3.8 miles Today’s walk was only a short section of the route as it was my birthday which meant a later start and fitting in a lunch out. The next logical section (Ovington to Cheesefoot Head) would have taken us too long so instead we opted for a cicular route, planned as a figure of eight, but private roads made it more circular and a lot more road than hoped.

6.8 miles Allan King Way Inspired by the Wildmans’ Wildmen on the borders, we were encouraged to start a walking project of our own. The Allan King Way is a 45 mile path from Portchester to Winchester. As we live in Portchester and I work near Winchester it seemed an appropriate walk to set out on, although we decided we wanted to walk towards home, so made Winchester our start point.

7 locks 8.6 miles Model boat in the Canal museum Laura and I woke up with the dawn chorus and decided to go out first thing for an exploratory walk. We headed up over the tunnel mouth where we found an air vent tower, a field with rabbits and a group of bee hives. It was lovely being the only ones about, with just the wildlife awake with us.

No locks 10.1 miles View through the branches Reeds A couple of flying ducks This day got off to a slow start as the engine wouldn’t start, although after phoning Calcutt Boats, Dad managed to get it going, so we arranged to meet the engineer at bridge 29, getting water on the way. Filling up the boat took so long with the water - they have huge tanks and the water seemed to take forever to fill so in the end the engineer met us at the next bridge after the water instead.

13 locks 8 miles Lock Leaving Braunston tunnel Wild Burdock

1 lock 6 miles Farm buildings We headed to Napton to meet my parents and collect the boat - on the way we saw a blackboard advertising a cider sale at the Napton Cidery as they were clearing out their stock ready for their new lines. We got to Calcutt Boats at just the right time and Wild Burdock was ready for us to load up.

As I hadn’t adapted to Central time and still waking up close to UK time I headed out early and drove down to Galveston Island to try and see the local brown pelicans. In Galveston, they get both the brown pelicans, and the invasive white pelicans which have tried to take over. There is a vast length of beach along the island, and it was so peaceful in the early morning, with just the birds (and the bird watchers) about!

This Saturday we had a lovely walk along the coast at Selsey Bill with my parents. We started off heading North up towards Pagham Harbour but made it about half way there and then headed back down to the Lifeboat Inn for lunch. After lunch we headed South round the Bill. It was striking particularly on the way back how different the sea was from the calm sheltered side to the end of the point.

Here are a few of the bees that have visited our garden so far this weekend: Bee from rickymoorhouse on Vimeo.

For a while I’ve been meaning to write up the details of the Raspberry Pi weather station that I have built with my eldest daughter. This project builds on a number of examples I’ve seen across the internet, particularly sensing the weather. This details how our system is put together. Temperature monitoring We took two temperature sensors and mounted them in a garden post with one pushed down to the bottom for soil temperature and one in the cap for the air temperature.