason, apparently my concept of horizontal is somewhat lost when taking the photos with the smartphone instead of a camera.

Either way, here's some of what we saw.

Here's the view from Mt Wellington on Boxing day, straight after a sudden "snowstorm". It was pretty cold although the ground was too warm for any snow to settle.


Here's what we saw on the way to Hartzview.


The next two were taken along the walk at Coningham:



In the next exciting installment.... more photos!

What I did on my holidays

An essay by Mr Snerg, esq., aged that and three quarters.

I made stuff! Did things! Went places!

Just wanted to post a few piccies of things to remind myself of what I got up to, now that I'm back at work.

I made some soap! Here's the 3 different soaps I made. The first two batches, on the right, are my usual recipe (vegetable oil, no palm oil), are also as usual rather soft. So the third one I made using about 1/3 lard. I haven't used the lard one yet (still curing), but I am looking forward to finding out the difference. Apparently hard wearing soap is achieved by using either animal fat or palm oil in the recipe.

I'm rather happy with how the colours turned out, and the fragrance seems right too (that one is green tea and jasmine; the other two are frangipani, and lavender).

In the next exciting episode...