the dorset camping trip- 20-23 July

last Friday was the first day the sun came out in weeks and weeks, and it rather happily coincided with the start of a camping trip to Dorset, followed by a few days in Hampshire. and you lucky lucky souls, for my first blog post I really am spoiling you! a decapitated deer, welly-throwing, rare butterflies and a rescue mission for a toy helicopter among many others! My next post will also include seeing the queen (in human form), and some incredibly geeky beetle forensics.

this'll probably work best if I write out the whole thing day-by-day, starting from...

Friday 20 July

where I got up early and we drove from little Seaford towards the Purbeck area of Dorset. early in the morning, 15 Crossbills flew W over Seaford, a fairly rare bird to see in the town, but July is often a month when little flocks of Crossbill become somewhat nomadic in their search for the Pine Cones they are so well adapted to feed on. The drive to Dorset was hot and boring, but I tend to drift off into a daydream in cars anyway. Once I started recognising where we were there was a pang of familiarity, as we drove the twisting route through the pretty looking Purbecks, turning left at Corfe Castle through a gnarled oak woodland, and taking a small road cutting through the Dorset farms towards Burnbake Campsite.

We had, thanks to an early start, arrived at about 12:30, much earlier than anyone else from our party, and early enough to spend half an hour having a chat with the group who had booked our space out for the previous few nights. They were a home-ed group who were very chatty and friendly, and filled me with insatiable hunger when they mentioned spit-roasting a roe deer! the poor young buck had been hit by a car and was found by the road by the group, who quite rightly didn't want to waste any of it. the skin was going to be used for a drum, some of the feet had been chew-toys for their dog and a spit-roast was set up over an open fire to give what I'm sure was a rather brilliant dinner!

the skin of a Roe Deer

they gave me this as a gift, and I was rather chuffed and proud until a friends dog
found it much to his liking...  

Shortly afterwards the majority of our camping group arrived, and the first evening was spent settling in. The woodlands were naturally explored, though having been here for many years there was only so much of interest we could find, and over the coming days I noticed myself and the rest of the kids spent less time in here than we had in previous years. As evening came we started a fire, which caused some commotion, and we found a Glow Worm. This has to be one of my favourite creatures you can find in britain, and this was only the second time I've been lucky enough to see one. It was, in fact, glowing like a little beacon (quite literally like the sun shone out of it's arse), but this fails to show in any of the photos.

a non-glowing photo of a glow worm, the fact I had to use
the flash setting on my camera really fails to do it justice.

to be completely honest I was a bit disappointed with how ugly it looks in the light. It looks halfway between a woodlouse and a shrimp. But in the dark, how can you fail to get excited? It's a little beetle-like creature with a luminous green bum. It looks like it should be one of those mutated animals from The Simpsons that have spent too much time near a Nuclear Power Plant!

Saturday 21 July

the thing I remember about today was walking. My my how we walked! a round trip of about 14 Km, from Burnbake to Corfe and back again. One of the main reasons for this was geo-cacheing; there were five caches hidden in the downs above Corfe, of which we managed to find four, not a bad score. If you've never done this before, the basic premise is that you have to find a cache, using GPS and your own tracking skills. The cache is generally well-hidden and, once you've found it, you write your name and the date. people leave presents behind for the next person who finds the cache, so you take one item out and put something of your own in for the next person who finds it. 

This stretch of the walk was about five miles, after which we stopped in Corfe, a quaint and rather historic looking village with a dramatic ruin of a castle looming over it, still keeping watch over the town it would once have protected. One thing I did notice was at least 100 Swifts screaming overhead, this probably being one of the last ports of call for this flock before they disappear over the channel and make their way back to Africa once again.

The walk back took an extra four miles, largely as we were taking a twisting route through the countryside. It was what I would probably call 'typical Dorset', a swathe of woodland, farmland and Meadows, which gradually evolves into conifers and heathland the closer you get to the coast. I think by the end we were all slightly too shattered to be paying too much attention to the landscape; 14 kilometres isn't too bad normally, but in the scorching sun you really felt it! 

