Ding Junhui 10, John Higgins 8

Ding Junhui last night won snooker's UK Championship, the second most important ranking tournament in the game. It was by no means a classic match, with much scrappy play and a profusion of errors, but nonetheless Ding can be very pleased with his performance and his title is certainly well deserved. It is only his fourth ranking event win, the last having been the Northern Ireland Trophy back in 2006, but as he is only 22 years old he has plenty of time to build on this collection!

Ding seemed a much more confident, well-rounded player around the table than he has been in recent years. He has previously tended to become demotivated very rapidly after making mistakes, to hang his head down and in some cases to seemingly give up completely. However, he appears to have matured immensely and now remains very level-headed, refusing to beat himself up over every slip and instead concentrating on enjoying his snooker. This change in attitude has made him a much more dangerous opponent, as John Higgins discovered last night.

The run of the balls was not especially conducive to big breaks, normally one of the mainstays of Ding’s game, and indeed it was Higgins who made the only century of the match, an excellent 115 in frame 17. However, Ding responded to this by ratcheting up his safety play to a new level, doing everything he could to make life even more difficult for the beleaguered Scotsman. With neither player willing to take chances on long pots many of the frames were drawn-out, tactical affairs, and although Ding always looked to be the stronger player the scoreline was pretty even right up until the very end.

In fact, it could be argued that the final scoreline was rather flattering to John Higgins, who was playing at the far below his best. He often looked uncomfortable round the table and made some terrible misses, completely unexpected from a player of his calibre. The bungled brown in frame 15, which allowed Ding to move within two frames of victory, is likely to haunt him till the end of his days. It is likely that exhaustion from his epic 9-8 victory over Ronnie O'Sullivan the day before contributed to Higgins' lack of form, and although he will obviously be disappointed at his loss he shouldn't worry himself unduly. He is still provisional world number one, and with a lead of 7705 points over his closest rival it is highly unlikely that anyone will catch up with him over the rest of the season.

Indeed, if anyone has something to worry about it is new UK Champion Ding Junhui. In addition to the £100,000 prize-money he has been awarded with his body weight in Pukka Pies. With 69 kg of pie lard stacked up in his fridge he's going to have to exercise like mad or he’ll turn up at the Masters in January looking like Stephen Lee...

World's smallest snowman

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory have made the world's smallest snowman, just 10 microns across.

Watch the video and be amazed!

Death of a bookshop: the combined perils of Amazon and private equity

The Borders chain of bookshops is in administration. The shops are being stripped of not just the books but also the shelves, magazine racks, chairs and desks; everything is being sold to leave only an empty, soulless shell. This is rather depressing. There are few enough bookshops on high streets as it is, and with the closure of Borders what is left? There are indeed still plenty of branches of Waterstones, busily expending all their energy promoting the latest celebrity ‘auto’biography and mass-market TV tie-ins. Always in the midst of a closing-down sale but never actually quite getting round to shutting, The Works trundles ever onwards with its emphasis on low price and even lower quality. WH Smith's doesn't really count and Foyle's and Blackwell's chains are too small to really be noticeable; a smattering of independents try hard but invariably struggle. In short, the book industry is in a bit of a crisis.

Why is this? People still buy books and there are more and more published every year. Around 118,000 books were published in 2007 in the UK (according to a Nielsen Book report); admittedly most of these will have sunk without trace, but sufficient were sold to net the book trade around £3 billion (according to their Publishers Association). However, more and more of these books are being sold at heavily discounted prices in supermarkets and at Amazon, bypassing dedicated bookshops and drastically reducing the income that authors and publishers receive for their work. Being an online retailer Amazon can obviously offer low prices due to its lack of overheads, and with its vast warehouses it can afford to stock even very obscure books. Supermarkets on the other hand will concentrate on a small handful of surefire bestsellers (think Dan Brown and Katie Price) and will use their great clout to arrange it so that they pay the publishers mere pence for each copy sold. Proper bookshops just can't compete.

In the case of Borders such increased competition wasn't the only problem. It only arrived in the UK twelve years ago, back then part of the huge bookstore chain in the USA. In 2007 however, it was sold off to a private equity firm called Risk Capital Partners before being sold again earlier this year. Alarm bells start to ring whenever private equity becomes involved with a business, as where private equity appears doom is sure to swiftly follow. These companies seem to operate according to the following formula:

1. Borrow a huge amount of money at low interest rates.
2. Use this to buy a profitable business.
3. Asset-strip the business, selling off everything in sight and thus making megabucks to be paid in bonuses, dividends etc.
4. Watch company disintegrate into bankruptcy as it is saddled by huge debt and now bereft of any means of repaying it.
5. Run away.
6. Pick another profitable business, and repeat.

Against such rampant greed, Borders didn't have a hope in hell.

I went to the Borders branch in Kingston upon Thames yesterday and I must confess I bought all the books I could carry. Many others were doing likewise. The poor staff, all about to lose their jobs, were working extremely hard to keep everything under control. Incidentally, they only found out that their company was going into administration when they heard it on the evening news; such is the calibre of the upper echelons of management that they chose to communicate nothing to those actually doing all the work. It must be rather stressful to be a Borders employees right now. I was therefore shocked and rather disgusted by the behaviour of one fellow customer who decided to kick up a huge fuss.

She had apparently phoned in to reserve a book about a week beforehand and had yesterday come in to collect it, by which time it had not surprisingly gone AWOL. Instead of accepting this as inevitable in a shop with an air of barely-contained chaos and where all the stock had to be got rid of as soon as possible, she got very annoyed and demanded some form of compensation. Somehow, the soon-to-be-unemployed staff managed to be extremely polite to her, even when it became apparent that she couldn't even remember what the book was called and began to rant on about the much-diminished nature of the children's selection. I think if I had been in charge, she would have got a slap!

The Giant’s Chair of Natsworthy and Jay's Grave

When walking on the eastern edge of Dartmoor a few weeks ago we came across a chair. Not just any old chair, but a huge, wooden chair staring out onto the moor, devoid of any explanation or seeming purpose. It was far too big to sit on, and in any case it had no seat to speak of, being essentially just a frame. We attempted to climb it regardless, but were scuppered due to lack of rope and other equipment. Bemused, we wondered ‘why is it here?’ What role could it have, being both pointless and unusable, but at the same time really rather good? And with that question, the answer became obvious: it must be art.

The chair has apparently been gracing the field just off a footpath not too far from Hameldown Tor (SX724800 or thereabouts) since late 2006, erected on private land by artist Henry Bruce. 6 m high, it is made from untreated oak obtained locally and was constructed using traditional methods. Unfortunately, planning permission was not obtained before it was built, leaving its future precarious. Retrospective permission was eventually granted but only for a period of three years, up until March 2009, after which point it was supposed to be dismantled. A handful of people with no sense of fun complained, accusing it of making the moor into a theme park and over-running the footpath with traffic. Luckily, the chair was still there in November, so fingers crossed it will remain intact for some time.

