Avez-Vous un Cuppa?

In the Six Nations, Wales won again beating Italy 47-8 at Cardiff, with Shane Williams and Lee Byrne producing a bit of magic to score two tries each, and Tom Shanklin added another try to cap his 50th cap appearance for Wales. Although Wales have now won three games in the championship, I think the last two games, against Ireland and France will the hardest games Wales will have play in the Six Nations! One of the few highlights in Liverpool's F.C. season, has been the world-class performances of Fernando Torres. "El Nino" for short is the first Liverpool player for over five years to score more than 20 goals in a season. So it was pleasing to see him score a hat trick against Middlesborough this weekend. Finally just for my mate John,I had a nice cup of tea and a pea-nut butter Muffin at a friend's house over the weekend!

Recently being a supporter of Liverpool FC has been a quite depressing experience, no chance of winning the league, and knocked out of the FA Cup by Barnsley last saturday. So the result last night, thanks to goals from Dirk Kuyt and Stevie Gerrard,along with Rafa's tactically nous (probably the best manager in europe!) was great to see. Hopefully in the next three weeks, in the return leg at the San Siro in Milan, Liverpool can finish the job off. Come on the Reds!

Starting early( Circa 5.45am) on saturday morning in sub zero temperature's ,myself, Mark Skevington and John Hague ventured out for a birding trip to North Nottinghamshire and the Socialist Republic of Greater Yorkshire. Our first port of call was Clumber Park to look for Hawfinches , which are normally around the chapel in the centre of the park. Leaving the car in minus six temperature's we wandered around the grounds next to the chapel, taking the odd photo in the very atmospheric landscape of freezing fog and heavy frost. John then picked up a male Hawfinch singing on top of a nearby conifer tree. After John and Mark had taken a few distant shots of the bird with there new toys, the bird promptly flew off. The bird then showed again briefly in nearby trees, before flying off towards the nearby car park. By this time, we were all feeling a bit peckish so decided to have breakfast at the greasy spoon opposite to the entrance to the park. I would recommend...

Over this last week, it has been National Chip Week (check out the link Love Chips), so this evening I will par take in eating some fish and chips from the local chippy. Some chip facts for you: 1 out of every 4 British potatoes are made into chips - that's approximately 1 1/4 million tonnes every year. Thick chips absorb less oil than thin ones; so chunky chips are a healthier option. Given the popularity of the classic British dish, it’s no surprise that across the UK there are 11,000 fish and chip shops! If you laid all the British potatoes that are turned into chips every year end to end they would stretch around the world 76 times! It would take an area the size of 56,000 Wembley Stadium football pitches to grow all the potatoes needed for the chips consumed in Great Britain each year.

  Over the weekend, a couple of things happened which made me happy, Shane Williams showed a bit of magic scoring tries against Scotland in the Six Nations, for Wales to beat Scotland 30-15, and then Man City beat Manure 2-1 in the Manchester derby at Old Trafford. Although I am Liverpool FC supporter, I have always had a soft spot for Man City, so well done City for beating the scum. Other things I did over the weekend included counting Ducks and Geese at my local birding patch of Watermead Country Park (please look at the Soar Valley birding website for the results) and then watched an excellent German film "The Lives of Others" about East Germany in the 1980's before the collapse of the Iron Curtain, arounded a friend house, after dining on an excellent home made Lamb Stew!

On Thurday 7th February, myself, John Hague and Bob Duckhouse twitched the Wallcreeper which had been on the cliffs between Boulogne and Wimeraux for almost two weeks. We caught the 6.35am ferry from Dover(which actually left at 7.30am!), and treated our selves to the typical British Breakfast, which was not too bad for processed food. After the breakfast we did a bit of seawatching, and had good numbers of Razorbills, Guillemots, Gannets, Fulmars and Kittewakes passing the ship. The only other highlight we had before we docked was an Eider duck flying past the ship mid channel. After docking at Calais we went straight to Boulogne to see if we could get onto the beach, but found that the tide was coming in very quickly, so we decided to check out the forests south of Boulogne for Black Woodpecker and other species which are scarce in the UK. Arriving at the Forest de Hardelot, just south of Hardelot le Plage, we checked out the forest for the next couple of hours. Sightings in the fore...

Hello everyone, following on from my friends who have started a blog recently(please see my links), I have decided to start a blog on my rants and raves of daily life mostly about my hobbies and interests, but also what is topical to me. Just to let you know, the idea for the blogspot, came from my recent birding trip to Northern France to see the Wallcreeper near Boulogne and the famous advert by PG tips of a British chimp cycling in the tour de france (see links), and hopefully I wont be sued in the near future for the use of my blogspot! Any way hope you enjoy my blog, and look forward to your comments. Earl Gray.