Just Back from Scandinavia

We have just got back from a 10 day flying tour of Scandinavia. I took over 800 photos in all which will take me ages to sort out. Loads of deleting to be done I'm sure :-)
There were 12 people on the trip in 6 aircraft. This photo is our arrival at Bergen, Norway where we all met up and spent the first night. Didn't see much on the flight as we were in cloud for most of it but once we broke out of the clouds the scenery was wonderful. From Bergen we went up to Trondheim and then up into the Arctic circle at a place called Alta right at the top of Norway and land of the midnight sun (home of the insomniacs). After that we flew down to Helsinki in Finland where we returned to having a couple of hours of darkness each night...bliss. Our last planned stop was Stockholm but as the weather turned bad on us we had to break our return flight at Gronegen in the Netherlands for an extra night.
Apart from some nasty flying weather on some of the legs the trip was excellent. I'll tell you more about it over the next few days.

Brac's big moment...but don't blink!

This is a frame from the Morrison's ad that Brac is in. You will have to be quick to notice him when it's on as he's only visible for about a second and hidden behind the other collie. Sorry about the quality of this image but it is a photograph of my TV screen.

Taking to the Air

Now we have the aircraft back Paul is desperate to get up-to-speed again with flying it before we go on holiday in it at the end of the month. For this reason we spent the weekend going places in it. On Saturday we flew to Shoreham airport which is near to Brighton on the south coast. This is a charming airfield as the terminal building was an original 1920 Art Deco building with all it's original features. The airfield is also located so close to the town you can walk there and get straight down onto the beach.
Yesterday we flew to Old Sarum airfield which is next to Salisbury in wiltshire. We me his parents, sister, and niece Bethany there for lunch. Paul gave Bethany and his dad a joy flight while we were there. There is a large Iron Age hill fort next to the airfield that you fly right over on the approach. This was later turned into a Norman bailey and mote castle and when that fell into disuse the stone was taken to build a cathedral. You can see the ruins of both in this image. Apparently when this cathedral was built it was so exposed and cold that no one wanted to worship there. A decision was made to relocate the cathedral and so history books record that an archer fired an arrow from the mound and where it fell was where they erected the current cathedral. However, it seems extremely unlikely that any arrow could have ever made it that far. You can just about make out the spire of the current Salisbury cathedral in this photo and it's a very long way.

Major Headache

Now here is an even bigger reason for my tardyness in blogging. My PC is getting old and arthritic. OK so it's only 4 years old but in technology terms that's ancient especially when I need to run hungry software like Photoshop. Paul tried increasing the ram for me but it's already on maximum at 1GB. One thing that did seem to be slowing everything down is spurious software that seemed to be running for no reason. Then Abode bridge, a pert of Photoshop that manages files, failed. On contacting the support desk I was told it was basically my operating system that was in error and not their software. They provided me a fix that sure enough fixed Adobe bridge but messed up the rest of my operating system! Thanks guys. I finally came to the conclusion that the only way to go was to start from scratch. I didn't want to replace my PC just yet as after the aeroplane refit we are a little tight on available funds and when I do replace this PC I want to make sure it has enough spec to last me a little longer than 4 years. The only other solution was to reformat the hard drive or simple replace it with a new one as they are pretty cheap these days. That was done last Saturday and I am still trying to re-install all my software and configure my system. It took me 24 hours to get all the windows updates installed! I'm nearly finished now and hope to have it all done by tonight but I'm sure there will be things I go to use in a few weeks time that I've forgotten to re-install. One thing I have noticed though, far less space is being used up by all my system and program files than was before. Lets just hope it runs more efficiently now. :-)

Long weekend in Berlin

The weekend before last we had a trip to Berlin. It was a flying trip organised by a group called the Socata TB Users Group which is an internet based support group for owners of Socata TB aircraft. It had been planned a long time and we were all paid up for it but for one problem. Our aircraft had been booked in over the winter for a respray and refit and the work was taking longer than expected to get done. We should have had it back at least a month before this trip but as it ended up we didn't get it back until about 30 minutes before we were due to take-off as there were still last minute problems that needed fixing. It does, however, look beautiful and the flight to Berlin went like a dream. See below



There were 31 other aircraft on the trip and we all flew into Templehof airport which is right on the edge of the city and the location for the Berlin Airlift just after the war.
Berlin is a real phoenix of a place. Flattened mainly by the Brits during the war there are few original buildings standing but what they have they have restored beautifully along side the ultra modern buildings of the Chancellery and the Paul-Löbe-Haus.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon and left after lunch on Monday. We had a city tour on foot and another by boat. A group meal was arranged for us at the top of the Reichstag on the Sunday evening and walked back through the Brandenburg Gate to our hotel. Although we saw quite a bit there is plenty we didn't get to see and I would thoroughly recommend it for a city break.

Brac moves into video

One thing I forgot to tell you guys that I know you'll be interested in, Brac did another ad last Saturday. This time for Morrisons supermarket. It's a TV advert rather than a still one and if used will be shown on ITV in the next few weeks. I took this on my mobile as they were setting up. Brac's not in this shot as he is with me. The advert had a housewife pushing a shopping trolley through a farmers gate on her way to get some spring lamb. The farmer is leaning on the gate and Brac is sitting next to him pretending to be a sheep dog. For some of the shooting he has a girlfriend, a beautiful tri-colour border collie bitch but she got worried by the shooting and after a few takes wouldn't settle any more so they continued without her. If she is in the final ad will depend on which take they use. You can just see her in the centre of this image being held my Brac's agent Viv. If you look closely you can also see the guy playing the farmer holding the gate open for a woman pushing a shopping trolley. They wanted to see if the set worked before bringing the dogs in. I think you can see the image larger if you click on it.