About a kilometre or so east from the giant’s chair lies a much more famous Dartmoor landmark: the grave of Kitty Jay, the story behind which is rather sad. Supposedly in the late 18th century an orphaned baby girl was taken to the Poor House at Newton Abbot, where she was raised and given her name. When old enough to work she was sent to a farm near Manaton where she laboured long and hard both in the house and out in the fields; a tough, lonely and miserable existence for which she would have received very few rewards. When still in her teens she fell in love with a man on the farm, possibly the farmer's son or possibly a hired hand, by whom she became pregnant. Back in the 1700s this was seen as a terrible crime, but one for which all the blame was laid on the woman. Kitty was therefore thrown out of the farm in disgrace, left alone with no prospects and nowhere to go. The sense of shame and thoughts of her bleak future were too much for her to bear, and so tragically she hung herself in a local barn.

There was a huge stigma attached to the act of suicide and so people who died in this way were not allowed to be buried in consecrated ground. Kitty was therefore interred at a crossroads, a site chosen so that if her spirit arose it would not know which way to turn, and so would be unable to either make its way to heaven or to return to haunt the living who were the cause of its great pain. This practice of burying suicides at crossroads was an old tradition that continued until 1823, after which point the bodies were finally admitted to churchyards.

The headstone that is now in place was not erected at the time of Kitty's death, but rather several decades later, in 1860 or thereabouts. At this time a group of men, aware of the legend and curious as to its veracity, did some digging at the crossroads and discovered the skeletal remains of a young woman. Assuming that these were indeed the bones of Kitty they placed them in a coffin, reburied them and marked the site with blocks of granite.

The grave has ever since been associated with unusual occurrences. A spectral figure has reportedly been spotted on multiple occasions, although there is disagreement as to whether this is the ghost of Kitty Jay herself, or that of her guilty lover. The grave is also always adorned with fresh flowers, usually yellow, but apparently no one has any idea who puts them there. It is a popular spot to visit however, and when we passed we saw not just flowers but also coins placed neatly atop it.

Both of these interesting spots can be visited as part of a fairly long circular walk taking in the surrounding tors. Starting in the village of Widecombe in the Moor, the walk first proceeds along the Two Moors Way as it heads northwards over the gently-rising hill of Hamel Down. After standing on as many tops as you care to, head down by the edge of the wood to the road at Natsworthy. From here, take the footpath east which leads past both the chair and Jay's grave, then stroll up onto Hayne Down, enjoying the impressive natural sculpture that is Bowerman's Nose. Next, make your way down for a brief walk along a road heading south, then stroll up onto Hound Tor, an irritatingly busy place, but one which boasts plenty of good rocks for scrambling on. Head south east through the ruins of a mediaeval settlement, pop down into the valley and then ascend up onto the group of hills crowned by Haytor Rocks. There are multiple car parks within sight of this tor, meaning it has been colonised by climbers, but one would imagine that when the weather is less than fair these will rapidly disperse. The next tors to take in are Saddle Tor, Rippon Tor across the road, and finally the twin tops of Top Tor and Pil Tor. From here bust your way downhill to the west, taking care not to end up waist-deep in bog, then at the edge of access land rejoin the road and stroll back into Widecombe, which will provide you with both tea and beer. I have sketched out the route below; my drawing skills leave a lot to be desired but hopefully it gives the general gist of way to go.

UK Championship Snooker in Telford this week

Rejoice! for this week there is snooker on the telly. This will almost certainly mean that the productivity of snooker fans such as myself will plummet, either due to putting work aside and succumbing to the delights of the red button or, if no television is available, by clicking ‘refresh’ every 30 seconds on the BBC sport website. Especially keen souls who are adept at multitasking and have both television and computer available will have one table showing on the TV and the other being displayed live on the internet (whilst this method definitely has its benefits, the aural cacophony produced by two conflicting commentary streams can be a tad confusing). Alas the BBC is only filming two of the four tables in action in the opening stages of the championship, precluding those with multiple computers from being surrounded by snooker on all four sides.

Of course, the best way to watch the snooker is to actually go to Telford International Centre and see it for real. Compared with most other ways of spending a day off it works out pretty cheaply, although the relative economy of the ticket prices can be wiped out if, like us, you live about 150 miles away and thus have to expend a good proportion of a tank of petrol getting there and back. Some may baulk at the thought of travelling for many hours to a big shed in an unremarkable Midlands town to essentially sit on their arses all day watching some blokes use big sticks to move some balls around on a table, but more enlightened souls will realise that this is in fact a splendid use of time and that any small hardships are well worth overcoming.

The snooker world is a small one, and as such it all feels quite friendly and inclusive. The referees and occasionally players will quite happily stroll through the crowds of Pukka Pie-eating punters, and the opening BBC segments are filmed with John Parrott, Steve Davis and the smiley Hazel Irvine standing mere metres from the queue to get into the arena. The spectators don't seem to fit any particular stereotype: male and female, young and old, every stratum of society is represented, all sat next to each other on not-particularly-comfortable plastic seats. As an example of the audience’s diversity, but universal enthusiasm for the game, there was one verging-on-goth-looking teenage girl (by no means a stereotypical snooker fan) who could not help herself from crying out excitedly "Oh my God, that's Jan Verhaas!" as the tall Dutch umpire walked past her in the corridor.

Once seated to watch the game, the atmosphere becomes electric in spite of the fact that watching snooker mostly involves being very, very quiet. There are of course bursts of applause after good shots, sharp intakes of breath as the cue ball teeters on the edge of a pocket, and cries of 'Come on Ronnie!' whenever the great man takes to the stage. There are also now, thanks to the ingenious little over-ear radios that allow spectators to listen to the commentary, rumbles of laughter/groans in response to the poor jokes being cracked by, for example, John Virgo and Dennis Taylor.

Other aspects which cannot be properly appreciated unless there 'in the flesh' include the wonderful clunk as the cue strikes the white ball, the click as it collides with its target and the thump as the object ball falls into the pocket. It is also possible to better eyeball the weird and wonderful expressions pulled by the players in response to events in the frame, with Ronnie O'Sullivan in particular being amusingly rubber-faced. Other entertaining players include Mark Selby, who looks positively daemonic as he bends down to eye up a shot, John Higgins who grimaces as though under intense strain and Neil Robertson who is wont to stick his tongue out every time he plays a shot he isn't completely happy with. Stephen Hendry, however, provides poor value in this aspect of the game as he just looks bloody miserable the whole time.

So, if you can get away with it, go to Telford this week! If not, at least enjoy it on the BBC. The second session this afternoon of the match between Mark Selby and Stephen Hendry should be a cracker if yesterday was anything to go by, and this evening Ronnie, ripe from his victory over Matthew Stevens, takes on Peter Ebdon. I'm not going to be getting much work done.

Birdseed: a universal foodstuff?

Most creatures are quite specialised in what they will eat, carving out a niche based upon a particular foodstuff in a particular habitat, becoming perfectly adapted via the evolutionary process. However, if the evidence from our garden is anything to go by, many animals will quite happily cast aside millennia of specialisation in order to gorge upon Haith’s Original Wildbird Food. As the name would suggest, this feast of seeds and grains has been concocted with wild birds in mind; small, busy birds like blue tits and robins and chaffinches. It was not, it is safe to say, designed for cats, deer and foxes.

Haith's Wildbird Food: manna from heaven?

