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The Bank Holiday Weekend: 4 Lovely Days

By Friends & Family, Happiness & Joy, NatureNo Comments

The long Bank Holiday has been four lovely days. The sunshine has been out and it has been warm. Really warm. There’s nothing more pleasant than being sat in the sun and feeling it warming your skin. I have done plenty of this over the weekend.

On Friday, my good friend Steve and I went out for a lovely pub lunch. The next day I saw family, including one of my brothers, his fiancée, one of my nephews and my mum. My brother and his fiancée made tea.

Sunday I treated myself to some pagan gifts for my birthday that’s in May. I also bought a couple of little presents for a few people. All online. I know that you’re not supposed to buy people presents for your birthday, but I couldn’t resist. I will share more details and photos on this blog soon. But that wasn’t all I did on Sunday.

I went for a canal-side walk, caught up on cleaning at home, worked on some creative projects (including a web-based App for my health and promotion of Mental Health Wisdom book), played with and looked after my cats. Here’s a couple of photos from my canal-side walk:

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Canal-side Walk (1).

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Canal-side Walk (2).

We are really lucky are surrounded by so much natural beauty.

Today (Monday), my good friend Kay and I went for a cheeseburger, a Pepsi and a lovely long walk in Rivington. Here are some photos:

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A Selfie, taken with the selfie feature on my Samsung S10 Plus.
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Kay.
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Me (I know, I need to loose a some weight, I’m working on it).
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Rivington – Beautiful Scenery (1).
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Rivington – Beautiful Scenery (2).
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Kay and I walked up to Pigeon Tower, Rivington.

Kay and I did manage to forget how to get back to the car and where we’d parked. Totally my fault. Rivington always feels like a maze, its many entrances and exits take you to different places. I can never figure out my way around the place. Perhaps this is the perfect excuse to spend more time there.

Hope you had a great Bank Holiday weekend.

Take care,

Antony

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Monday 22 April 2019

My New Kitten Nicholas (Black Bengal) & Introducing Him to Dylan and Russell (My Two Bengal Cats)

By Happiness & Joy, Life, Nature, PetsNo Comments

At the weekend, I bought a playmate for my two Bengal cats. His name is Nicholas (Nick) for short. He’s a black Bengal, which are incredibly rare, apparently 1 in 10,000. Here are some photos:

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Nicholas (or Nick) my black Bengal kitten.
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Nicholas’ space, only lasted a couple of hours.
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Nicholas’ was about to jump over the wall I’d made. This meant he needed constant monitoring. I felt like a guard in the Night’s Watch in The Game of Thrones.
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Nicholas rubbing against his cat tree.
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Nicholas playing (1).
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Nicholas playing (2).

Introducing him to the boys and the household has not been without tension. Dylan has begun hissing at Russ and Nick. Russ hisses back. Dylan and Russell are litter mates and have always been together. However they are slowly getting used to each other.

It has made me super anxious, as I’ve never introduced a new kitten to a household with cats. But having read around on the Internet and spoken with others that have introduced new kittens to cat households, all seems to be going really well.

I will keep you updated. Blog soon,

Antony

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Tuesday 16 April 2019

Health Review: Tisserand Essential Survival Kit & Better Sleep Rollerball Aromatherapys

By Amazon, Health, Nature, Paganism, ReviewsNo Comments

I’ve been struggling with sleep recently. So one morning, feeling like a zombie, I searched for sleep on Amazon. I came across these:

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Tisserand Essential Survival Kit includes De-Stress, Sweet Dreams and Energy.

Anyone that knows me, knows that I love essential oils and often have them burning at home.

In the Survival Kit you get:

  • De-Stress (10mls) is made-up of the following essential oils: orange peel, lavender, geranium and patchouli. The fresh smell of orange, along with one of my favorites patchouli makes this my absolute favourite out of all of the bottles I bought.
  • Sweet Dreams (10mls) is made-up of the following essential oils: lavender, sandalwood, bergamot, jasmine and ylang ylang. Unfortunately the smell of lavender overpowers the other scents, meaning that lavender is all you can really smell. This was disappointing as I love the scents sandalwood, jasmine and ylang ylang.
  • Energy (10mls) is made-up of the following essential oils: jojoba, bergamot, lime, orange peel, cypress, grapefruit, coriander and juniper. I loved this pleasant subtle yet addictive scent.

As well as the Survival Kit above I also saw this and bought them both:

  • Sleep Better (10mls) is made-up of the following essential oils: lavender, cedar, cypress, sandalwood, bergamot, jasmine and ylang ylang. Unfortunately the lavender overpowers the other scents, which is a huge shame.
Tisserand-Essential-Survival-Kit-2019-Rollerball

All have rollerballs, with the packaging recommend you apply it on your temples, behind your ears and on the nape of your neck.

