Catastrophic

Things were going so well. After my wonderful time at Easthope campsite I returned home to take part in the annual Scarecrow Trail.

 This year for the first time I decided to make a scarecrow. I have to say the idea for my scarecrow was suggested by a friend.

The theme this year was the "letter S" so all the scarecrows had to start with S.
What did I make?
As you can see from the photo, my scarecrow was all white with a halo (it was suppose to be a saint rather than an angel as there were no wings).
The saint was holding a dog's lead which was attached to a beer barrel. The clue I submitted to the organizers was
"My home is in the Alps".                    Can you guess my scarecrow's title?

St Bernard Dog.

As the weather app predicted fair weather I decided I ought to go to another campsite.  I want visit them all and do the walks by the end of the season in October. I don't want to do too many in the expensive summer holidays and the one in Scotland I am proposing to do is quite far north. This will not only take some planning but also will take a considerable amount of time.


I decided to go to the National Trust campsite at Ilam in Derbyshire, or to be precise on the Derbyshire/Staffordshire border.  A very unusual site (I'm not going to write about it here in any detail. I'm going to save time and effort for the book). Just to say once I got use to the campsite it was a nice place to stay. There were lots of walks for Pearl and a place for her to have a swim.

The downside was all the sheep and lambs in the fields. Much of the time I had Pearl on a lead just in case we met some sheep. So free hands were free for taking notes and photos I hooked the extending lead through some straps on my backpack. On one occasion Pearl even got chased by a sheep. It was a wonderful outing for us both.



So you are wondering what it the Catastrophe?  On Thursday early evening when I was almost back at the campsite having finalized the short walk after two other attempts my camera mal-functioned. An error message came on the LCD screen informing me I needed to clean the lens contacts. I could do nothing about this "out in the field" so put my camera away. Back at the van I looked at the lens; did some cleaning; tried taking photos but all to no avail. No matter what I did the error message kept popping up.

There was no point going to another campsite if I could not take any photos. There was really no choice but to return home and get to the camera to the repair shop asap. Monday I was straight up there. Not good news.

Apart from the cost, (nothing to do with cameras is ever cheap), it will be at least a week possibly longer before it is mended. It all depends how long it takes for the part to arrive. So I cannot go anywhere in the immediate future. Just as well that for the next week rain is forecast.

Unable to make any plans until my camera is fixed.