Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 February 2017

Kenfig Pool and Kenfig Sand Dunes

Kenfig Pool (Photo: Public Domain)

I was thinking about places in the countryside that I remember from my childhood and thought I would like to tell you about Kenfig Pool and the sand dunes there. My parents used to take me to this amazing place when I was a boy. We used to go on lots of days out, visiting the countryside. My dad had a blue Vanguard car and this is what we would go out in. Mum and Dad were always encouraging when it came to my interest in nature and they used to buy me lots of books. I had most of the Observer’s Books.


I had the Observer’s Book of British Wild Flowers, and the book on fungi and British birds, and wild animals, and freshwater fish, and even the Observer’s Book of Mosses and Liverworts. That last book was given to me when I was only five, and I know that because it has survived and is at my Dad’s house still, I think, and it is signed to me in the front for my “Fifth birthday.”
Anyway, one place we used to go which I really used to love was Kenfig. It is near Porthcawl but much wilder. There is a big lake called Kenfig Pool and miles and miles of sand dunes.
These dunes have rough paths through them and eventually you can get to a long sandy beach by the sea. It takes well over an hour, as I remember it, to get from the carpark to the beach. But the walk is the real fun of it all. There were so many wild flowers I could look out for and insects and newts and frogs and toads, lizards too.

Kenfig Pool

There were temporary pools that formed in the dunes and they had boggy bits around them with sphagnum moss and bog myrtle. I used to love the smell of marshy ground, especially if there was water mint that added its aroma if you stepped on it or brushed by it as you were walking. In these pools there were newts and water beetles and other water insects. I was always fascinated by water, by ponds, streams and rivers, and rock pools when we went to beaches. I used to wear my Wellingtons so I could investigate the watery places without getting my feet wet, though often I did get water in my boots and my Mum used to get mad at me because of this.
Part of the fascination was I never knew what I would find. I was exploring. It was like it stirred some sort of instinct to hunt for life; I was a hunter-gatherer boy. In those days, I was forever turning stones over, looking under boards and corrugated iron on waste ground, wading around in muddy ponds, seeing what I could catch in rivers and streams, and exploring the railway bank behind where we lived. Nature was my world. It meant much more to me than people and the human world and I hated school.

Viper's Bugloss (Photo: Public Domain)

But getting back to Kenfig, one of the reasons I was so excited by the place was because there were rare wild flowers to be found there. I used to like looking up plants in my wild-flower books. I used to always be on the lookout for new species and hoping I would discover something really rare. Wintergreen, hound’s tongue and many types of orchids were some of the rare plants that grew at Kenfig Dunes. I used to find blue viper’s bugloss and pink centaury and also we used to look out for dewberries, a type of blackberry that grew in the dunes. We used to collect them and take them home so Mum could make pie which we used to have with custard. I used to love eating blackberry pie and custard or just stewed blackberries and custard.
Often I used to go on ahead of my family, or be lagging behind them, as we made our way over the dunes. I was always investigating some marshy ground, turning over any boulders or rubbish I found or searching in the vegetation. I remember there were some parts where you could find common lizards. They would bask on bits of discarded iron sheeting and on boards and other rubbish that littered the dunes even then….this was back in the early 1960s.

Great Green Grasshopper (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)

I used to try and spot great green grasshoppers too. These insects are, as their name suggests, very big, the size of locusts. They lived in some parts of the dunes and you could hear them singing but they are really difficult to find. The insects blend in so well with the vegetation and they stop singing as soon as you get anywhere near them. Most frustrating!
Often I found young toads and they seemed happy in the sandy soil. I remember thinking about natterjack toads I had read about in my books. They liked habitats like this but were very rare and didn’t live in South Wales but that didn’t stop me dreaming I would find them there.

Six-Spot Burnet (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)

There were lots of butterflies too. Wall butterflies, meadow browns, common blues, small coppers, small heaths and the colourful day-flying moths known as burnet moths. Many of these types of butterfly you hardly ever see in Britain today. It has always depressed me to watch wildlife vanishing. I never thought it would happen when I was younger. I mean, you don’t think about these things. You think everything will always be there somehow.
In spring though it was amazing because that is when there were most wild-flowers in bloom and the ponds were full of water. At this time too, if you happened to get there at the right time, it was possible to see thousands of adult toads making their way to Kenfig Pool. They used to use the lake to breed in and I remember seeing these amphibians all over the ground on the shores of the lake and in the water around the edges. many of them were mated pairs, in what naturalists call amplexus, where the male toad grasps the female with his arms round her and rides on her back.

