Author: Platypus Man

Ten years a blogger!

Posted on by Platypus Man

August 2026 is a significant month for me, marking as it does my tenth anniversary as a blogger. Encouraged by Mrs P, my blogging career began in 2016 with a travel blog documenting our once-in-a-lifetime trip to Tasmania.* Although I was motivated in part by a desire to capture some memories to which I could return in my dotage, it was also a conscious act of rebellion, an opportunity to express my true self at last.

Binalong Bay, on the edge of the Bay of Fires (Tasmania 2016)

You see, for nearly 15 years I’d been writing internal and public reports for a city council, accurate but anodyne prose that was totally devoid of personality. It was the kind of stuff that was painful to write, and that no sane person would ever choose to read. I knew that a travel blog could demonstrate I had more to offer. As well as showcasing the heritage, wildlife and landscape of an underrated part of Australia, writing a daily account of our adventures in Tasmania would be an opportunity to temporarily shrug off my employer’s shackles and celebrate the joy of writing for its own sake.

Tasmania, 2016

I quickly discovered that I enjoyed the process of blogging, the discipline, the creativity, the drive to produce something that was pleasurable both for me to write and for others to read. And, knowing that travel blogs are more accessible when well illustrated, it also offered the opportunity to share some of Mrs P’s excellent photos with a wider audience.

Newfoundland, 2017

Other travel blogs followed, featuring Newfoundland in 2017, Yellowstone National Park – our favourite place in the whole, wide world – in 2018, and New Zealand in 2019. Having retired from work by this stage I recognised that blogging regularly would bring some structure to my life, and help keep my brain active by filling the gaps once occupied by my council’s demanding projects and interminable written reports. And so this blog – Now I’m 64 – was born, also in 2019, and flourishes to this day.

Yellowstone National Park, 2018

Back then, I imagined that the satisfaction derived from blogging was all about the process of writing. I was wrong! Although I still get a buzz when I produce something that is well written (sadly it doesn’t happen very often!), in fact it is the relationships with other bloggers that I now value the most.

New Zealand, 2019

For me, the opportunity to share ideas and experiences with people all across the world, people I shall never meet in person but whom I regard as (virtual) friends, is now what it’s really about. You guys read, comment on and (hopefully!) enjoy my posts, I read, comment on and enjoy yours. Everyone’s a winner. Inevitably, as one gets older, horizons narrow and personal interactions become more restricted, so I am enormously grateful to the blogging community at WordPress for making my life more interesting and connected than it might otherwise be. Thank you, my friends, long may it continue.

* To celebrate the 10th anniversary of our Tasmanian travels, later in the year I’m hoping to republish a few posts first written in 2016. This will be an opportunity for me to relive some of the best moments of that trip, and for many readers of Now I’m 64 to discover them for the first time.

Sandwich terns and the miracle of migration

Posted on by Platypus Man

During a recent trip to the island of Anglesey in North Wales we were pleased to encounter a breeding colony of Sandwich terns at the Cemlyn Nature Reserve. Adult birds were rearing their chicks on little islands in a lagoon behind the beach, occasionally breaking off from parental duties to go fishing. It was such a pleasure to witness – cute little chicks exploring the islands of their birth while their parents looked on caringly or whizzed around in the skies above us, their beaks loaded down with lunch as they returned from fishing expeditions. And all around us, a cacophony of sound as the birds called out noisily to one another.

A Sandwich tern carries home a spot of lunch for its chick

Despite the blustery wind, our morning spent at Cemlyn Bay was idyllic, just the sort of thing that brings joy to a birdwatcher’s heart. But such joys are transitory. In only a few weeks from now the birds we so admired will be at the other end of the world. We’ve all heard of migration, the process by which countless species of bird move from one geographical location to another in search of food or a suitable place to raise their young, but I think we underestimate the enormity of the undertaking.

Soon the Sandwich terns of Cemlyn Bay will be heading off to the coast of west Africa. The most intrepid amongst them will make it all the way to South Africa, a journey of around 10,000km (a little over 6,000 miles). And a few months later they’ll head back again, doing the journey in reverse!

Sandwich terns nesting on an island in the lagoon behind the beach at Cemlyn Bay, Anglesey

So, in just a few short months these guys will fly around 20,000km, and in between those epic journeys they’ll spend a lot of time cruising over coastal waters on fishing expeditions. Their average lifespan of 12 years means that Sandwich terns can clock up over 250,000km (150,000 miles) in the course of their lives. What an extraordinary achievement for a creature weighing in at around 250 grams (9 ounces), and with a wingspan of roughly 100cm (39 inches).

