Mayan Prophecy Countdown

Well, it was crap weather, very windy and nearly horizontal rain, not an ideal day to be going crayfishing, but maybe later. This weather is well liked by Monty the dog though, he loves it out in the rain, but it makes him a bit wiffy though 😉

After a few hours blogging and other online planning for myself, we all managed to get away around 11am. The rain had just been isolated scuds and showers, sometimes pretty intense, but we would be near the car and could hop in if it got bad 🙂 The place we were going to was the river Lark, only a short distance away. There used to be a road bridge across it, but it became too dangerous so they removed it and replaced it with a pedestrian walkway. In this river are these crustaceans called crayfish over here, they look very similar to the Crawchies we have back home, but these are introduced and are a pest over here, killing the local ones. Read more here

But, the way to catch them is around the same, hang some bait(in this case bacon strips tied to a line) in the water, then after a short while, bring the line up slowly and place a landing net under it as it gets near the surface, then drop them in a bucket.

And after a few hours the results were in, it had not rained again and we had about 30 odd crayfish, but apparently Jack and his mate managed to get around 120 a month or so back, but still a different type of afternoon 🙂

So, after that it was back home for some lunch, and this meant work as I had to dress those crabs I bought yesterday. I was surprised though when Paul kept the shell meat, and said it was the sweeter meat? This was different and no photo of it, but normally when I remove the top shell, it is all waste, over here it is mixed with the white body and leg meat. Hmm, I may try that at a later stage, but in the meantime, I had crab sandwiches, with white meat only 😉

During this time the crayfish were being cooked, very quick at only 3 minutes on the boil, we were going to have these later as an entrée at dinner.

Paul then took me around to his brother Nigel’s place, I had met him once back in 86 when he was very young and again when he arrived in Oz for a visit, some years after that. He had grown a lot, although I did remember him as being tall and skinny. Anyway, glad to have met you again and your family, good luck with the renovations 🙂

After that it was that time of the day again, and time to sample a few different brews Paul had bought for me.

Both were OK, very interesting names 🙂 Then Hannah and Marta came over for a chat, they had stayed out till after 3am and had slept all day, I can remember doing that when I was a clubber too 🙂 Marta being Italian copped some ribbing from Paul, as tonight was the England/Italy quarter final knock out game, and maybe with hindsight he should not have tempted fate with the following photo?

A little while later we had another fish dinner, this time it was baked Salmon and a very tasty fish it is too 🙂 Then it was time for the game and although the first 20 minutes was an end for end and very exciting game, after that it was all Italy. They played the better game, and although there were many scoring opportunities for both sides, the game ended with a nil all scoreline, with England having a very tough defence but absolutely NO attacking skills,so even after 30 minutes extra time, the scoreline did not change. It was then down to a penalty shoot out and this is where Italy won the game. Probably lucky for England, as their next match against Germany might have been a tad embarrassing 😉 Anyway, the game was over around 10pm or so and Mark picked me up and we tooled it to London where he has a flat and works during the week. Tomorrow was China visa day 🙂

Cheers from London
TravellingStrom