01/07/2009 by pete.

I spent three hours this morning going round Ivinghoe Beacon looking for wildflowers, butterflies and other wildlife. I have started two threads about it on the WildAboutBritain site, with loads of photos:

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/forums/butterflies/56269-butterflies-ivinghoe-beacon-morning.html

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/forums/wildflowers-plants-and-tree-forums/56273-wildflowers-ivinghoe-beacon-today.html

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21/06/2009 by pete.

This morning I visited the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust’s College Lake nature reserve. I have written a report about my visit, with about 20 photos, here: http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/forums/general-wildlife/55580-college-lake.html

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20/06/2009 by pete.

My web host, 1&1, provides a tool that gives me statistics about the visitors to my web site “Pete’s Walks”. Obviously it doesn’t give personal information, but it does give me details of visitor numbers, page hits, from which URLs visitors have come and which country visitors are from (based on their Top Level Domains). I thought I might share some of the statistics with you.

I’m pleased to say that the number of visitors and page hits have both been increasing steadily - in fact over the course of 2008 they went up fourfold! Currently “Pete’s Walks” is getting 450-500 visitors a day, with about 900 page hits. The average number of pages visited per visitor is less than two, but this is because a large number of visitors are ‘bots’, automatic programs used by search engines to scan for new pages.

Typically there are around 30 hits a day from Google, and maybe another 5 a day from other search engines (the stats program can only detect where a small percentage of hits come from, so these figures may be greater). I usually get 2-3 hits a day from sites where I have reciprocal links (such as ‘WildAboutBritain’ and ‘WalkingBritain’) and once or twice a week I get hits from a couple of links on Wikipedia (a couple of articles on long-distance paths refer to my site).

One of the fascinating things is looking to see where visitors come from - it is truly a world-wide web! Obviously, most visitors are from the UK. I can’t tell how many US visitors I get, as they come under ‘.com’ which covers a range of other groups as well.  But I assume US visitors come second (they may possibly even outnumber UK visitors, but I doubt it - I’ve had 2 or 3 contacts from people in the US, but far more from the UK).

What is intriguing is that the third highest number of visitors come from  …  the Czech Republic! Last year they were fourth, but during 2009 they have overtaken the Germans. I have no idea why I should get such a disproportionate number of visitors from a relatively small country. I’m quite pleased though - Prague is one of the most interesting places I’ve ever visited, and I was sorry I only had a day and a half to explore it (I was on a walking tour of the Tatra mountains that had a bit of sightseeing thrown in as well).

Canadian visitors come fifth, followed by another surprise, Poland (Krakow is another brilliant place, which I visited on the same holiday that I went to Prague). The Dutch come eighth  - but then they get everywhere, wherever I’ve been on holiday, no matter how remote, there’s always a couple of Dutch visitors! Just as well they’re such nice people - I’ve worked in the Netherlands three times and have always got on with the locals, their sense of humour is very similar to the British one (and they almost all speak better English than I do!).

The Australians are ninth (I hope we stuff them in The Ashes this summer!) with Thailand providing the tenth highest number of visitors to the site (presumably a number of ex-pats keeping in touch with home). Outside the top ten, more exotic visitors include people from Oman, Peru and Indonesia.

Despite the visitor numbers, I don’t get too much in the way of feedback - maybe an email once a fortnight, and an entry in the guestbook once in a blue moon. I think the fact that the guestbook (provided by 1&1) displays people’s email addresses is a problem that puts a lot of people off (quite understandably). I’m thinking of finding another one that doesn’t show the addresses, but this would probably involve using one with adverts (and, as a privacy isssue, I’m worried what the providers might do with addresses). People can always email me at pete@petes-walks.co.uk anyway.

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19/06/2009 by pete.

“Pete’s Walks” has been updated again. There are several new photos, including a couple of shots of Roe Deer and about 10 new wildflowers. I have also created a separate section for deer photos. But the biggest addition is a journal for the Beeches Way, a 16-mile route in South Bucks which I did over two days.

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14/06/2009 by pete.

This morning I visited the nature reserves at Totternhoe. My main aim was to look for the Man Orchids and Bee Orchids that I saw there last year. I found a solitary Man Orchid (last year there had also been a group of four nearby) but no Bee Orchids. There were plenty of Common Spotted Orchids and Common Twayblades, plus a couple of Pyramidal Orchids. I also saw lots of Yellow Rattle, and my first Self-heal of the year.

I got a nice photo of a Speckled Wood, but that was the only species of butterfly I saw.  I did see a couple of moths though, Cinnabar and Straw Dot.

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07/06/2009 by pete.

I have just updated my web site, “Pete’s Walks”. There are a few more photographs, but the major addition is a journal for The Dales Way. It is not very detailed, as I did the walk five years ago and I was writing it from memory with very few photographs to help me.

The next long-distance path I shall probably do is The Beeches Way, a 16-mile route west of London. I shall probably split it into two 8-mile walks, doing them in both directions.

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29/05/2009 by pete.

I’ve just updated my web site again. Having photographed another couple of moths, I’ve now separated the moth photos from the butterfly photos.

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26/05/2009 by pete.

I’ve just updated “Pete’s Walks” again. I’ve added the Ver-Colne Valley Walk, a two-day walk I did over the Bank Holiday week-end, and a few dragonfly/damselfly photos (something I’ve meant to do for ages!).

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22/05/2009 by pete.

Last night I updated my web site “Pete’s Walks” - there was a slight technical hitch, but I think I’ve sorted it out now.

The main thing I’ve added is a journal for the Chess Valley Walk, which I did on Wednesday (10 miles each way). There are also a few more photos, including four new wildflowers.

Tomorrow I hope to walk the first half of the Ver-Colne Valley Walk.

I will continue to add walks straight to the web site rather than to this blog (see the “Latest Walks” section of the web site). I will use the blog just to report on other things, such as visits to nature reserves.

A couple of weeks ago I had all my furniture and belongings brought out of storage and delivered here to my parent’s house. It’s been a struggle fitting things in, and a lot of stuff has had to be dumped or recycled. But we’re getting there - I just have masses of boxes and things to sort out in the garage now.

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26/04/2009 by pete.

I’ve just updated my web site. There are some more ‘Latest Walks’ and a few more bird and wildflower photos.

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