Remember, also, that the UK plays host to four other species of tern during the summer months. One of these, the Arctic tern, breeds close to the Arctic circle, but spends northern hemisphere winters on the edge of Antarctica. Depending on the exact starting and finishing points, and the circuitous route taken in between, it is reckoned that one of these birds may fly between 71,000km and 95,000km (44,000 to 59,000 miles) over a period of 12 months. And Arctic terns are famously long-lived, with a lifespan of up to 30 years. During the course of their lifetime the oldest birds may therefore fly a distance equivalent to taking three round-trips to the moon. Eat your hearts out, NASA and SpaceX!

Left: Sandwich tern Right: Arctic tern, the world’s champion migrator in terms of distance covered (to the moon and back, 3 times!)

I find the numbers quoted above almost impossible to comprehend. Small birds, huge distances! The annual travels of Sandwich terns, Arctic terns and all their cousins leave me in no doubt that bird migration is a miracle worthy of our absolute respect. Way to go, guys.

George Washington did NOT live here, but his great-great-great-great-great grandaddy did!

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The US flag flutters happily from one of the flagpoles at the front of Sulgrave Manor. In the garden is a bust of George Washington, while a portrait of the famed American Founding Father hangs in one of the rooms. What’s this all about, we wonder? Why are we celebrating the US in general, and George Washington in particular, in this remote, rural corner of the English county of Northamptonshire? Washington cannot possibly have lived here or even visited, as he never left American soil apart from a brief visit to Barbados. So just what is going on?

Sulgrave Manor dates from the mid-16th century and was built by wealthy wool merchant Lawrence Washington. Nearly one hundred years later the family fell upon hard times, having backed the losing horse (King Charles I) in the English Civil War. A new beginning was called for, prompting Colonel John Washington – the great, great grandson of Sulgrave’s founder – to emigrate to the Colony of Virginia in 1657. Colonel John clearly made a good decision, and just over 120 years later his great grandson George proved himself the ultimate embodiment of the American dream when he landed the new nation’s top job – the first ever President of the USA.

Bicentennial Washington by Avard T. Fairbanks (1897 – 1987)

So what’s the big deal? Why do visitors seek out this building, and pay handsomely for the privilege of visiting it? Sulgrave Manor is an unexceptional Tudor house. Just because a building is old it doesn’t have to be interesting. Sulgrave is not, at first glance, very interesting. Nor, indeed, at second glance either! It has undergone multiple alterations over the centuries. Neither in its architectural features nor in its contents does it bear much resemblance to the manor house Lawrence Washington commissioned around 1539. He would barely recognise it; nor, of course, would the first President of the US, because he never went there!

The Entrance Hall

Historic England, the government body responsible for ensuring that important buildings are protected by law, has given Sulgrave Manor its highest rating – Grade 1 – which indicates a building of “exceptional interest”. I’ve questioned in a previous post whether it is right, or necessary, to protect a building for posterity simply because someone famous once lived there. But in Sulgrave’s case nobody famous lived there anyway, just the remote ancestor of some guy who one day made it big on the other side of the world!

The Great Bedchamber

Delving deeper, however, we learn that there is a better explanation for the attention Sulgrave receives today. In 1911, with the centenary of the ending of the British-American War of 1812 fast approaching, former president Theodore Roosevelt proposed the creation of a permanent memorial to celebrate 100 years of peace between the two nations. Sulgrave Manor was identified as a suitable location, and a fundraising campaign was launched targeting prominent citizens and philanthropists on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1914 the British Peace Centenary Committee purchased Sulgrave at a cost of $42,500. The opening ceremony in 1921 was attended by former President Taft and members of the British Royal Family.

The Oak Parlour

So there we have it. Although the building is old and the historic links with President Washington’s ancestral family are plain to see, international friendship is fundamental to Sulgrave’s significance today. The Sulgrave Manor Trust is an independent charity with two legal objectives:

  • “To preserve Sulgrave Manor (the ancestral home of the family of George Washington, the first president of the United States of America) for the public benefit. 
  • To provide and support education in subject areas relevant to Sulgrave Manor and its historic role in the history of Anglo-American relations, and to the history, literature and institutions of the United States.”

Buried within the Sulgrave Manor website is this sentence: “To this day, Sulgrave Manor continues to serve as a memorial to Anglo-American friendship“. As someone who has enjoyed countless visits to the US, travelling to all 50 states where we were warmly welcomed by our local hosts, I am happy to support the sentiments that underpin the Sulgrave project. All relationships have their ups and downs, but the things that separate the UK and the US are trivial in comparison with those that unite us. Long may it continue.

If the Earth were to have a set of instructions…the wisdom of the Dalai Lama

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The Global Birdfair is an event we attend every year, a great opportunity to hear eminent ornithologists and other conservation experts speaking on subjects that are dear to their hearts, and to ours too. One of the stand-out events at the 2026 Birdfair was a presentation by the British zoologist and author Mark Carwardine, which included an anecdote about a meeting in 1989 with His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

IMAGE CREDIT: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

At the time of their meeting, Carwardine was working with novelist Douglas Adams (creator of the wonderful Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) on the BBC’s project Last Chance to See, in which the two presenters journeyed across the globe in search of some of the world’s most endangered species.

