By the way, in case you do not know, our home in the fens sits on the Greenwich meridian, to be precise it runs between the fruit cage and the ash tree in our back garden. So the degrees east mentioned in the blog are a precise measurement from our home.
On 29th we visited the Sofiya gardens in Uman. These beautifully wild gardens were laid out in the late 18th Century by a love struck Polish count in honour of his Greek wife Sofiya. They cover 200 or more acres and are filled with mock caves, cliffs, grottos, statues, waterfalls and lakes. Sofia cheated on the count so it did not end happily. The park is now mostly a botanical garden with lots of wild flowers. We visited the park on a Sunday when everyone goes there to promenade, and it is a favourite place for new brides to have their picturers taken. We saw a Wryneck there (sort of woodpecker).
On, on, ever onwards, east, and by the evening of 30th we had reached Dnipropetrovsk a large city. We were both feeling tired so we decided to take a hotel for the night. The Comfort Motel (http://www.comfort.cc/) is brand new, we reckon we are the first guests. It is all ready to be wrecked by football fans in a few weeks. The last 300 miles have mostly been huge fields all ploughed up and harrowed and being drilled. We understand wheat and sunflowers are the main crops but we have seen several fields of rapeseed already in flower. There have been far fewer villages and we have missed seeing all the local produce for sale by the locals at the side of the road. We hope to get pics for posting later. The main products for sale are apples, potatoes, honey & eggs. Lots of vans bussing 50 or so hives of bees around on carts - we would hate to have an accident with one of those. We noticed how rubbish free the roadsides are and have seen several teams of people (mainly women) picking all the litter up.
See update pics in the Ukraine, Coeliacs and Inverts pages. Mike will also add the April bird sightings on the file sharing site.
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| Carol just can't resist a cute dog. |
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| Sofiya park Uman - and next photos |
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| Mike calls room service in Dnipropetrovsk |
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| Just before we left we bought a little gadget called a Kelly Kettle. It is a stainless steel jacket which is filled with water and then a small fire is lit in the base. It works like a dream and boils a litre of water in just a couple of minutes. Any old bits of wood or dead plants laying around are all the fuel you need. You can also cook on it. |
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| Carol and wildflowers, Sofiya park, Uman |