By the time we got back to the campsite it was mid-afternoon, and it was generally a quiet evening. The previous night I had struggled to sleep, with the festivities of some of our party going well past midnight, tonight I turned in at 11:30 and barely heard a thing. 

a view of Poole Harbour

Corfe Castle

One of our geo-caches

a Rosy Footman, a gorgeous moth that decided dad's jumper was as good a home as any

the steam train that runs from Corfe to Swanage

somewhere on our return walk, we got REALLY lost! 

a friend I made, while trying to find Scotland

Normally butterflies aren't too difficult to photograph, but in the middle of the day 

on a scorcher like Saturday they literally never seem to perch! This Marbled White 

was the only one I saw that stayed still for longer than about half a second, and it was

one among several hundred! Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers were also on the wing

in massive numbers, but diversity of butterflies was disappointing; Speckled Wood, 

Small White and a few unidentified Skippers were the only other species seen.

Despite a few days of sun, the awful weather of June and early July has still left

a lot of flooding in many areas, and all 40 or so of our group had to make

this particular precarious crossing. Sadly no-one fell in to the waist-deep 

flood water, I had my camera ready to capture the action! 

Sunday 22 July

an early start today for one of the most prestigous athletic events in the country. The Burnbake Olympics showcase some of the greatest sporting talent in all of the UK, and features such high-profile sports as Welly-throwing, Potato and Spoon Race, Gymnastics and the Relay (with Spoons as Batons). Our group was divided into five teams for all these events, and I have to say, my team (team 4) fancied our chances. Our main rivals for overall glory were team 3, featuring slightly more athletic talent if I'm honest, but we were plucky and fought them hard! 

The first event was welly-throwing, where it was, in the end, almost too close to call. Gordon produced a monster of a throw for us, but it was bettered by a few inches by team 3's Seb, and the rivalry was beginning! 

Egg and potato was next, a relay featuring every member of the team. We were on the verge of victory here, but Gordon's slip up on the final lap meant we had to settle for Bronze, with team 3 pipping us to Silver. However, in the relay we turned up the heat, picking up our first gold while our opponents were relegated to bronze! 

We now had a gold,  silver and a bronze, the same as team 3 had managed. Javelin was next, where myself and ollie were nominated to take part (you had to pick your shortest team member, and the third tallest). Now, Ollie is 10 years old, and he beat me! I should explain that the javelin was a foam thing, and it got caught in the wind. it nearly went backwards my throw was that bad. we were fourth, team 3 had won another gold, and it looked like victory was out of sight. 

Long Jump saved us somewhat, as I earned gold by a few inches and brought us back into contention. Team 3 had the silver though, and were still ahead going into the final event, gymnastics... 

This is not my strong point. for five of the six people in our group it was not a strong point, only Beth was any good. we threw it, giving the medals to some far more deserving groups who put in much more effort, but still managed second place overall. team 3 beat us by two points, but it wasn't really competitive anyway, was it? 

welly-throwing

 Ollie and myself eyeing up the competition 

'potato-and-spoon race'

from left to right- either Joe or Ollie (sorry they're identical twins!), me, Romily, 

Jack and either Ollie or Joe

the silver-winning gymnastics display

the last-placed gymnastics display; I can't even clap in synchronicity

our podiums

thankyou to Claire for organising the whole event, it was a brilliant success! We followed it up with a relaxing trip to Studland Beach, where I didn't really do very much others than swim and sit around, and I didn't have my camera either. 

However, that evening was perhaps the highlight of the camping trip for sheer bizarreness. A girl from another campsite had recently purchased a remote-control helicopter and made one huge mistake; leaving it in the hands of her dad... 

as it climbed higher into the air, drifting over our heads, it drew a few curious eyes. But it started spinning like mad, 30 feet in the air and caught by a strong headwind, it was spinning madly out of control, and in a moment of slow-motion dread, crash landed in one of the trees on our area of the campsite. Jack hopped up the tree in what seemed like a matter of seconds, 20 feet up and making me feel a bit dizzy just looking at him (I'm a bit of a wimp with heights)! However to get to the helicopter would involve shimmying along a very narrow branch that seemed incredibly unlikely to hold his weight. Reluctantly he climbed down, and with a bit of a crowd having now gathered, we thought about our next plan of action. 