As part of the project Carwardine and Adams interviewed the Dalai Lama, hoping to gain a Buddhist perspective on nature, the environment, and humanity’s relationship with animals. Carwardine has previously spoken warmly of the Dalai Lama, describing him as one of the most intriguing and enchanting people he has ever met. It was clear from his Birdfair presentation that this encounter, which took place relatively early in his career, had a profound influence on him and helped shape how he communicates the urgent need to protect wildlife.

For the benefit of his Birdfair audience, Carwardine displayed on the screen his own brief summary of what the Dalai Lama said to him that day. It read as follows:

“If the Earth were to have a set of instructions, they’d be very simple. Much simpler than the instructions for recording a tv programme on a digital recorder, for example. Don’t poison the water – don’t chop down too many trees – don’t let the planet get too overcrowded – don’t touch the thermostat – and don’t kill all the wildlife. It really is a simple as that.”

Now that’s what I call wisdom. I have absolutely nothing to add.

She must have loved him! And maybe herself too, just a bit?

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Driving along the North Wales Expressway (A55) it is impossible to miss the Marble Church. The spire is 202 feet (62m) high, dominating the skyline of the little town of Bodelwyddan and the surrounding countryside. It’s a striking sight and also an impressive example of marital devotion, the church having been commissioned by a widow in memory of her beloved husband.

The Marble Church, Boddelwyddan
The spire is visible from miles around

In 1829 Margaret Williams, the daughter of a wealthy North Wales landowner, secured her perfect marriage. The man of her dreams was Henry Peyto, the sixteenth Baron Willoughby de Broke. As such she became Lady Margaret, and went off to England to live on Henry’s estate in Warwickshire for the next 23 years.

When he died in 1852, Lady Margaret evidently decided that she’d had enough of life in the English Midlands and elected to return to her ancestral Welsh estate. However, she was in no mood to forget Henry and petitioned the Bishop of Asaph to create a separate parish for the town Bodelwyddan, complete with its own parish church to serve as a memorial to her late husband.

Marble…
…and more marble

The Bishop readily agreed, no doubt aware that the financial generosity of Lady Margaret – supported by her brother Sir Hugh Williams – would enable the construction of a landmark building. And indeed, they paid a huge sum to deliver the project. Work began in 1856, and the church was finally consecrated in 1860. The total cost was around £60,000, equivalent to about £9.5m (USD 12.7m) in today’s money.

Constructed mainly from limestone quarried in North Wales, the church is notable for containing no fewer than 14 different types of marble, including pillars of Belgian red marble, flooring of Sicilian marble, and other features fashioned from French (Languedoc) marble, Griotte marble from France and Belgium, and Kilkenny black marble from Ireland. Although it was nicknamed the “Pearl of the Vale” immediately after its construction it is no surprise that the building soon became popularly known as the Marble Church.

The pulpit is elegantly carved
The font features Sir Hugh Williams’ daughters!

Other notable features of the Marble Church include a finely carved pulpit, an artistically styled font representing two girls (Sir Hugh Williams’ daughters!) holding a shell, and some fine stained glass windows. Plainly no expense was spared in the creation of Lady Margaret’s splendid memorial to her late husband.

But, when we visited the church a few weeks ago, I did find it odd that Henry is not the star of his own memorial. The font, as we have seen, features his brother-in-law’s daughters. And although there is a portrait of Lady Margaret in the entrance to the church, there is no mention at all of Henry on the foundation plaque above the porch, which reads –

This stone was laid, July the 24th, 1856, by Margaret Willoughby de Broke, who founded, erected and endowed this Church at her own expense in the devout hope that it might tend to the glory of God.

‘Mine House shall be called a House of prayer for all people.’ Isiah 56:7

And it’s worth noting that the Church is dedicated to Saint Margaret. I admit this could be pure coincidence, but really?

I have no doubt that Lady Margaret Willoughby de Broke loved her late husband dearly. But I suspect she loved herself just a bit too.

Wordless Wednesday – Tudor

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Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo Gawsworth Hall in Cheshire, which dates from approximately 1480 to 1600, in 2014.

Wordless Wednesday – Waiting for Sockeye

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Wordless Wednesday is a simple blog post featuring a photo. It seeks to convey a message or tell a story, but speaks for itself without using words. Mrs P took this photo of a bronze sculpture (“Waiting for Sockeye”) by Kent Ullberg at the US National Museum of Wildlife Art, Wyoming, in 2018.