Common Toad (Photo: Public Domain)

I used to like the idea of how wild it felt once you got away from the road and ‘civilisation.’ It was just miles of sand dunes covered in marram grass and other plants that tolerated the sandy soil, the sky above and hardly a soul ever in sight. Most people stayed in the car-park, few ventured into the dunes and were prepared to make the long trek.
When we were getting near the beach area you could tell. There were visible signs if you knew what to look out for. The sand got more so, less covered in vegetation, and new plants appeared.  The weird and prickly sea holly and sea spurge, food-plant for the rare spurge hawk moth. It was a moth I always hoped to someday see but never did. It is funny how we can live in expectation of some dream coming true, even though it is very much against the odds. It seems easier to do this when you are younger.

Gatekeeper on Sea Holly (Photo: Pixabay/Public Domain)

In this part of Kenfig it was like a zone, a border between the dunes and the beach, a place where different plants would grow. Then there was the top of the beach proper with rotting seaweed, bladderwrack with sandhoppers underneath it. I always used to enjoy moving the weed and seeing the hundreds of little crustaceans jumping about and seeking cover. It fascinated me how they all lived under these piles of seaweed.

Sandhoppers

So Kenfig was very much a part of my childhood and early teens. I don’t know what it is like today, probably spoiled to some degree. Most of my life and growing up I bore witness to seeing places I loved in the countryside getting ruined. I am sure you know what I mean, I mean watching places get built all over, ponds drained, roads built etc etc. Reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” But the wild places are still there in my head, in my memories, and are very much a part of what has made me as I am.

Footnote: This is the slightly edited first chapter of an unpublished book I began writing. More chapters will appear in future blogs.

Wednesday 25 May 2016

Why Tenerife is a paradise for naturalists

Tenerife is a naturalist’s dream
Tenerife forested mountains
Tenerife is a popular island in the Canary Islands for tourists who spend their holidays there but it is also every naturalist’s dream. With its forests, mountains, semi-desert areas, cliffs, sand dunes and range of beaches there is a real diversity of habitats. There are so many types of countryside on the island, and also a range of very different microclimates. This is why so many forms of flora and fauna can be found there, both endemic species and introduced and naturalised plants and animals.
Laurel Pigeon (Photo: DrPhilipLehmann)
There are two main sorts of forests: pine forest and ancient evergreen laurel forest. The latter of these is very important because the patches of this type of woodland that still stand on Tenerife and some of the other Canary Islands are some of the only remaining stretches of this form of forest in the world. Rare birds, such as the laurel pigeon (Columba junoniae) and endemic plants like the Canary Islands foxglove (Isoplexis canariensis) can be found in the laurel forests.

Viper's Bugloss species

Red Bugloss
Tenerife has a very great range of species in the Echium genus of viper’s bugloss. The most spectacular species is the red bugloss or Teide bugloss (Echium wildpretii), which as its name suggests has red flowers that form in tall spikes, and it is found growing high on Mt Teide where there is a very extreme habitat. Because it is so high the sunlight is very strong but it gets very cold at night. The ground is dry and rocky and it looks like another planet in the Tenerife highlands.
There is a shortage of naturally occurring freshwater in Tenerife because it drains quickly into the ground and down to the sea after it rains but this has not prevented a fascinating selection of freshwater creatures and water birds being found on the island. Many species of dragonfly, two species of frog and the mosquito fish (Gambusia affinis) mainly depend on the reservoirs and irrigation tanks used by farmers for collecting water for their crops. The frogs, by the way, are the Mediterranean tree-frog (Hyla meridionalis), and the Iberian water frog (Rana perezii). In the village of Erjos, however, there are some large ponds that formed after the topsoil was removed many years ago. These pools attracted all sorts of wildlife and make a wonderful area for appreciating nature and walking in the surrounding hills and forests. 
Grey Heron
The grey heron (Ardea cinerea) is a bird that uses natural and artificial freshwater pools to search for fish and frogs and is often seen on the island. It will also take goldfish from ornamental ponds in parks and gardens.
Tenerife has lizard species, two types of gecko and a skink but no snakes, despite having excellent habitats for these reptiles.
Monarch butterfly
There are many interesting insects to be found on the island. A butterfly to look out for is the monarch (Danaus plexippus). It was able to colonise the Canary Islands because the tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) is often grown in gardens, flower borders and parks. This large and beautiful butterfly can be seen flying all year round and is most often seen in cities, towns and resorts where its caterpillar’s food-plant grows in gardens. The massive and strange looking death’s head hawk moth and its larva are often found on Tenerife. This moth gets its name due to the skull-like marking on its thorax. The fact that it can squeak too has added to its weirdness and has made it the subject of various superstitions. The caterpillars are very big and feed mostly on thorn-apple (Datura stramonium), which is a very common weed on the island, and also on the shrub Lantana (Lantana camara).  There are also some species of praying mantis that can be found on Tenerife.
Mantis
Botanists will be excited by the very large number of succulents that grow wild on Tenerife. There are many endemic species of Aeonium and Euphorbia. The Canary Island spurge (Euphorbia canariensis) looks more like a cactus and grows in large clumps on arid and rocky ground around the island.

