Any of you who read the blogs from last year will know that a lovely present I got was a trail camera, the sort of thing now popular with some wildlife programmes as they stake out places to photo or video wildlife. Mine was fine for the first two years but then started to hardly capture anything: either wildlife was in our garden was taking a nose-dive or the technology was dying. Well the latter was the case, and yet the makers (Bushnell) did offer a good replacement deal despite the first camera being well beyond warranty. The new camera is even better, and we are happy to say that, having staked out the garden this last week, we have lots of badger activity, the odd tatty fox, and much to our relief because we'd seen no signs recently, a hedgehog. Some clips below.
The badgers have been active almost nightly passing through the garden, and indeed one night at about 10.30pm Mary was out and saw three young badgers exploring at the end of the garden. We've caught them on camera but only two at most on our house patio.
Anyway enjoy these video and hopefully if we get anything particularly good we'll post some more.

I don't often mention guests specifically in this blog but I am making an exception. This last week our guests were Lucille (Lucy) Campeanu and her partner Gino from Australia. They were here for 9 days and managed to pack in a lot in that time including two separate circuits of the Gorge Walk, visits to Wells, Glastonbury and Bath Spa where they literally enjoyed the spa - the new-ish Thermae Bath Spa facility which includes a rooftop pool where you can gaze at Bath Abbey nearby.

They also made it to Stonehenge and took part in one of the special groups allowed in to the stones themselves (normally off-limits) for sunrise. Pretty special but made the more-so by them being in the area when a magical crop circle appeared overnight. A huge 7-pointed star: you can see the images here.

Anyway they also managed some quiet time back at the cottage and because Lucy is amongst other things a creative coach and artist she had chosen to document their travels in England and afterwards in France with an "art journal", images of which she has been posting and "vlogging" on her Facebook page as she goes along. We were particularly taken by the two paintings she did in her journal of the cottage and the patio view to the garden. They are below and you can get a lot more of this by checking out Lucy's FB page here:

                                                           www.facebook.com/artshedangel 

​Another lovely idea of lucy's was bringing with her some painted "Peace Rocks", and then leaving them in various places along their travels. Each has simple instructions on the back encouraging the finders to adopt the rocks for the next part of their own travels and then to leave the rock in turn for others to find - but not before photographing them in their new location and posting this up on Lucy's FB page for her to track their slow migration.

So a different take on how to capture your journey. And do keep you eyes open for a Peace Rock as you travel around.