Why then do these three in particular go crazy for it? Deer at least are herbivores, and so seed isn't too much of a stretch from their usual diet of leaves, twigs, fungi and the like; foxes are omnivorous, although most of their diet is made up of invertebrates; but domestic cats are carnivores through and through. Their bodies just aren't designed to deal with nuts and seeds. What is it then about birdseed that is just so good?

One possibility is that the cats are simply pretending to eat the seed, lurking around the vicinity of the feeder in the hopes of ensnaring an unwary bird. Or it could be that the seed, having often been kept in garages or warehouses where small rodents abound, smells irresistibly of mice. However, a lot of the time the cats do seem to be genuinely eating the seed, fully concentrated on gobbling it up and as such blissfully aware of what is going on around them. And I have heard tell that dogs will lap the stuff up also.

One factor that may well play a role is the huge amount of energy packed into the tiny seeds. For example, sunflower seeds provide a whopping 6.5 kilocalories per gram (compared to 5.0 kcal / g in custard creams and a measly 0.3 kcal / g in carrots). When it's cold outside and food is scarce, this is not to be sniffed at, providing one has a digestive system that allows it to be absorbed. The ruminant stomachs of deer will certainly be fine, and that of the fox will have a good bash, but cats? They simply don't have the right kind of teeth to even get started on the process.

Perhaps cats are simply not very bright. This is certainly the case for one of ours, and indeed it is she who seems to chomp down the birdseed most voraciously. Or perhaps they are simply economically savvy: after all, Haith’s sunflower seeds for birds cost around £2 per kilogram whereas those designed for human use from Julian Graves come to an astonishing £7 per kilogram. It would thus seem that people should start munching on the birdseed too!

The Cherry Orchard at the Palmer Hall, Fairford

Anton Chekhov's 1904 tragicomedy ‘The Cherry Orchard’ is a brave choice for an amateur dramatics group, and is certainly a far cry from the pantomimes that are usually the closest thing the small Cotswold town of Fairford gets to proper theatre. The play has a substantial cast, with many complex themes, and although some of its subtleties are lost in the mix, overall the Meysey Players have put together a very good production.

The Cherry Orchard of the title is situated on the estate of an aristocratic Russian family that is struggling to adapt to the changing times. The emancipation of the serfs had occurred some forty years beforehand, allowing former peasants to rise up and become successful businessman and at the same time reducing the power of the landed gentry. As such, nobody is quite sure where they stand in relation to both one another and the world in general. Servants come and go seemingly as they please, the aristocrats continue with the extravagance to which they have been accustomed despite the fact they can no longer afford it, and members of the emerging middle class take advantage wherever they can.

The nobles who live on the estate, led by Mrs Lyuba Ranevskaya who is ostensibly the head of the family despite her complete inability to make decisions, are at the beginning of the play so much in debt that their home will have to be sold. This is such a distressing situation that they do their utmost to avoid thinking about it, dismissing the plan of local businessman Lopakhin to sell some of it off as summer cottages, a plan that would indeed result in the destruction of the orchard but would at least allow them to keep their ancestral home. The servants, although concerned that they will lose their positions if the estate is lost, are wrapped up in pointless love affairs and it is only Ranevskaya’s adopted daughter Varya who makes any attempt to economise and thus improve matters.

Most of the comedy is in the form of farce, with a clumsy clerk and poor-mannered nobleman providing the bulk of the laughs. The overall feeling of the play however leans more towards tragedy; themes of unrequited love and loss abound, and the only characters who are satisfied by the finale are Lopakhin and the highly objectionable manservant Yasha.

The production was rather slick for the first night of a complex play performed by a group of amateurs, with only one slight slip up on lines noticeable throughout the whole evening. Some of the acting was perhaps a little over the top, but mostly the characters were very well realised. Special mention should go out to the actors playing the roles of Firs, the aged servant whose decline was symbolic of that of the Russian aristocracy, Lopakhin and Gayev, Ranevskaya’s slightly loopy billiard-obsessed brother. All of these had real stage presence and could easily put some professional actors to shame. The costumes and set were also impressive, especially as they had so much to fit onto such a small stage.

The play is running every night until this Saturday, 28th November, at the Palmer Hall in the middle of Fairford, and there are plenty of seats left. Tickets are only £10/£12 and can be bought on the door. The action starts at 7:30. This really is a good event for the town, and I highly recommend anyone in the area to go and see it.

The Meysey Players

The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons

The Hunterian Museum, named after the 18th century anatomist and surgeon John Hunter, is perhaps one of the most disconcerting places to visit in London, and as such is not recommended for the squeamish. It lies inside the grand Royal College of Surgeons which takes up most of the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, a typical London square bursting with interest. Open from 10 am to 5 pm Tuesdays to Saturdays, it is free to enter. Simply collect a visitor's pass from the front desk, walk up the staircase along which portraits of past Fellows of the College stare out, and enter the lower level of the museum.

Most immediately striking is the sheer quantity of specimens on display. Brightly illuminated glass cabinets are full to bursting with jars containing bits and pieces of every creature imaginable. From the tongue of a chameleon to the large intestine of a whale, the specimens are both fascinating and repulsive. Apart from those few examples where the entire animal is contained within its formaldehyde tomb, it is almost impossible without hunting out the label to guess the organism from which the sample came.

Around the edge of the room are displays which detail the history of both the College and of the science of anatomy in general. These are illustrated by both its human samples and by the tools that were used to obtain them. A particularly interesting exhibit shows large wooden dissecting boards with a different section of the nervous system on each. Less easily stomached are the examples of diseased body parts, showing starkly how things in the body can go horribly wrong. Other curiosities worth singling out are the towering skeleton of Charles Byrne, a so-called 'Irish Giant' whose body was collected by Hunter contrary to his wishes, and the pickled brain of the father of computing, Charles Babbage.

Picture by Paul Dean

For some light relief, head to the far end of the museum where a small collection of paintings are hung. These are not the kind of pictures that would normally be found in an art gallery, not due to lack of merit but rather due to the unusual subject matter. They depict people or animals which would have been highly novel at the time of painting: a rhinoceros hangs close to a portrait of a native American; a hugely obese man looks across at a noble with dwarfism.

Upstairs the exhibitions are more informative and less nausea-inducing. Here the story of surgery is dealt with, moving from Joseph Lister's groundbreaking discovery of antiseptics to bang-up-to-date methods such as keyhole surgery. It is staggering how much practices have evolved and improved over the past hundred years or so. I left the museum feeling slightly freaked out, but also very glad that I was born now rather than in the times when barber-surgeons considered a filthy, blood spattered apron to be a badge of honour.

The photograph on the top left of this post shows the skeleton of a hydrocephalus sufferer.

Birthday cakes

Birthdays are good for many reasons; reasons such as beer, presents and general frivolity. They are also a great excuse to make cakes, not just any old cakes but proper, highly decorated, completely over-the-top cakes. The kind of cakes that take a whole day to make, involve scary amounts of butter, chocolate and sugar, and weigh in at over a kilogram. It is no longer just about making something tasty to eat; rather the purpose is to make something that looks amazing. Any pleasure that can be derived from actually consuming the cake is very much a secondary consideration. If the recipient of the birthday cake doesn't feel a pang of guilt when cutting into it, quite frankly, not enough effort has been put into its decoration.

