(Photo: The Aberfan memorial at Bryntaf Cemetery by Stephen McKay courtesy of wikipedia).

1966 was not a good year for me, despite England winning the World Cup, it saw the Aberfan disaster happen and about two weeks later my father died, both were total surprises to the thirteen year old child that I was.

It is still quite warm here on the Costa Blanca. Yesterday was a bit of bummer as we had to wait in for the wi-fi connection to arrive via Spanish Postal services, so practically lost a whole day just kicking our heels. I did some university work and also read my book, Farewell to Ice by Peter Wadhams a scientist from Cambridge. I admit it felt quite weird reading about ice formation when the temperature outside was in the low thirties Centigrade. I explored the garden and found a couple of butterflies and the remains of a tiger butterfly, one of the Danaidae or milk weed butterflies.

On Saturday my course begins and I'm going on on holiday the next day - clever planning that - c'est la vie. The thing is, I've invested quite a bit of money in the course, a degree in Environmental Science, which is going to keep me a bit busy for the next six years. I'm hoping I'll still be able to write some Bikesodes, but obviously nowhere near as many as you have had in the past. I'm still working part time and that has got very busy as well, so life isn't easy at present - and the dormouse stuff I do in real life is also quite busy.

I shall be out with the bat group until quite late so won't have time to write, I'm afraid. This being a part time ecologist is hard work and we only had one dormouse yesterday, which ran up the tree, so we didn't get to sex it or weigh it. Thankfully, it wasn't me who let it escape. We did have a couple or more nests in the boxes but that was it.

As it's a fairly quiet night, windwise, we might get some bats. I'll let you know.

Angharad.