Look out too for the prehistoric-looking dragon trees (Dracaena draco), which can still be found occasionally growing wild but are very rare. They are much more commonly seen in parks and gardens around Tenerife, and there is the famous “Drago Milenario,” said to be 1,000-years-old that is in its own park in Icod de los Vinos.

If you are interested in wildlife you will find plenty to interest you wherever you are on the island.

Friday 19 December 2014

Fly Agaric Magic Mushroom linked with Father Christmas

Fly Agarics. Photo in Public Domain






The Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) is a brightly coloured hallucinogenic mushroom that is often used in illustrations for fairy stories, and perhaps with very good reason. The substances muscimol and ibotenic acid it contains produce intoxication and altered reality and consumption of this toadstool has been used to produce visionary states. Because of this it is included in my book Herbs of the Northern Shaman.

Because of this, and its known use by shamans of Lapland, Siberia and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, the fungus has been linked with the myth of Santa Claus. The Fly Agaric is coloured red and white just like the traditional costume that Father Christmas wears.

The Fly Agaric is sometimes eaten by reindeer and Santa Claus travels in a sleigh drawn by these animals. They fly through the sky and it has been suggested that hallucinations brought about by the ingestion of this fungus might have something to do with this fanciful idea.

The author and ethnobotanist R. Gordon Wasson suggested that the Fly Agaric was the mystical soma mentioned in the Rig Veda, sacred book of the Hindus. John Marco Allegro in his 1970 book The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross went as far as suggesting that the Christian religion was founded by practitioners of an ancient fertility cult who were ritual users of this fungus and Biblical texts were inspired by visions they experienced. 



It has been suggested that part of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland was inspired by the Fly Agaric because it is known to cause hallucinations in which size becomes distorted. 

Hookah Smoking Caterpillar and Alice - Illustration by Sir John Tenniel (Public Domain)

Fly Agarics grow in groups under pine and birch, as well as under other trees.  They can be found in autumn and are common in some places. They grow in the UK, many parts of Europe, and across Asia, as well as in Canada and North America. 

Fly Agarics are reported to be edible after parboiling and the fungus has been eaten in some places. Recreational drug users and modern neo-shamans use the fungus as an entheogen, especially after the psilocybin magic mushrooms became an illegal drug in many countries such as the UK. 

The Fly Agaric is a fungus we all know about, if only from having seen it in fairy tales and in artwork.

Fly agarics in Rubezahl by Moritz von Schwind (Public Domain)