How then to go about making the cake look spectacular? An obvious starting point is to make it into a non-standard shape. It is unlikely that there will be strangely-proportioned baking tins in the cupboard, so a better bet is to make a round or rectangular cake as per usual and then cut it up and put it back together in an unusual fashion, using icing to fill in the gaps. This way the cake can be made to resemble a myriad of objects: a snake, a Lego brick or a house, perhaps.

Next, consider the icing. There are many different types, and the variety chosen will depend on the precise design of the cake. Rolled icing can be best for more regularly-shaped cakes, glacé icing makes a good cement, and creamy chocolate fudge is good for covering imperfections, but perhaps most versatile is simple buttercream. This can be applied using an icing tube with nozzle, or simply smeared on directly with a knife.

The birthday cake will look rather dull if the icing is just white or cream. Bright, gaudy colours are much more fun; obtaining these necessitates the use of food colouring. The little bottles of red, green or blue normally carry a warning, saying for example to only use 1 teaspoon per 250 g of icing, but this guidance should be ignored. After all, the whole point of using food colouring is to produce a vivid, unnatural hue, which often means putting in half a bottle. The people consuming the cake will probably be so high on sugar that they will hardly notice the difference from an extra drop or two of E numbers.

If after the addition of icing the birthday cake is still lacking a certain something, do not fear. A quick peek into the baking aisle at the local supermarket will reveal a mind-boggling assortment of sprinkles, chocolate chips, candles and silver balls. A selection of these should almost certainly make their way onto the cake where they can join other sugary delights such as chocolate-covered raisins, jellybeans and fudge. Worries that the whole thing might be looking rather crowded should be brushed aside; when it comes to birthday cakes the old adage that less is more should be thrown out the window.

Once the cake is complete the problem becomes transporting it to the birthday boy/girl. Often this is no mean feat as the distances are long and the cakes are quite fragile. However, it is possible to get the cake, perfectly intact, to just about anywhere. I personally have carried cakes whilst walking for a couple of kilometres through the suburbs of Birmingham, have taken one on a bus and another on the Underground, and most recently have held onto one for dear life as my boyfriend drove us for 10 miles through the hazard-ridden streets of south-west London.

It is possible that at some point during the epic journey of cake creation and transportation the question "why didn't I just buy one from the supermarket?" will arise. Banish such thoughts. Making a birthday cake from scratch may well cost dearly in both pounds and in time, and afterwards the kitchen will almost certainly resemble a war zone, but it is all worth it. It is worth it because, however good they may taste, and however much hassle they cause to be avoided, shop-bought cakes are lame.

My most recent birthday cake, a mountain complete with chocolate raisin scree, marshmallow sheep, matchmaker trees, a caramel stream and a fudge trig point.

Leafcutter bees

I am always impressed at how obliging wildlife can be when we try to attract it to our gardens: put up a bird box and before long it will be occupied by a blue tit, dig a hole and put some water in it and as if by magic a whole wealth of aquatic creatures will appear. This year we put up a solitary bee home, and lo and behold, solitary bees appeared. It was fascinating to watch them as they went about their business, and highly impressive to see the rate at which they made the tube-filled log their own.

Most people imagine bees to be highly social creatures, living in large colonies to do the bidding of an all-powerful queen. This is indeed the case for common bumblebees and honey bees, but there also exist a number of solitary bee species, of which the leafcutter bee is one example. Leafcutters are fairly small bees at about 10 mm long. Their bodies are a dark brown with a dip in the abdomen where they store pollen; this differs from other bees which store pollen in sacks on their legs. They don't live long, normally only for two months, but they fill this brief existence with frantic activity

Upon emerging from its nest the female bee quickly finds a male with which to mate. Once it has done this it goes about finding a suitable nest site, ideally somewhere providing a hollow tunnel of a similar width to the bee itself, although it can dig out a tube if necessary. The nest could be in the stem of plants such as roses, in the soft depths of decaying wood, or in the tubes of a shop-bought bee home. Once a site has been located the bee will start collecting leaves. Whole leaves would be rather awkward for the little bee to carry, and so instead it cuts out small semi-circles which it carries back to the nest. It then uses these to fashion several compartments in the previously-constructed tunnel, into each of which it leaves an egg and a ball of pollen and nectar before sealing it up. Once the nest is completed the bee abandons it to fate.

Each female leafcutter bee lays up to 40 eggs, which means up to 40 compartments need to be made - this equates to an awful lot of leaf building material and explains why the bees are so busy. Life for the larva is rather more sedate. It soon hatches and consumes the ball of pollen left for it, then hibernates for the winter. The following spring it comes round and pupates, emerging as a fully-fledged bee at the beginning of summer. Males tend to develop in the compartments closest to the end of the nest, and so emerge first. Their sole purpose is to mate with the females, and after they have done so they die, taking no part in the nest-building process.

Miss Julie at the Rose Theatre, Kingston

'Miss Julie', playing until 28 November at the Rose Theatre in Kingston upon Thames, is an 1888 drama by Swedish playwright August Strindberg. It is a relatively short play, running here without an interval, but manages to pack a considerable emotional punch into its 90 intense minutes.

The bulk of the stage is taken up by a large 19th century kitchen, complete with working stove and water pump. On either side of this are bedrooms, and behind it lies a slightly creepy, ethereal wood, with long thin trees reaching up to the rafters. The play opens with a lone servant cooking onions - certainly the first time I have ever seen actual cooking taking place on stage. These onions turn out to be for the dinner of Jean, a smartly-dressed valet and the man betrothed to Kristin, the cook. The pair work in the stately home of a great Count, a man who is never seen but of whose presence we are very much aware. Despite their engagement, the pair seem somewhat prickly towards each other, perhaps reflecting their different desires in life. Kristin is devoutly religious with a strong sense of what is proper, and is content with her position of servitude. In contrast, Jean is a fiery, well-educated man tortured by the senseless inequality of his position who dreams of being his own master.

They start gossiping about Miss Julie, the Count’s daughter who has recently broken off her engagement, an event about which she seems to feel a sense of humiliation. To escape these unpleasant thoughts she has taken to frolicking with the servants, raucously dancing at their Midsummer's ball and generally behaving in a way inappropriate to one in her position. She bursts into the kitchen and begins to flirt outrageously with Jean despite Kristin's presence. Kristin, exhausted from her hard day's work, soon falls asleep, provoking Miss Julie to be even more blatant in her attempted seduction. Jean is initially reticent, but eventually succumbs to his lust, with the end result being that he pulls Miss Julie off into his bedroom and they have sex.

This is the pivotal event in the play, and the bulk of it is spent with the two protagonists arguing over its consequences. Miss Julie feels she has fallen and can no longer occupy her lofty position as a Count’s daughter; in contrast Jean feels this could be his chance to rise up and follow his dreams. However, both characters are confused and they constantly change their minds as to what is the most appropriate course of action.

Miss Julie herself is a mass of contradictions; she has been fed starkly opposing views and values by her mother and father and as such has no idea who she really is and what she actually believes. Her indiscretion is the last straw that causes this inner turmoil to break out and she rants and raves as it threatens to tear apart. Jean is the more grounded of the two, coming up with genuine plans and suggestions in amongst Julie's hysteria. Whenever the Count is mentioned however, this steely façade crumbles and he becomes the humble, pathetic servant once more. They are doomed and both know it.

