A selection of photos showing cows in fields, in farms and in various other environments where i see them.
Cows
Vinters Valley Nature Reserve
There exists a large housing estate on the outskirts of Maidstone known as Vinters Park Housing Estate. That estate keeps a secret – deep in the bowels of its labyrinthine system of roads and paths there lies a mysterious but beautiful nature reserve full of – natural stuff! A secret place, unknown to all but those special few who can read road signs, vinter’s valley nature reserve is the home of much wildlife as well as being a popular destination for dog walkers from the surrounding estate.
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Birds at Vinter’s Valley Nature Reserve
A collection of bird pics from my various visits to Vinter’s Nature Reserve.
Birds in Mote Park
I make regular visits to take pics of the birds in mote park, a large public park in Maidstone. Its a really nice place, an oasis in an urban desert filled with about 3 square miles of green fields and lush woodland as well as a pretty little lake in the middle of the park. Its the home to lots of wild birds especially near the lake, where a wide variety of birds such as ducks, geese, pigeons and cormorants flit about and have fun times. There is also a coffee shop in the park – a nice place to go for hot drink and a bit of cake.
Birds at Loose Stream
Loose stream runs through the picturesque village of Loose (pronounced “lose”) near Maidstone in Kent. The stream is part of the river len, a tributary of the river medway, running from the north-west via bockingford and passing though the village to the east, eventually meeting Langley Lake.
Loose stream has lots of wildlife – a large group of mallard ducks come here every year to have their babies and various other birds make their home there at various times of the year.
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Dinosaurs!
New section added featuring pictures of dinosaurs! A large variety of images include collections for amphibians, early mammals, armoured dinosaurs and strange dinosaurs. A nice, modern collection showing some vividly coloured dinosaurs and also partially feathered ones, in accordance with current opinion regarding the appearance of dinosaurs.
White Dwarf Magazine Covers
Large collection of White Dwarf covers added to the magazine cover section. White dwarf is a cult magazine first started in 1977 and interested in role playing and table top games. It was published by games workshop and originally featured a wide variety of games features from dungeons and dragons and call of cthuhlu to games workshop’s own products such as fighting fantasy books and Warhammer. Eventually it changed and transformed into a magazine specifically for Warhammer vanilla and 40000 versions, promoting the myriad new figures, objects and products connected to the hobby.
The covers in this collection are from the first issue to the time period just before the magazine changed to featuring games workshop only products. The later magazines feature, in my opinion, less attractive covers. The mid-period magazines in particular feature some fantastic sci-fi and fantasy art that was never matched in later issues. There are a few missing issues which i hope to find in future. There is nothing more on the internet that i can find so will have to find and scan the originals I think!
A New Site, a New Blog, a New Day
Hi, this is ayay.co.uk, the newly revamped and revitalized site born from the ashes of wallpapers-free.co.uk. The primary change to proceedings is a new blog for the site. I will be posting news about new wallpapers, content and any other information worth sharing, but the main purpose of the blog will be to share photos – to create a pictorial record of the places I visit and present it with a bit of prose and a photo gallery. A new blog may not seem like a big deal but it will enable me to categorise and display a large amount of photos and images from my travels quickly and easily. I’ve already added some posts and pics describing some recent travels to interesting places – ancient villages, hidden towns, nature parks, old churches and mystical fantasy universes . I hope you enjoy the photos! And if you don’t, bah humbug to you! 🙂
Why Change the Site?
Wallpapers-free was only ever meant to be a casual undertaking, a pastime, a way to earn a little bit of extra money, something to beaver away with when there was nothing better to do. But as anyone who runs a website will tell you, it can become an addiction – even an obsession – as you tweaks things here and add things there to make the site better, bigger, stronger; and as you see the site grow and improve you tweak things again – and then again. And so I ended up spending more and more time with wallpapers-free. But I never really liked the name. Its not the name of a serious site, its an EMD (exact match domain) name. But changing the domain name of a site can be a tricky thing – you invariably lose traffic from the changeover – at least initially – and the changeover requires some serious effort. And the site was performing quite well. So I figured ” if it ain’t broke…” .
Well, then Google went and broke it. In September 2012 a change to their search ranking system in relation to EMD’s resulted in my wallpapers-free site traffic dropping by a half. Rather than get upset and annoyed by this misfortune I took a pragmatic approach to the whole sorry affair and tried to look at the positives. Did my site deserve the drop in traffic? No, but this sort of thing happens all the time with search rankings and is likely to happen again so you just have to roll with the punches. And hadn’t Google given me the perfect opportunity to rebrand, improve and expand my site? I was now motivated to get my lost traffic back and then some. No silly search engine technology company with a funny name is going to beat me! Oh no! No sir!
So really I’m hoping the great google traffic crash will be a blessing in disguise for me.. Let’s find out 🙂
Mushrooms, Toadstools and Fungi from Kent
A selection of pics showing various Mushrooms, Toadstools and Fungi from Kent in the south-east of England. The photos here will constantly be added to as I gather more over time. I will try and add the name of the mushroom to the caption too if I can make an accurate identification. This is tricky to do though, as mushrooms can change their appearance drastically depending on their age and surrounding environment. There is also the possibility that I may have found a new mushroom variety! This is not as unlikely as you might think considering it is estimated only a small percentage of mushrooms in the world have actually been officially found and identified.
Aylesford Priory
An old religious site near Maidstone in Kent, a centre for prayer and contemplation since the Middle Ages, its also known as “The Frairs”. I visited Aylesford Priory in September 2012 with my friends Austin and Guiseppe. I am not a religious person but i am very interested in religious history and religious imagery and there is plenty of interest to see at Aylesford Priory. It’s well worth a visit, though unfortunately many of the original buildings were badly damaged by fire in the 1930’s.
Extensive rebuilding work was undertaken in the 1960’s to bring us the site as it is today. According to an employee at the priory a large posse of itinerant irish workers from a nearby building site were cajoled into helping with the restoration of the priory. They were persuaded to work for free by the religious hierarchy who pointed out they were doing gods work and since the workmen were good irish catholics they couldn’t possibly be paid for their labours! I’m sure the boys were supplied with plenty of cups of tea though and got free use of the confessions box!
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More info can be found at the friars website .
