Tag Archives: Sahara

Spring! (tra la!)

Posted on by
2

Yesterday was one of those frustrating days, caused by what we laughingly call April’s ‘sweet Spring showers’.  The day dawned glorious – sun-kissed and promising.  Grass was reassuringly green, daffs were delightfully golden, birds said variations on ‘tweet!’  All was good.

Inspired, I rushed to put the chicks’ run out on the grass so they could feel the sun and eat fallen blossom (for some reason all poultry adores eating blossom, small chicks no exception).  I took Slip’s rug off so he could sunbathe and top up on Vitamin D and I set off on a long walk with Darcy and Indie.

When I was at the further end of the walk, a cold wind arose.  It whistled up some ominous clouds which rapidly blotted out the sun and I accelerated, because I knew what would happen next.  It did happen:  when I was nearly home the sky turned dark purple and it began to hail.  I shot home and moved the chicks back indoors under their infra red lamp.  They were surprised, but rapidly recovered.  Then I whizzed out to the field and put Slip’s rug back on.  He hates hail, so was galloping around the field scattering sheep and swearing under his breath.  I got his rug on as quickly as possible, but he was blaming me for everything throughout, and I can’t say he was cooperative.  Then I rushed home to dry Darcy and Indie who looked as if they had just emerged from a swimming pool.

Then the sun came out and everything steamed.  Steamiest of the lot was Slip, who was now too hot in his rug, and blaming me all over again.  So I took his rug off and, after a dither, put the chicks out again (which, I should mention here, takes 3 journeys every time – one for the run, one for the box of chicks and one for their food and water bowls).  Then I encouraged the dogs outside to dry off in the sun.

And that’s when it started to rain again.

Well, that’s Spring for you, and at least the grass is growing.  We’re off to the Sahara wild-camping next week which is guaranteed to produce a couple of weeks of gladsome warm weather back in the UK: it always does.

Where did it go?

Posted on by
4

This weekend, the house was full of enormous men reading maps and talking about Land Rovers.  Our annual adventure to the Sahara is drawing closer, and they were here to discuss routes, and suitable dunes to camp beneath etc.  When it comes to food they like quantity above all else, so the kitchen was full of steaming pots brimming with chilli.

In among everything I tiptoed out to the computer to upload my latest blog, and discovered to my bleak horror that my website had disappeared and in its place was a bland message full of acronyms telling me to download my feeder (I think) and various other incomprehensible messages.

And I realised again the disadvantage of growing up before technology changed the world.  My childhood was spent deep in the country and mainly outdoors.  Television was there for the evenings, I loved Batman and something called Snowy White Horses, but you only watched it for a few minutes and then rushed off and did something real.  There were books in plenty:  we had a huge haunted library which I didn’t like to linger in, but would grab an armful of books ancient and modern from the long, dusty shelves and bear them away to my lair under an old dresser in a disused kitchen.  It all sounds gothic and strange from a distance, but it was entirely normal to me.

Anyway, back to the point of this blog.  If I encounter a sheep on its back, or a horse on three legs or a goose that is walking backwards (all of these have happened in the last month) I have a pretty good idea what to do.  I’d like to think I could sort it, and probably wouldn’t need help.  But confronted by a screen telling me that my website had gone walkabout and it was probably all my fault, and hearing in the distance the large men trying to find where I’d put the apple crumble, I hadn’t a clue how to proceed.

Mikey, my eldest son and IT man, has inherited the adventure gene and is far, far away.  By texting I contacted him (how I love texting, it can reach him in the furthest flung places which often have better reception than I do in these nearly-Cotswold hills) and he made his way to a computer which every town seems to have no matter how improbable.  And he got my website back.  Huzzah!

I suppose I can console myself with the knowledge that I am unrivalled at digging sickly chicks out of their eggs.  But actually (let it be whispered) it would be far more useful to be able to grapple with a vanished website.  Far, far more useful.

Midnight ramblings

Posted on by
6

The Sahara was exotic, no doubt about it.  Think dunes, dust, camels, goatherds, souks, prickly pears, mirages.  But the bit that made me laugh most (in retrospect) isn’t exotic at all, in fact it’s not really suitable for polite company.  But here goes anyway:

We spent three weeks sleeping on the roof tent above our Land Rover, which was mostly incredibly comfortable and I slept like a log.  But once a night, regular as clockwork, I had to answer a call of nature and go balancing down the ladder and out into the desert.  Some nights there were stars all over the sky which lit up the scene like the Blackpool Illuminations.  But one particular night it was pitch black.  That evening, my son had pointed out a camel spider doing the rounds – a big hairy thing with pincers.  There were also scorpions ambling about which were so huge and black that they looked like novelty rubber toys (but really, really weren’t).   And I didn’t want to tread on anything that didn’t want to be trodden on.

So I borrowed C’s headtorch and set off into the night.  The torch shone through a comforting red filter, and I picked my way around the camp beds of those who were sleeping under the stars and went far out into the dunes to find the perfect spot, neatly avoiding anything that scuttled.  When I got there, I tried to switch the headtorch off.  But it didn’t go off, it switched into blinding spotlight mode and when I looked around in confusion it shone straight on the camp beds, the inhabitants of which started making waking up noises.  In panic I switched the thing again and it turned straight into alarm beacon with a flashing on/off mega bright light that said “HERE IS SOMEBODY!! TAKE A LOOK!!”

In the end I had to stuff it down my pyjama top, where it kept on flashing but with a rather attractive muted floral glow.

So there we are, not an exotic holiday tale, but cautionary in it’s own way:  always use a headtorch you know and trust.  Now I’ll try and think of the things that happened that are far from normal experience in the Wiltshire countryside, and which I could repeat in the most refined circles.