My apologies for the long break in posting - mixture of tech problems + not too much to report + lack of time.
Anyway, a few things to tell you about now.....
The Autumn weekend at the Forest Park hotel went well with good weather, good food and good company as ever. I was pleased that the elusive tawny owl deigned to appear (so many times I've said, "There's an owl lives in that tree" without a single feather subsequently on view!) That's him (or her) above - a photo taken by Rick Gill on a later walk - thanks Rick!

Through the summer we tried various day walks (we being myself, Theresa and Sarah) but without great success. The walks themselves were very enjoyable and we promoted various themes such as wildlife, ponies,twilight walks and, in high summer, the heather which was particularly stunning this year. but unfortunately we didn't get many people. However the ones who did come all had a good time and we won't give up on the special walks just yet! We hope the Christmas walk at Keyhaven will be well attended: it's a lovely area and the many varieties of visiting wading birds will be in the lagoons there. Theresa will be there to tell us what all the different species are, which is ideal for lazy birdwatchers like me.

I'm really pleased to say that we will be walking on Dartmoor again this year - this time in the week immediately after Easter (10th-13th April) and again in September. I have some new routes sorted - watch this space for further details and once again we have Hotel Manager Frank Postel to look after us - as he did so brilliantly last Easter.

We also have the Spring and Autumn Forest Park dates now and I will be working on more new routes over the next few months. In addition there are some probable extra weekends to arrange as a number of people from the last Forest Park weekend are interested in organising a Dorset coast event and another group are in the process of setting up an additional Forest weekend. All of these will be advertised on this website and they are likely to be open to anyone who is interested.

In the meantime there is a lot of preparatory work to be done and I hope to report in more detail soon.