To explain the next bit of the story, I need to back up a day, when the adults had asked us to go on a wood-gathering expedition. They expected a few little bits of kindling, but in quite a show of bravado we managed to drag a fallen Aspen out of the forest behind our campsite! It wasn't used at all that night, so the tree, probably about 20 foot long, was turned into a large poking device for our rescue mission. However, even this couldn't quite reach the poor helicopter, and it became quite obvious the only way we would reach it was to climb the tree again. 

one of the twins with an axe (I think this was Joe) lopping off branches from the

Aspen, while Jack and Maddie look on. 

Seb and Joe did the honours, and we passed them one of the longer branches we'd lopped off the Aspen, short enough to be manoeuvrable but just about long enough to reach the helicopter from a few branches lower than Jack had first climbed to. The helicopter was knocked out of the tree, caught and, about an hour after it's crash, had finally been freed. The girl let us all have a go on it as the evening progressed, and I can now completely understand how it could have been crashed. as complete novices to remote-control helicopter flying, we could barely get the thing in a straight line, and I dread to think what would have happened had it ended up 30 foot in the air again! 

during the rest of the evening, we had campfire songs, the kids built our own fire and we all generally wound down after a hectic day. It was our last evening on the campsite, and by 12:00 when I went to bed only five people were still awake, everyone not in quite as high spirits now the trip was coming to an end

Monday 23 July

I hadn't really done any geeky wildlife stuff all trip (I know I'd found Glow Worms and Marbled Whites and things, but I hadn't gone out of my way to look for them, they'd just been there). So early this morning, Dad drove me to Durlston Head, just west of Swanage. Our target was a butterfly called the Lulworth Skipper, which is only found on a handful of south-facing hills on this stretch of the Dorset coast. It didn't take very long to find one, and in the long grassland of the clifftop on Durlston Head we ended up seeing plenty. The total number of Butterflies was estimated at;

• Lulworth Skipper- 30+
• Small Skipper- 1 or 2 positively identified
• Essex Skipper-1 positively identified
• unidentified skipper- 30+; the only way to separate Small or Essex Skipper is the colour of their antennae, and only a few were seen well enough to determine which species they were. 
• Ringlet- 2
• Gatekeeper- 50+
• Marbled White- a huge number, there must have been a few hundred in this area of Durlston overall
• Dark Green Fritillary- 1

also seen were a very large number of Six-spot Burnet Moths, a few hundred at least. It was a pretty successful morning, and I got a few OK photographs too, but when we got back it was time to pack up.

a Ringlet, one of my favourite butterflies with their smooth, velvety-brown

wings and the little wings that look like they were drawn on my a cartoonist

Six-spot Burnet Moth, not a bad little critter either

I believe this is a Small Skipper

a flotilla of speedboats briefly broke the silence

and finally, the star of the show, one of 30+ Lulworth Skippers out on a
gorgeous morning. It's not the most colourful butterfly in the world, but I reckon
beauty's in the eye of the beholder

 We left the campsite for another year, and it was time to say goodbye to everyone. If you read this, thankyou Brian, Claire, Liz, Charlie, Oli, Joe, Maddie, Lucy, Neil, Sarah, Jack, Beth, Romily, Gordon, Else, Megan, Ella, Izzy, Ollie, Seb, Laurence, Georgia, Max, my parents and everyone else who went along (and I'm really sorry that I know I've missed a few people out, their names just escaped me as I was writing this), it was a fantastic weekend and it's a shame I might not see some of you til this time again next year. 

On the way home, my parents dumped me at my uncle and aunt's house in the New Forest, which is where I'll pick up in my next post. If you like The Queen, Stag Beetle legs, Alpacas and photographs of baby pigs, it might be to your liking!