I saw the play this past Saturday, at the matinee performance. The Rose is a fantastic, modern theatre not yet two years old, which has an expansive stage and has been designed so that every seat provides a terrific view. Unfortunately, barely 10% of the 900 seats were filled. This is a crying shame, as 'Miss Julie' is well worth seeing, and certainly a better use of time than shopping, which is what the majority of visitors to Kingston that day seemed to be absorbed in.

The acting is excellent. I felt a little sorry for Lucy Briers, the actress playing Kristin, as she had to spend most of the play pretending to be asleep, but when she did get to do something she did it well. Rachel Pickup captures the wildness and instability of Miss Julie but gives her enough depth that she seems human, allowing the audience to feel sympathy for a character who could easily be made abhorrent. Daniel Betts is also good as Jean, changing in a more controlled fashion between calm realism, passion and cruelty.

My only complaints would be that it is not completely clear why the initially level-headed Jean would risk all for a moment of passion with his feared employer's daughter, and that the ending is rather sudden. Otherwise though, it was a play that I am very glad I went to see, even if the experience was not exactly enjoyable. I was left feeling emotionally pummelled, and that, for a cast of just three in a near-empty theatre, is no mean feat.

Rose Theatre

Bad taste

When recently confronted with the above object all I could think was why? Why would such a hideous thing come into existence? Why would someone design it? Why would some company agree to manufacture it? Why would some member of the public then hand over their hard-earned cash in exchange for it? And now I have to ask myself, why am I sharing it with the world?

I simply do not know the answer to any of these questions.

Marmite marble cake

Marmite, the thick black goo extracted from yeast left over from the brewing process, is well-known for being one of those rare things which incites either all-out revulsion or all-out adoration in those brave enough to try it. I fall into the latter camp, feeling especially that cheese on toast without Marmite is scarcely worth eating at all; the thin veneer of the black stuff elevates this humble dish to positively divine heights. Marmite is of course perfectly acceptable when spread straight onto toast at times when the extra lardage provided by the cheese would just be too much, and can be added to cooking sauces in order to provide an extra kick, but surely more can be done with it, surely it can break out of its restrictive savoury mould and assume its rightful place in the ranks of the most versatile kitchen essentials?

With this goal in mind, I have endeavoured to include Marmite in recipes where its presence would normally raise eyebrows, to venture forth into previously undiscovered Marmite territory. Some of the results have been surprisingly successful, including that of Marmite marble cake, the recipe for which I will give here. This tasty snack met the approval of not only myself and my parents, but also of my grandmother, who does not hesitate to say exactly what she thinks and so whose opinion can be considered highly reliable. Here goes:

Ingredients

• 175 g self-raising flour


• 175 g caster sugar


• 175 g butter


• 3 eggs


• a little hot water


• Marmite (1 tsp to 1 tbsp, according to taste / sense of adventure)

Method

• Preheat the oven to 180 °C or Gas Mark 4.


• Cream the butter and sugar together, thus creating one of the most horrifically calorific, yet strangely compelling, substances known to mankind.


• Add the eggs to the mixture. If you are feeling brave, crack them directly into the mixing bowl. If, like myself, egg cracking is not your forte and such a method would result in a cake full of bits of eggshell, crack them into a mug first, then transfer.


• Mix together vigourously to create a sloppy mess.


• Bit by bit, stir in the flour.


• Divide the mixture into two separate containers.


• Dissolve the Marmite in the minimum amount of hot water, then stir this into one half of the mixture.


• Grease a cake tin with a little butter, then add alternate dollops of Marmited and non-Marmited cake mixture to it in such a way as to produce a nicely marbled effect.


• Bake in the oven for about half an hour, until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. If the top starts to go overly brown cover the tin with foil.
• Leave to cool, then try a bit.


• Be pleasantly surprised!

A (heavily extended) stroll in the northern Carneddau

The Carneddau comprise the largest area of high ground above 2500 feet in the UK south of Scotland, and as such provide a wealth of entertainment for the keen hiker. The southern half of the range, containing peaks such as Pen Yr Ole Wen, Carnedd Dafydd and Carnedd Llewellyn, is easily accessed from the Ogwen Valley and as such is normally crawling with people. Indeed, until a couple of weeks ago the car park at Ogwen Cottage had been the only starting point from which I had successfully completed walks in the Carneddau, and these walks had only yielded very limited views. They had provided other entertainment, such as gusts of up to 70 mph which on one occasion knocked myself and my entire group off our feet, and which almost lost me my much-prized ‘skull and cross bones’ Buff, but had yet to give up the stunning vistas that I knew must be possible.

In contrast the northern Carneddau are much more rarely frequented. The hills have a completely different character to their southern brethren; in place of steep ascents and bouldery summits are grassy slopes with more occasional rocky outcrops. The paths are less eroded and have only been reinforced by paving slab-wielding National Trust volunteers in a handful of places. Quite a few sturdy-looking ponies inhabit the lower reaches, and at the beginning of the walk we paused to watch several sheepdogs at work, herding their charges off the hill and down to the valley bottom.

We started our hike from a small car park near the end of a minor road leading south east from the village of Abergwyngregyn. Most people parking here do so for the brief trek to see the Aber Falls a couple of kilometres away; these waterfalls do indeed seem to be impressive, but alas it was too dark to properly appreciate their splendour by the time we reached them. Rather than crossing a nearby bridge and heading straight for the falls we instead continued along the road to its end where it turned into a gravel track. We quickly left this behind us, and freestyled our way up through patches of prickly gorse to the top of the first hill, the diminutive but still rather nice Foel Ganol. From this vantage point we could see across the Menai Straits to Anglesey looking one way, and to the cloud-swathed peaks that were our playground for the day in the other direction.

The ponies viewed us with a mixture of contempt and annoyance, clearly not impressed to have humans invading their space. We brushed off this unfriendly welcome however, and strode on, across Pen Bryn-Du and Carnedd y Ddelw. We ascended this latter well and truly enveloped in the clag; a minor annoyance, but not anything to get too worked up about as after all, we were in Wales and this is the sort of weather that Wales does best. Next up was the refreshingly-pronounceable Drum, where we stopped for a well-earned snack, followed by Foel Fras; a thoroughly respectable 942 m high and bearing the first trig point of the day.

It was at this summit that we came across our first fellow hiker, sheltered behind a wall and enthusiastically tucking into his sandwiches. There was also a scattering of sheep posing quite elegantly by the edge, providing perfect foreground interest for when the clag momentarily cleared:

Things were starting to get rather good. After a few minutes more walking in the grey the cloud rose again, lifting our spirits with it. The sky revealed itself to be a bright azure blue streaked with wispy white, the sun beat down with a strength belying the fact that it was almost winter, but best of all was the way in which the low clouds still remaining were gracefully decorating the flanks of the hills before us. By the time we reached the rocky rise of Garnedd Uchaf (recently renamed Garnedd Gwenllian after a Welsh princess who spent most of her time locked up in a Priory), the view was spectacular.

Our initial plan had been to use this walk as a gentle warm-up, and to descend over Llwytmor from Foel Fras and to be down by early afternoon. However we were hungry for more and hence had stayed up, continuing on to Garnedd Uchaf. It didn't take us very long once here to decide to extend the walk still further; after all Foel Grach was only a kilometre away and the view was so good that it would seem rude not to keep going. At Foel Grach a similar argument spurred us on to Carnedd Llewellyn, whose summit provided one of the best views I have ever seen in my life.