 I wasn’t sure about the roller ball, but it’s great. You may need to tilt your head or the bottle to get the oil to apply. All I would say is that when it comes to applying the essential oils less is more.

Use the roller ball to apply the oil to your temples, behind your ears and nape of your neck. Then use your first two fingers to massage these points. Don’t use the roller ball to massage these as it will continue to apply oil.

The other great thing is that you can use these in an oil burner easily.

Review soon,

Antony

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Thursday 4 April 2019

The Superb Blackpool Zoo – Get CLOSE to the Animals

By Friends & Family, Happiness & Joy, Nature3 Comments

Yesterday a good friend, her son, two of his friends and I went to Blackpool Zoo. It was raining heavily, but we didn’t let the rain dampen our spirits.

Blackpool Zoo is a superb Zoo, I can’t believe I’ve never visited it before. It is the perfect size, allowing you to see everything in a day at a stroll.

Blackpool Zoo has all the animals you’d expect in a Zoo (plus a few more) and you can get really close to them. The animals look happy and well looked after. Here are some photos from the day, along with my comments, click any photo to see the full size:

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The Elephants – Indoors sheltering themselves from the rain.
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The camels didn’t seem to mind the rain or the temperature that was significantly lower than their natural environment.
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Blackpool Zoo has Amazonia an exhibit where you can walk freely in an enclosure with monkeys and other wildlife from South America. It transports you into a rain forest like environment and is where we saw these cheeky little monkeys.
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I saw these gorgeous pink birds and just had to take a photo.
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A white wallaby. I’ve never seen a wallaby in real life, they’re so cute.
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The kangaroos were all taking shelter from the rain. The first time I’ve seen kangaroos. I don’t blame them for taking shelter from the rain, it was bucketing down at that point.
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Sea Lions. The photo was a lucky shot, as they were weaving around and in and out of each other quite quickly. As if they were doing some sort of intricate and improvised dance in the water.
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A giant in the Orangutan world – just look at the size of his face, never mind the rest of him.

I am particularly proud of this awesome photo:

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This photo of a penguin is most probably the best photo I’ve ever taken. The penguin was swimming at great speed, although you wouldn’t have guested. I looked at this photo when I got home and it looks like it was taken by a professional. A total fluke.

Here’s even more photos:

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Blackpool Zoo even has an exhibit of Farm Animals. These animals included two Shetland ponies, goats, donkeys, pigs and sheep (photo is of one of the sheep).
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A pair of attention seeking otters. Wonderfully fun, playful and liked to upstage one another. I love the spirit of these animals.
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Look how close we got to this tiger at Blackpool Zoo. In Chester Zoo I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tiger, let alone been able to get close enough to appreciate its stripy beauty.
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Another of the beautiful tiger. Blackpool Zoo have two tigers from what we saw. The tiger is more than slightly moist because of the rain.
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Lion: *yawn*
Me: I totally understand how you feel. I’ve walked around Blackpool Zoo all day.
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This is how close we got to a Lion. Able to look in its eye and see the intelligence, along with the hunter instinct. He appeared to be eyeing us up as a snack. Blackpool Zoo had two male Lions living in the enclosure together from what I saw. They seemed pretty well bonded and one went and groomed the other while we watched.
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Quickly becoming my favourite animal, the giraffes. What I love about giraffes is that every time I’ve politely called over to one (in different Zoos I might add), they come over. They look at me with their big black eyes and some times, if I’m really lucky, they let me take a photo before they walk off.
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Another photo of the giraffes. I had politely called out to the one in the foreground.

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Essential Info

  • Parking: There is an onsite car park, with overflow parking. It is charged reasonably at £2.50 for the day.
  • Opening Times: Vary throughout the year, click here to see opening times.
  • Admission Prices: Vary throughout the year, but are cheaper if you buy them online.
  • Facilities: Toilets, two gift shops, a cafe, a Starbucks Coffee at the entrance, a small train that takes passengers (for a charge) from one end of the Zoo to the other, an indoor children’s play area (separate to Zoo and doesn’t require Zoo entry), experience days.

Chester Zoo VS Blackpool Zoo
I couldn’t help but compare my many visits to Chester Zoo with my experience in Blackpool Zoo. Chester Zoo could learn a few lessons from Blackpool Zoo including:

  • Have more of the bigger and more popular animals. Chester Zoo’s selection of big and popular animals is pitiful when compared with Blackpool Zoo.
  • Ensure good viewing opportunities for visitors in enclosures. Blackpool Zoo have done this really well. It makes visitors feel that they can get really close to the animals. Chester Zoo hasn’t got this right.
  • Make it realistic to visit everywhere in the Zoo in one day. Currently to see everything in Chester Zoo you need about a day and a half of rushing around.

We had a brilliant time at Blackpool Zoo and I would highly recommend it to you all.

Blog soon,

Antony



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Sunday 9 September 2018
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