Camino Reflections

I was inspired by Johnnie Walker for this. He did some reflections on the Camino, using his own spoken commentary with photos. I have done much the same thing here about my walk in 2008 from Le-Puy-en-Velay in France, to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, northern Spain. (These reflections are already on my Camino blog in a longer written form, and I have just edited them down a bit.)
You can see it on YouTube here.

Powelliphanta

One of the bonuses of working 'part-time' is that I can do groovy things like volunteer to help with local conservation projects. Today a small group of us went up Kahuterawa Rd where some powelliphanta snails needed to be found and relocated before some track work proceeds.

I had always wondered how people 'found' these things that usually seem so well hidden. But going on a trip with some experts you learn these things. There is a particular plant that powelliphanta seems to like especially well, and underneath it, you find the little creatures, well camouflaged in their favoured wet and muddy environment.

Here are some of the living snails that we retrieved. We found 32 live ones all up, and 40 empty shells.

It was a great group of people that I shared the morning with as well. A young grad who was there found this wonderful dragonfly. Roll on the next volunteer opportunity!

Lourdes Movie

I might be so far gone from things Catholic that I don't even count as one anymore- but I visited Lourdes and it has left its magic in my soul. There was a review about this movie about Lourdes on the America website. And there is a beautiful trailer for it on YouTube with English sub-titles. I hope we at least can see this movie in a film festival or something.... eventually.... (Just listening to the French is a wonderful treat for me!)
Apologies.... I know that the embedding only shows part of the screen here on my blog, and I don't know how to alter that... I suggest you take the link to YouTube itself.