The North Norfolk Railway and the romance of steam

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One of the highlights of our recent visit to Norfolk was a trip on the county’s award-winning heritage railway. The North Norfolk Railway covers a distance of around 5.5 miles (9km), from the Georgian town of Holt to Sheringham, a seaside town on the North Norfolk coast. A nineteenth century poet once named the area around Sheringham as Poppyland, which was his way of paying homage to the masses of poppies that carpeted local fields. For this reason the railway is popularly known as the Poppy Line.

The countryside through which the Poppy Line passes is indeed scenic, the railway architecture is atmospheric and the historic rolling stock is eye-catching. However, I’m fairly certain the reason most people take a trip on the North Norfolk Railway is to get up close and personal with its steam locomotives.

Let’s be brutally honest for a minute – steam trains are the quintessential example of yesterday’s technology. They are noisy, smelly and dirty emitters of CO2, and as such are the very antithesis of the brave new, pollutant-free world we are trying to build in the 21st century. And yet, as the hordes of happy visitors to the Poppy Line prove, they remain massively popular. So we have to wonder, why is this? What is it that makes steam trains so popular?

It is, I suspect, because steam trains are perceived as characters in their own right. Modern transportation systems tend to be anonymous and sterile. Steam trains, however, have a life of their own, they are like “living machines”. The things that distress us about them – the noise, the smell, the pollution – are the very things that help give steam trains their distinctive personality. A journey on one of them is a massive and strangely appealing sensory experience. There’s nothing anonymous or sterile about a hissing locomotive clattering down the tracks while spewing smoke and steam into the sky.

And let’s not forget the nostalgia that steam trains evoke. We live in fraught, complex times and many of us hanker after a simpler way of life. Steam trains are the product of a bygone, simpler age and a journey on one is an invitation to wallow in nostalgia for a while. It’s romantic nonsense, of course – very few of us would actually have been happier living in the days when steam ruled supreme, in the days when fewer medical conditions were treatable, more people went hungry and nobody had a mobile phone! And were steam trains more comfortable and reliable than their modern day electric successors? I don’t think so!

But hey, escapism in small doses is not necessarily a bad thing, and the romance of steam – as served up by a journey on the North Norfolk Railway’s Poppy Line – offers the perfect opportunity to escape. I thoroughly recommend it.

The closest I’ll ever get to an Oscar…or a Nobel Prize!

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A few weeks ago, to break our journey home after visiting family down South, we called in at the house known as Shaw’s Corner. It is one of those National Trust properties that is remarkably unremarkable, with few if any architectural or design features that merit a second glance. I suspect it is part of the National Trust’s portfolio only because someone remarkable once lived on the premises. George Bernard Shaw definitely falls into that category, being one of only two* people ever to have won both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize.

George Bernard Shaw’s Oscar, awarded in 1939 for his screenplay of Pygmalion

George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) was born in Dublin, but moved to London at the age of 20 to pursue a career as a writer. During his lifetime he wrote more than sixty plays, and as a committed socialist also passionately supported a range of progressive – and sometimes contentious – political and social causes. As the leading dramatist of his generation he was highly influential in the development of Western theatre, and as such was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.

Shaw’s Corner, George Bernard Shaw’s primary residence between 1906 and 1950, is remarkably unremarkable

Shaw’s most famous work – written in 1913 – was Pygmalion, a comic exploration of the class distinctions that are so deep-rooted within British society. In 1938 he adapted Pygmalion into a screenplay for a movie of the same name. This was further transformed into My Fair Lady in 1956, that movie being the creation of Lerner and Loewe as Shaw had refused to re-work it as a musical. It is for his original film adaptation that Shaw was awarded an Oscar.

As a witty and observant writer, George Bernard Shaw left behind a wealth of quotes that remain relevant today. Here are just a few that resonate with me:

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”

“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”

“Youth is wasted on the young.”

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”

Shaw’s Corner was the playwright’s primary residence between 1906 and his death in 1950. It was built in 1902 as the rectory for the village of Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire. However the Church of England quickly decided the building was too large for the size of the parish. Shaw and wife took up residence instead, initially as tenants before buying the house and its land in 1920.

Spot the Oscar!

Today, the National Trust has laid out and furnished the rooms much as they were in Shaw’s time. His Academy Award statuette stands on the fireplace mantel, where visitors can admire it from afar. Meanwhile, the citation certificate for his Nobel Prize is securely displayed in an upstairs cabinet.

Citation certificate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded in 1925

In my view, visiting a house simply because a famous person once lived there is not necessarily a good use of one’s time. Shaw’s Corner is an uninspiring property, and at no point could I sense the great man’s presence. But the time we spent there was not entirely wasted. Even though this blog is getting a lot of views these days it’s never going to win me any prizes. So, without doubt, Shaw’s Corner is the closest I’ll ever get to an Oscar or the Nobel Prize for Literature!

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* In case you are wondering, the other person to be awarded both an Oscar and the Nobel Prize for Literature was Bob Dylan.