The clouds were positively caressing the mountains in front of us; pouring over the ridges like breakers on the sea. The grand figure of Snowdon stood proudly in the background, itself for once completely clear. The low afternoon sun illuminated the scene beautifully, catching the tops of the clouds and making them shine pearly white. I could have stayed and watched forever. Alas, the sun was descending rapidly and we had a long way to walk back to the car, and so we had to tear ourselves away.

We retraced our steps over Foel Grach, skirted past Garnedd Uchaf and moved on to Bera Bach. This impressive pile of rock was crying out to be scrambled over, but alas we had not the time, and so reluctantly passed it. The last hill of the day was the cairn-topped Drosgl, from which we could look back over the chains of now completely cloud-free mountains. There was no opportunity to linger so we headed down to the col, from where we used sheep tracks to make our way down to the valley bottom. Fortunately luck was with us, and we easily joined up with the wide tourist trail leading to the waterfall. It was now rather dark but we resisted getting out the head torches, preferring to let our eyes adjust naturally to the gloom. Before long we were back at the car, looking forward to sating our post-walk hunger for tea and cakes.

Millipedes

There are around 8000 different species of millipede in the world, of which 52 are present in the UK. The name 'millipede' translates as ‘thousand legs’, and although these creatures are indeed many-legged none of them quite reach the thousand mark, with 750 being the record (held by Illacme plenipes of the USA). Their bodies are made up of multiple segments, most of which carry two pairs of legs and are protected by a chitinous cuticle. The different segments are connected together by ball and socket joints, allowing the creatures to be incredibly flexible, and they will often curl up into a compact spiral if they sense that a predator is nearby.

Despite all those legs millipedes are rather slow-moving in comparison with similar critters. They are herbivores and therefore have no need to chase prey, preferring to spend their time burrowing through the leaf litter and chomping on the decaying vegetable matter that is highly unlikely to run away. This lack of speed does put them at a disadvantage when escaping from predators, and so as well as employing the tactic of coiling up they can emit unpleasant chemicals such as hydrogen cyanide in order to make themselves less palatable. Despite this defence other creatures do manage to eat them; they are at risk from frogs, toads, some spiders and birds. Starlings seem to find them especially tasty - millipedes can make up half of their diet in the spring.

I have recently spotted two different species of millipede. The first, shown above, was hanging out on a shady crag close to a forest in Northumberland, at a rather higher altitude than they would usually be found. This was a White-legged Snake Millipede, a common species that can grow to about 5 cm long. The second, shown below, was much smaller, barely more than a centimetre in length, and at first glance I thought it was a woodlouse. Its very shiny body and evenly-sized segments however proved it to be a Pill Millipede, a less common species whose party trick is rolling up into a tight ball. I found it on a beach on Anglesey, not its most usual habitat by any means. It is much more likely to be found, like the others, in woodland and on rough pasture where there are more tasty dead leaves to munch on.

Castles in North Wales: Penrhyn vs Conwy

I have just come back from a week in North Wales, a part of the country I knew well from a hiker’s point of view, but no so well from that of a tourist. We therefore took the opportunity of a longer-than-usual stay to visit some of the region's lower altitude attractions. I am a bit of a sucker for a good castle, and so we ended up visiting two. But which one was best?

First off, I freely admit that this is in no way a fair comparison. Although both termed 'castles' they are completely different beasts, both in age, style and most importantly purpose. We also visited one when we were completely fresh, and the other after having done a 17 km hill walk, the exertion from which had made us more interested in tea and cake than in culture. Despite all this, in my mind there is a clear winner.

Conwy Castle occupies a commanding position on the edge of its small walled town. Considering that it was built between 1283 and 1289 it is in excellent condition, with most of its towers and even a few archways still intact. It is one of many castles built for Edward I after his suppression of a major Welsh rebellion, and was designed in part to guard the mouth of the River Conwy. It proved itself able to withstand a lengthy siege a mere six years after its construction, but by the 17th century had fallen into disrepair. It is now under the stewardship of Cadw, the organisation charged with the preservation of Welsh history.

Conwy Castle is from the outside a grand structure, a dominant presence that looks just like castles should with its thick walls and sizeable turrets. Inside however, it is slightly disappointing. Yes, there are plenty of spiral staircases to climb up and down; and yes, the views from the tops of the towers are impressive, extending over hills, river and sea. But the explanatory signs are few and far between, one tower is much like the next, and it is difficult to get a real feel of what the castle would have been like in its prime. Many rooms are simply latrines for the pigeons and the only real attempt at an exhibition is a display about chapels in Welsh castles in general, which failed to grab our interest. We stayed just a short while before moving to a nearby pub to put our booted feet up.

Penrhyn Castle on the other hand had me captivated instantly. It is an entirely different proposition: rather than being a true castle designed for defensive purposes it is a 'fantasy' Neo-Norman stately home built by Thomas Hopper for the astoundingly rich Pennant family from 1820 to 1845. The Pennants made their fortune from slate quarrying in the surrounding hills and from the sugar industry in far-off Jamaica, getting rich off the labours of others who unfortunately included a large number of slaves. The grand scale and lavishness of the castle reflects well this extreme wealth, and it must have been a magnificent, if rather unnerving, place in which to live.

The first room entered after passing through the entrance corridor is the dazzling great hall. This is a vast space with an intricately patterned vaulted ceiling, stained glass windows and imposing fireplace. It has a cathedral-like atmosphere to it, and must have made visitors feel very small indeed. The next room is the library and it is here that the full force of Hopper's over-the-top design hits you. Everything is unique, no surface remains undecorated, gilded ornamentation and intricate carving abound. It doesn't necessarily look good, but it does look 'wow'!

Another highlight is the grand staircase. I originally thought that the pillars and walls were made of plaster casts but it had in fact all been carved out of sandstone. Gargoyle-like faces look down on you from everywhere, each one different, each one intriguing. Upstairs things are toned down slightly, becoming merely excessive rather than extravagantly so. Few sandstone creatures inhabit the bedrooms, supposedly in order to let their human occupants sleep without being terrified, however Hopper couldn't seem to resist putting a few wooden ones on the furniture. In short, the place is full of the stuff of dreams, or the stuff of nightmares, depending one’s individual inclination.

So, which castle is the best? Older or newer? Practical or fanciful? Style or substance?

For me, Penrhyn Castle wins easily. Its ostentatious design is almost certainly all in very bad taste, but nonetheless I find it mesmerising.

I am now of course going to make the above comparison completely pointless by concluding that if I had time to visit just one castle in North Wales it would definitely be that of Caernarfon, which is a fantastic, immense and mostly-intact structure containing ample nooks and crannies which allow for a cracking game of hide and seek...

Conwy Castle
Penrhyn Castle
Caernarfon Castle

Nick Griffin on Question Time

Before seeing Question Time last night I had thought that allowing BNP leader Nick Griffin onto the political discussion programme was a thoroughly bad idea. I didn't agree that the BBC absolutely had to invite him on in order to fulfil their charter, instead I thought that the move was more about securing publicity and ratings. I also shared the concerns of those such as Ken Livingstone who worried that giving racists a platform would lead to a spike in violence against Muslims and black people.

