A few hours walking in the New Forest between heavy rain showers.






A few hours walking in the New Forest between heavy rain showers.






WW2 British D-Day Deception Decoy Paratrooper Dummy, these dummies were produced for the decoy operation, known as Operation Titanic part of the larger operation for the deception of the D-Day landings. The Allied forces dropped hundreds of these sacking dummies across parts of France on the 5th / 6th of June 1944 to deceive the Germans to move their forces away from the actual invasion force on the Normandy drop zones. Although these dummies are much smaller than a person when at a height they did fool the German forces, they were packed with an incendiary which would ignite them when they hit the ground, in the hope of destroying the evidence of the decoy from the Germans. These dummies were given the nickname ‘Rupert’s’.

Beer Quarry Caves are a man-made underground complex located a mile west of the village of Beer, Devon. The tunnels resulted from 2,000 years of quarrying Beer stone, which was particularly favoured for the cathedral and church features such as door and window surrounds because of its colour and workability for carving. Stone from the quarry was used to construct several of Southern England’s ancient cathedrals and other important buildings, as well as many town and village churches and some buildings in the United States. Extraction was particularly intense during the Middle Ages the quarry closed in the 1920s.
Today you can visit the caves on an hour-long underground tour through the vast man-made complex of underground caverns There are large halls with vaulted roofs and pillars of Beer Stone which have been likened to a vast underground cathedral.






A visit to Southsea near Portsmouth allowed me to visit the D-Day museum. Within the museum is The Overlord Embroidery, which was commissioned in 1968 by Lord Dulverton. It is 83 metres long and made up of 34 panels, all hand-stitched.


T



Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation started with the run-up to D-Day on 6 June 1944 with the landings (Operation Neptune). A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.



Royal Navy War Memorial Southsea Parade.

Wordless Wednesday.


End of the pier and the end of the season Southsea Hampshire. The people have gone home the lights are turned off and the paint has faded.












Red sails in the sunset
Way out on the sea
Carry my loved one
Home safely to me



Red Sails in the Sunset lyrics by songwriter Jimmy Kennedy. {written in 1935}
A pictorial post today. Back to the New Forest again looking for fungi, some nice examples are now showing.

Panaeolus semiovatus. {egghead mottlegill}

Fomitopsis betulina {Birch Polypore}

Fuligo septica {Dog Vomit slim mould}


Species of Hylemya fly.

Fly agaric



Moorhen at Titchfield Haven.






Some more Marsh frogs in the New Forest.
Now we have located the pounds where there are colonies of Marsh frogs in the New Forest it is fairly easy to find some.
Can you see him in picture 1 ? Their camouflage is fairly good.





