our New Years day walk in Walton-on-the-Naze

It was a bit nippy on the new years day, we went for a walk. I'd never been to Essex coast I guess, and it was grey. It was about 30-40mins drive from Marcus's house(maybe bit longer........) by car, we took our nibbles and flask of tea with us. I love that.

 We parked up the car on the car park, it wasn't free car parking either( on the new years' day!). So we thought we'd better getting a ticket from a machine, and it' ate our £1 coin and didn't regurgitate. Which means, the machine was broken. Thanks to Essex. Apparently, seemed like some people had the same experience. Never mind.

 We started walking towards the beach, and as soon as landed, I saw something, and it was fossilized wood twig! I always wanted to find fossilised wood and that day was my dream came true! Hooray! Later, when we got back, we looked up on the net, they weren't fossilized, they were pylised! Even better! Magic. ☺

 Those pylised tree twigs were heavy and made nice noise. Apparently, geography there was really old, went back to Jurassic period.  Just looking at the beach, looked like rocks but actually they were crays! They were really sticky to walk on too!

This is Naze tower. 

This is the beach. Very grey and looks cold doesn't it? 

These looked soooo wild, didn't feel like we were on the Essex coast. Amazing colour!

Naze tower looking up from the beach.

These are my findings "pylised wood", and my treasure!☺ When I got to the beach, I was sooo excited to see so many of them, but by the time on our way back to the car, lost its novelty. there were loads of them on the beach!

 Apparently, not only pylised wood, also, shells, fish, shark teeth, and crocodile teeth can be found there. How exciting! There's another Jurassic coast in the area. Hunstanton in Norfolk. I can't wait to go there for fossil hunting in summer! and camping be nice too☺

boxing day 2011

I wasn't happy, I suppose I was really ignorant about fox hunting. I thought it was more or less banned. It's still English country side tradition to do "fox chasing" instead.

 I know Emma from our charity shop, once had massive argument with a guy who supported fox hunting in a country fair in Ipswich last summer. That made me proud of her! Right on!

On the boxing day, on our way to Marilyn's, we saw some posh country people were gathering round near by farm with a pub. I didn't know what's going on, till Marcus told me they were there for fox hunting! Later we saw on BBC news, interview with an anti-fox hunting person and a fox hunting supporter. And it was interesting. What I don't understand is; why those people found fun (they call it sport) chasing poor foxes with dogs? I really don't get that. Although they now stop killing foxes, but they chase them instead.

 Chances are: those foxes who are chased probably die from stress anyway. What did they do to them? To me, foxhunting/chasing is really backward(it's 2012, time's moving on) and it's not really sport to feel superior to other creatures on the earth. What if someone had broken into their house, started chasing them with samurai sword when they were chilling out with kids. How would they feel? (Actually I know someone who did this, and they were so scared) Scary!!!!
 

I was actually shocked seeing posh country people gathering and on the news. I couldn't say a word. Those English people go mad about Japanese killing wheals, but o.k for them to kill foxes. Doesn't make sense. I don't support wheal hunting either, I think Greenpeace is always doing well with their protest to Japanese. Again, some Japanese don't like that either, tough.

 But anyway, I hope one day soon, cruelty to animals will stop....