However, having seen the programme last night I have changed my mind, and think that it was probably a good move. This is because Nick Griffin was just so utterly pathetic. I would be extremely surprised if any undecided voters were to turn to the BNP as a result of his wretched performance, and would hope that those who supported him in the European elections are now regretting their choice.

Nick Griffin is one of the most hated people in the whole of the UK. He has put himself into this position, which cannot be pleasant, because of his fascist and racist beliefs. If he believes these things to be true so strongly that he is willing to be the target of so much venom in order to support them, then one would have expected him to defend them passionately. Instead, he attempted to deny he had ever said pretty much everything he's been recorded as saying.

Griffin complained that he was one of the most misquoted people in the British media. However, when asked by the chair David Dimbleby to give an example of one of the things that he'd been reported to have said that he hadn't actually said, he couldn't come up with anything. When questioned about his views on the Holocaust he claimed that they had changed, but that he couldn't explain the reasons why. His bizarre excuse for this was European legislation preventing such things being discussed. The rest of the panel nonetheless tried to draw something out of him, with Jack Straw pointing out that he was the Justice Secretary and so could guarantee that Griffin wouldn't be prosecuted. Still the BNP leader was evasive, giving the impression that he was simply clueless.

Why wasn't he just honest? Who was he trying to appeal to? By denying everything he stands for he alienates his core membership, and to everyone else he just looks like a bumbling fool. Sat next to Griffin was Bonnie Greer, playwright and Deputy Chairman of the British Museum, who seemed to be on the show as the voice of reason. She spoke in a very matter of fact fashion, and treated Griffin like a misguided little schoolboy, which is exactly how he behaved.

Griffin floundered for the rest of the programme. He appeared completely out of his depth, not really understanding what was going on around him. He smiled and laughed when people made jokes at his expense, applauded and nodded in agreement with those who suggested that people only voted for the BNP out of disillusionment rather than due to any engagement with their policies. If he truly thinks that, why isn't he hanging his head in shame? Surely a political party has failed if no one really agrees with its principles.

BNP supporters are today saying that the programme was completely unfair, that the audience and other panellists were overly hostile and didn't allow Nick Griffin to get his points across. Yes, the prevailing mood was against him, but I don't think someone who incites hatred based on ethnicity can complain about this. And yes, he didn't get his point across, but this was not due to others preventing him from doing so; rather it was because he did not have any coherent points to make. It is very sad that such a spineless, incapable man is present on the political stage in this country.

Man in wheelchair abandoned on Snowdon

On Saturday a group of six martial arts enthusiasts attempted to walk up Snowdon carrying their wheelchair-bound friend. This was apparently as part of a record attempt for charity. They got partway up the Llanberis path, decided they were getting a bit tired and so left their friend sat in his wheelchair on the path whilst they went up to bag the summit. They then descended, and instead of taking their friend back with them they decided it would be a better idea to save themselves the effort and to call mountain rescue who would, they figured, get him back down quickly in a helicopter.

The mountain rescue team was, unsurprisingly, less than impressed. Fifteen people carried the by then rather cold man to the railway and the train took him down to the valley bottom.

The first entry in the catalogue of stupidity demonstrated by this group is the fact that none of them had even been all the way up the Llanberis path before. Common sense would dictate that if you are set on performing such a ridiculous deed as carrying a wheelchair up a mountain, you would check first to see if the terrain is going to be okay for this. If the rocky reality of the mountain landscape had failed to dissuade you it would then be sensible to consider whether a mere six people were sufficient for such an undertaking. To which the answer would be no.

If, once embarked upon this fool's errand, the group started to get tired, you would have to consider the best course of action. Would it be to all descend together, using your last vestiges of energy to carry your friend down, or would it be to indulge the desires of the able-bodied group members to get to the top, hoping that somehow you would have enough juice left to carry your friend afterwards? Any person with half an ounce of consideration would go for the first option, and so of course this sorry lot plumped for the second.

I admit that I have only heard about this from news websites, and so there may be extenuating circumstances of which I am not aware. I doubt it though. It would seem to be yet another example of people treating mountains as toys, as tourist attractions, not as vast and often-dangerous masses of rock which demand respect. When I first started properly going out into the hills, a mere seven years ago, the sight of a mountain rescue helicopter was a rarity. Now they seem to be out and about every weekend in the Lake District and the north of Snowdonia.

People seem to think that they have a right to summit the mountains (especially if it's for charity) and so go tramping up pitifully ill-equipped. Sometimes it works out okay; the weather is good, the path is easy. But often the weather is foul, the way is unclear, and that clown costume which seemed such a good idea down at sea level is suddenly not quite so funny. An accident happens, the good people of mountain rescue are called out and yet again they risk their lives in order to help those too naive to help themselves. The hills in the UK may not be especially big, but that doesn't mean they can't pack a considerable bite. Give them the consideration they deserve.

Too many snails?

A resident frog

The garden pond has been a source of much entertainment for me over the past year. One of the few advantages of being in too much pain to work is that I have been able to take the time to simply sit back and watch as nature has gone about its business. Our pond is only about 6 m² large and is not very deep, but there is so much going on. It has been simply teeming with life, from the alien-looking larvae and diving beetles to the much larger visiting frogs and dragonflies. Best of all has been watching the newts, from their first appearance in spring, through the frantic breeding season to their departure in early autumn.

Back in the spring the pond was in a sorry state. It was still full of creatures, but these were scarcely visible due to the suffocating swathes of blanket weed and duckweed clogging up the water. The pond was also choked by a proliferation of decaying leaves, deposited there by a nearby tree the previous autumn. Drastic action was required.

We decided that the best way to clean up the pond was to remove huge clumps of the leaves and weed by hand, sorting through the noxious-looking mess to ensure that no living things were discarded. Before long we had a whole menagerie of weird and wonderful creatures collected in a bucket: beetles, bugs, and boatmen mixed in with the occasional amphibian. It was tiring but fascinating work. When we were done the pond was by no means perfect, but looked significantly better. We returned the creatures to their home and waited for things to settle out.

One of the newts I found in the mess of leaves

The duckweed had been conquered and the bulk of the leaves removed, but things were still not right. Despite our best efforts, the blanket weed was still there. The problem with blanket weed is that it grows, and it grows fast, expanding at a quite frankly terrifying pace on hot days. It had to be removed, but how? Luckily, inspiration struck and I devised a cunning approach to this: using a broom to simply sweep out the weed. Its green fibrous tendrils stick readily to bristles, meaning that with just a few minutes work the pond could be made much clearer. However, if even the smallest bit was left this would expand rapidly and the next day the pond would need to be 'broomed' again.

We had discovered one good weapon, but we needed to open up another front on which to attack the masses of blanket weed. The broom was a mechanical approach, and so perhaps it was time to attempt something a little more biological. We headed off to the garden centre and returned proudly wielding a water-filled bag containing seven snails. We crossed our fingers and hoped that these would be hungry molluscs, eager to chomp down every last vestige of weed.