Saturday 1 October 2011

Las Galletas means the biscuits


One of the Las Galletas beaches

Las Galletas may well mean “The Biscuits” when translated from the Spanish but I am thinking of a charming fishing village turned resort town in Tenerife South that bears the same name. Las Galletas is not far from Los Cristianos and the Reina Sofia Airport as well.
Las Galletas has become a really popular seaside town with a good range of varied shopping, plenty of bars and restaurants and an attractive seafront promenade. It also has its own harbour and new marina where cruises operate from. It is possible to go diving from Las Galletas which has a dive centre as well.
Las Galletas is the neighbour of Costa del Silencio with its many housing complexes and large community of British ex-pats and other visitors to the island. Part of Costa del Silencio is known as Ten-Bel, and this was one of the first specially built self-catering resort developments. There are many Tenerife apartments for rental in Costa del Silencio and Las Galletas itself, and this is why so many people end up staying there after they have discovered these places when looking for Tenerife accommodation.
Because Las Galletas is in the extreme south of Tenerife it usually has excellent weather and plenty of sunshine. This makes it just the sort of place holiday-makers are looking for. Its proximity to the resorts of Los Cristianos and Las Americas goes in its favour too, as does the fact that it is very near to the Reina Sofia Airport for Tenerife South.
Las Galletas has two long beaches and one of these is very popular with sun-bathers and swimmers even though it has a lot of pebbles on it and it is right in front of the road. Its sunshine, calm waters and view over the marina with the many boats there more than make up for any disadvantages! 

Friday 5 August 2011

Los Cristianos is one of the most popular resorts in Tenerife


Los Cristianos harbour photo by David Parkes

Los Cristianos in the south of Tenerife is one of the most well known and popular tourist resorts on the island. In fact for many people it is the only part of Tenerife they really know. Los Cristianos is where countless holiday-makers go and find it has all they are looking for.
Los Cristianos has the sandy beaches, the warm subtropical sunshine, the bars and restaurants and an excellent range of shops and local businesses. It is also within easy reach of the Tenerife South Airport.
There are hotels in Los Cristianos but many visitors to the island who are looking for Tenerife accommodation chose self-catering holidays in rented apartments. There are plenty of short-term lets as well as long-term rentals available for Tenerife apartments.
Apartment blocks and community complexes usually have their own swimming pools for residents and are not far from shops and bars. It is easy to get to the beach too in Los Cristianos, which is where most holiday-makers like to spend a lot of their time.
There are two large sandy beaches and a smaller one. The main beaches are Playa de los Cristianos, which is near the resort’s harbour, and Playa de las Vistas, which has been awarded a Blue Flag of excellence. The beaches provide long expanses of golden sand and are ideal for sunbathers. Sun-beds are readily available and WC and shower facilities are provided.
Los Cristianos runs right into and merges with the resort of Las Americas, and it is easy to walk along the seafront that joins the two.
Los Cristianos harbour is a focal point of the seaside town and also where ferries travel to the neighbouring island of La Gomera from.
Los Cristianos has an excellent regular bus service that enables travellers to get to many parts of the island from or for shorter journeys in the south.
Los Cristianos started life as a fishing village but in the late 1960s it began to develop fast into the thriving tourist town it has become today.


Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.

Friday 24 June 2011

Popular Tenerife Resorts




Las Americas at sunset

Tenerife in the Canary Islands is a very popular destination for holiday-makers with many British people, as well as Germans and other nationalities choosing it as the ideal place to spend their holidays. Of course this is understandable with its subtropical climate, sandy beaches and modern tourist resorts.
It is also easy to book flights to Tenerife, especially to Reina Sofia Tenerife South Airport, which is within convenient travelling distance from the main resorts in that part of the island. Visitors to the island have plenty to choose from when it comes to a selection of affordable Tenerife accommodation, and there are short-term lets for Tenerife Apartments as well as long-term rentals available.
There are plenty of apartment blocks, apartment-hotels and more conventional hotels on offer in Tenerife but many visitors like to choose a self-catering holiday to suit their pockets.
The most popular and well known resorts in the south of Tenerife are Los Cristianos and Playa de las Americas but there are many other coastal villages that fit into the resort category as well.
The resorts offer everything a holiday-maker could want. Besides the wonderful beaches and plentiful sunshine there are loads of bars and restaurants, as well as large modern shopping centres. There are theme parks like Siam Park, as well as coach and minibus excursions all around the island.
The resorts are served by an excellent bus service too that makes it easy for visitors to the island to get about, although many are quite content to use the local beaches and facilities in the area they are holidaying in.
Tenerife North, which on the whole offers a cooler climate and more rain that allows luxuriant vegetation to grow, has resorts too with Puerto de la Cruz being the most popular and largest of these. This is where you can visit the world famous Loro Parque Parrot Park or relax on its black sand beach with its own gardens known as Playa Jardin.


Copyright © 2012 Steve Andrews. All Rights Reserved.