Bloggers Catch 22

The big trouble with blogging is that when ever I have time to blog I never have anything much of interest to say. When ever I have plenty to tell you, I don't have the time to blog! It's the Bloggers catch 22. I've not been blogging lately because I've been so busy but now it's all old news. I'll tell you some snippets but I'll break them up into separate blogs because long blogs can be a strain to read. :-)I'll also space them out a bit so they won't appear all at once.

Chinese Military possibly disguising themselvs as monks?

I didn't take this photo. It was sent to me via facebook.
It appears to be showing Chinese Military donning Tibetan Monk's robes before going on to riot and cause trouble in disguised. Whoever took this was very brave.

Brac goes live on YouTube

I have now set up a YouTube account where I shall be uploading videos of Brac from time to time. There are two on there at present but I'm sure I'll soon have a few more to add. You can see them here.

Obedience - When he feels like it!

This is me in at a training session with Brac last Thursday. He looks wonderful, bless his cotton socks. We had our first obedience show of the season yesterday but what he produced in the ring bore no relation to this. He will work like this outside the ring at the venue which is usually a sports field, but in the ring, Brac has his own agenda and paying attention to me isn't listed very high on it.

Spring

More snow

It's Spring. It's April. Friday I was walking Brac in a T shirt in glorious sun shine and thinking I should perhaps have put some lotion on. This morning it snowed, and snowed, and snowed. We ended up with 2-3" but it would have easily been twice that if it had been cold enough for it not to melt. It looked pretty for a while but once the snow started to abate it melted very quickly. The sun has just appeared but it is about to set anyway. There is now just a small amount of snow left on the rooftops but apart from that it appears to be returning to normal...what ever that is. Crazy weather.

Just being a dog!

Brac takes time out after all his hard work.

Brac's second day on the job

Today was Brac's second and final day on the photo shoot. This time he was being walked by a different model and in a park. What he really wanted to do was what dogs normally do in park but instead he had to be content being walked back and forth while more photos were taken. It wasn't all boring though. A little later on he was to get involved in a group frisbee game in the park which, as it had been raining lots lately, was extremely muddy. Brac, who had only been bathed yesterday in preparation for this photo shoot, ended up plastered but at least he had fun.

Brac's a Star...but we knew that anyway.

Brac was used in a photo shoot for an advert today. This is the second time he has been used in advertising. Last time was for worming pills and today was healthcare. He assignment was to walk on the lead with the model so nothing too taxing. What amazes me about this kind of set-up is just how many people it takes to take a photograph.
Brac is required back again tomorrow for some different shots. I'm not sure yet what they will require but what ever it is he will be only too happy to be in the centre of attention.

New Neighbours

A male blue tit has been very busy these last few days sorting out this nest box and trying to make it acceptable to his female. I think they have now finally settled but for several days it was touch and go as to whether she would accept it of not. He was hedging his bets though as there are at least three other tit boxes in the garden and he had been preparing all four but this was the one he had been displaying outside so clearly this was his first choice. It's good for me as it's right opposite my office window.

This is just an Easter wish for you all. Enjoy the holiday and don't get too sick on chocolate. As for me, today is a day for staying in by the fire as it's freezing cold and snowing!

Silly sheep... ...dog!

These sheep are engrossed. The have wandered across the field to try and understand the spectacle that is revealing itself before them. Believe it or not, it's Brac they are interested in and far from being concerned about his presence they seem completely mystified by him.
So why is Brac commanding so much attention? Because bored with me stopping to take photos of sheep he has wandered off through a scraggy hedge to my right and into a small coppice. There is a lot of growling and grunting going on with a few barks through in for good measure. I decide to take a look and see for myself what he is up to and the rest I thought worth photographing...
Scroll drown to the images below.



As I turned around I saw the tip of Brac's tail slowly emerging from the hedge. By the time I get the camera focused he is half way out. He is clearly trying to retrieve something that he does not want to give up on and the frustration is very apparent.


Suddenly it all happens and he springs backwards with his spoils. It's one of the recently coppiced canes.


Having dog-handled it through the hedge he now feels his has won the right to parade with it up and down the path while the sheep still gaze at him in wonder.

Back at Agility

This morning I was able to take Brac to agility training for the first time since just before Christmas. You can imagine how excited he was when he got there. There was no training for a month over the Christmas period and then when it started up again it was cancelled for the first two weeks due to bad weather. Since then there have been a couple of training days cancelled because the organisers have been away and of those that were available either we were away or Brac had a cut paw. Next week there won't be any agility training as Crufts is on and most of the trainers and some of the trainees will be there.
Despite Brac not having been for so long he hadn't forgotten any of it and was far more 'on the ball' than me. I was still trying to fathom out my lefts from rights when he was half way around the course. I swear he is probably better off without me barking commands at him all the way around especially when half the time they are wrong and he ignores me anyway. I think I need to go round with Gaffa tape over my mouth :-)

My Garden Stalker

Although not native, pheasants are '10 a penny' in the UK and a quintessential part of the British countryside. I don't , however, live in the country, so you can imagine my surprise at seeing this beauty in my back garden. Ok, I've only got to go a few miles down the road to find some and It's true I do back onto farmland, but it's arable so at this time of year especially there is no ground cover. Being on the edge of a town means these fields are regularly patrolled by endless dog walkers and there is a clay pigeon shoot the next field over. All this generally keeps these birds well away so maybe this one had got lost and thought my garden a place of safety? He clearly hadn't spotted Brac watching from the French doors. He's gone now but not until he had spent a good few hours searching between every blade of grass in a general leisurely way for some morsel to eat. I wonder if I'll see him again?