04/08/2009 by pete.

I have just updated “Pete’s Walks” again.

No new walks (well, a couple in the Latest Walks section, one a nature ramble at Thursley Common, the other a short local walk) but lots of new wildlife photos I’ve taken in recent weeks - Moths, Butterflies, Dragonflies and a few more Wildflowers.

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19/07/2009 by pete.

Yesterday morning, I spent about three hours wandering around Bricket Wood, south of St Albans in Hertfordshire (there is a village there too with the same name).  I had walked through here on the Hertfordshire Way, and passed by recently on the Ver-Colne Valley Walk.

Apart from woodland, there is a small open are that is more like a heath. I was hoping to see White Admiral and Silver Washed Fritillary butterflies. I just got a fleeting glimpe of the former, and saw none of the latter. But there were lots of Gatekeepers, Ringlets and Meadow Browns, plus a few Marbled Whites and Peacocks.

Despite my lack of success with regards seeing the target species, it was a very pleasant morning.

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17/07/2009 by pete.

I had two wisdom teeth removed on Tuesday. It was quite painless (thankfully, as I’ve got to have the other two out in three weeks time!) but my mouth is going to be somewhat sore and tender for several days, and at the moment I can only eat ’semi-solid’ foods.

The weather has been very indifferent, with lots of showers. So I’m not really sure when I’ll be able to do my next walk.

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14/07/2009 by pete.

Yesterday I walked to Totternhoe and back, recording as many species of wildflowers as possible. I have written a report of what I found on the WildAboutBritain site:

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/forums/wildflowers-plants-and-tree-forums/57010-flowers-south-beds-today.html

The highlight was probably finding a couple of Common Broomrapes, only the second time I’ve found this peculiar parasite.

There were also loads of butterflies on the walk. Having just seen my first Gatekeeper of the year a few days ago, they are now out in force! I was seeing them almost everywhere, they were possibly the most numerous butterfly I saw. I saw at least four Commas, they seem to be doing well this year, and a couple of very faded Painted Ladies. Many Meadow Browns, Ringlets and MarbledWhites, two or three Small Tortoiseshells and a Brimstone.

I had a couple of brief showers and then it rained heavily for 10-20 minutes, starting while I was eating my lunch on top of the castle site at Totternhoe Knolls. This was at 2pm, which showed how often I’d stopped to take photos - if I’d been just walking, I’d have been back at Dunstable Downs or Bison Hill by 1.30pm!  I took pretty much the quickest way home (except I didn’t fancy the direct route up the steep slope of the Downs!), and fortunately there was no more rain.

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11/07/2009 by pete.

Today I had arranged a meeting for members of the WildAboutBritain web site at Ivinghoe Beacon.  It was very nice to meet a few people who share my interests in wildflowers and such like. Only a small number attended (it was very much a last-minute thing, I didn’t give people much notice, and unfortunately it clashed with a similar meeting elsewhere) but we had a good time and after exploring round the Beacon most of us moved on to College Lake.

I saw six or seven flowers I’d not seen before, including Frog Orchid and Green-flowered Helleborine - this was all due to one of the guys being a real expert on the subject of wildflowers, I’d never have spotted them myself or known what they were.

I’ve written a report on the meeting along with some photos here:

http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/forums/meetings-and-events/56669-ivinghoe-beacon-saturday-11th-july.html#post510557

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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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