At first not a lot happened. The pond still required regular brooming, and we rarely clapped eyes on its newest inhabitants. But then, one day, the blanket weed was gone. The water was crystal clear; we could see everything. And everything included one hell of a lot of snails. They were everywhere, not a single patch had been left uncolonised. They came in all sizes, from the barely perceptible to those several centimetres long. It was a remarkable transformation.

It is of course good to be rid of the blanket weed, but we are now wondering if we have simply substituted one bane for another. Can such a huge number of snails be healthy? Will they naturally regulate their numbers in a sensible fashion, or will there be a population explosion followed by a mass death as the pond is drained of resources? Will their excrement make the pond too toxic for other creatures? Troubling questions indeed.

Friend or foe?

Deciding that no harm, and potentially some good, would be done by a little intervention, I decided to remove some of the snails. Just working from one corner I scooped out about fifty and put them in a bucket along with some weed and sediment for them to munch on. The places these had occupied were quickly filled by others, and when I returned a mere quarter of an hour later it was impossible to tell that I had taken any out.

And now I have a new dilemma. What do I do with a bucket full of snails? I could try to sell them back to the garden centre, thus making a huge profit, but I'm not sure they'd be accepted. I could try and fob them off on neighbours with ponds, but they probably have plenty of snails of their own. I can't put them in the river as we can't tell for certain what type of snails they are, and we don't want to risk harming the ecosystem there. I need a plan, and I need one fast as I doubt snails enjoy living in a bucket. Any ideas?

That's a lot of leg!

I found this creature on the outside wall of the house yesterday and thought 'surely that amount of leg can't be necessary?'! The little critter is a harvestman, a type of arachnid that differs from spiders as its body comprises only one segment; the head, thorax and abdomen being melded together. It also possesses a mere two eyes as opposed to the spider's eight, and can't produce the silk needed to make webs. Birds are one of the harvestman's main predators, but to help deter them it can secrete a substance from the base of each front leg that smells really bad (if you happen to be a sparrow or a blue tit). It also relies on raw speed to help avoid becoming another creature's next meal - enormous legs and minimal body weight come in handy for this! Interestingly, it sheds its exoskeleton every ten days or so, like a snake shedding its skin. Harvestmen are normally nocturnal, but nonetheless it is still quite possible to see them out and about during the day. If you do spot one, try to resist picking it up as if you do, one of its legs will probably fall off.

A soggy weekend in the Rhinogs

Ah, the Rhinogs. One of the few groups of hills in Wales that you can visit with the guarantee that you will hardly see another soul. This is due to two main factors: firstly, the hills are too gnarly to appeal to your average hill walker; secondly, the visibility will almost certainly be such that unless a fellow human being comes within five metres of you, you will have no idea that they are there.

My friend Murray has a perverse fascination with the kind of hills that nobody else likes; the more obscure and unwelcoming the better. He therefore schemed a plan that would see us start in the seaside town of Barmouth, catch a train to the rarely-frequented village of Talsarnau, hack our way inland and then walk back south across the mountains over two days. Linear walks incorporating a wild camp are always appealing, and so four of us endeavoured to put the plan into action...

Day one

Everything started well; we caught the train with no problems and our pronunciation of 'Talsarnau' was sufficiently good that the guard understood where we wanted to go. Before long we had left the (limited) signs of civilisation behind and were surrounded by craggy wilderness. Leaving our heavy packs hidden in the remains of a small ruined hut, we headed north to bag the first two peaks of the weekend, Moel Ysgyfarnogod and Foel Penolau. Both of these are very satisfying tops, with the second requiring some minor scrambling in order to reach the summit, and are well worth a visit. We were fortunate in that the cloud was quite high at that point, and so we had some stunning views, with the Llyn Peninsula to the west and a vast valley to the east.

Soon afterwards we were in a slight quandary: the next peak on our list, Rhinog Fawr, was some way to the south. Did we embrace Pythagoras’ theorem and take the direct route, or did we stick to the path, which would mean walking further and required considerable re-ascent? Given the trickiness of the terrain, the rapidly-lowering clag and the fact that Murray had just become intimately acquainted with a bog, we plumped for the latter.

By the time we reached the ‘Roman Steps’ path that skirts the side of Rhinog Fawr we were all beginning to feel fatigued, and started looking around for a possible campsite. As all around us was steep, rocky and heather-infested things didn't seem too promising. Fortunately we did manage to find a place that was fairly flat and wasn't too squelchy, and before long we had all three tents set up. Dinner was pasta tarted up with ground pepper from sachets 'acquired' from a workplace canteen, followed by hearty slices of Yorkshire Tea Cake. This tastes good anywhere, but in a cold tent after a hard day's walk it is elevated to the divine. The evening’s entertainment consisted of an unsuccessful game of 'mind snap' (i.e. the card game but with no cards), a rather more rewarding session of tent-bound ‘I Spy’ and a great quantity of borderline-amusing jokes.

Day two

The next day we awoke to much more typical Welsh weather: cold, wet and windy. Before setting out on the trip we had scoffed at a weather forecast which had promised a cloud base at a mere 49 m - far too low even for the Rhinogs, we thought; unfortunately that prediction appeared to be coming true. Despite many and prolonged protestations – ‘You expect me to come out in that?!’ - we eventually got everyone out of their sleeping bags and packed up ready to go.

We followed a reasonable (for the Rhinogs) path up to the summit of Rhinog Fawr, where we hunkered down to eat some snacks and wonder what the view might look like in the absence of cloud. This is one of life's great mysteries, and I am not sure anyone truly knows the answer. The way down Rhinog Fawr is rather less distinct than the way up, lacking any real paths, leading Murray to comment that it is never possible to descend by the same way twice. Our chosen route was perhaps the worst of all the possible options, and I take comfort in the fact that I am very unlikely to repeat it. We unsteadily picked our way down a steep, unstable pile of boulders, unpleasant at the best of times but made worse by the rain which had made them incredibly slippery. With these conquered, the terrain turned more heathery; equally steep and even less reliable.

A typical Rhinogs view

It was a grumpy group who finally reached the bottom. Soaked through, with strained knees and sore wrists we contemplated the shadow of Rhinog Fach in front of us and thought 'no thanks'. Not liking to bail the walk, but at the same time having no desire to continue hacking through the heather, we decided to head west down the valley, hoping to catch a train from the station about 10 km away at Llanbedr. A couple of hours later a much happier gang were mere minutes away from the station when we heard a train approach. We tried to speed up, but to no avail. There was no chance that we could get there in time, and so the train trundled past without us.

It turned out that we had just missed the only train running that day - such is the nature of public transport in rural Wales on a Sunday. Somehow, being late by such a short amount of time felt much worse than if we had missed the train by a good few hours. Dejected, we slumped on the station bench and consoled ourselves with Bournville. Then it was back to the village to inspect the bus timetable, which was similarly sparse. Luckily, however, a helpful soul at one of the pubs provided us with taxi numbers and for the princely sum of £12 a friendly driver allowed the four of us and our gear, all damp and smelly, into his nice clean car.

Barmouth is a seaside town which still has character and, despite the tackiness of some of the establishments, I like it. It also has a very good chip shop, the Harbour Fish Bar, which we were very happy to make use of. Alas, time was getting on, and so after finishing our meals we got back in the car and began the long drive south. All in all, it was a good weekend despite the unforgiving nature of the hills, although it may be some time before any of us attempt to the Rhinogs again.