Chickens and a Lofty surprise!

Our main source of fresh fruit and vegetables comes in on the LAN flight on a Saturday.  Unfortunately, since the end of December, the LAN flight has been full of passengers, meaning that freight has been taken off.  This has meant that we have been short on soft fruits, eggs and vegetables; basically if we can't grow it here at the moment, we can't get it!  As a family we have compensated for the shortage of fresh fruit and veg by substituting it with tinned and frozen, but the eggs have been the real killer.  Until they're not there, you simply don't realise how much you use eggs!  We even made Sky News this week due to the increasing tension with Argentina http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16164445

We had been looking at getting some chickens for a while, so grabbed the chance to get some from a family who were leaving the islands, and were based at MPA.  A quick phone call later and plans were made, and we set off to collect them, or so we thought..... The family we were collecting them from had thought that the chicken run would fit in the back of a 110.  When we got there, it quite clearly wasn't.  Time for Plan B.

Still, we did have time for a chuckle as we drove around MPA.  They are demolishing one of the water towers, and have shipped down a crane from the UK.  Harry decided Bob The Builder must be around, because he had Lofty at MPA.....  I'm not sure if the crane is on long term hire, or has been bought from the company.......

....Crowland Crane Hire!!!!!.....Crowland is where we live in the UK!!

Anyway, Plan B involved borrowing a trailer and going back to pick them up after work one evening.  MPA is around 35 miles from Stanley, but because of the road conditions here, it takes around 45-50 minutes to drive, depending on the road conditions, weather, vehicles.....

Anyway, with the chickens and their house collected, it was time to get them home.

The following morning, Harry was eager to see the chickens, and wanted to check if there were any eggs.  Needless to say, he now wants to check them every 5 minutes to see if there are any eggs.....

Harry is always well chuffed when he finds an egg, and is even more pleased that we can start having cakes again!

Mount Harriet

 I'd been wanting to have a look at Mount Harriet for a while.  The previous week we had done a tour of Two Sister with FIDF, but I had forgotten to pick up my camera......

I made sure I had it for this one!

As always, the battlefields are littered with the debris of war, although there seems to be more on this one, probably not had as many souvenir hunters I guess!

There was the usual collection of boots and plimsolls, the reason for this is that during the night time, the Argentines would change from boots into plimsolls.  All of the attacks were night attacks, hence the left behind footwear.

 

In the picture above you can see the remains of a plimsoll, and the black canister is from a respirator

 Empty cases still litter the ground, they are brass so do not corrode......

 ....unlike the magazine above.  We did check and it was empty!

 

These two photos are of the same position, and contains some of the items shown in the photos above, along with blankets and the remains of a LAW.

 Memorial to fallen Royal Marine Cpl Laurence Watts

We've got quite good at spotting things as we walk around the sites, and tucked in a crack in some rocks we found this NBC (nuclear biological chemical) warfare boot.  A lot of the British troops wore these over their main boots as the DMS boot let lots of water in causing trench foot.

This debris was around a 120mm mortar position.  It was directly below the postion shown earlier with the LAW, I wonder if it was fired at this postion?

The four photos above were at another 120mm mortar position.  The long pole is used to extract mortar shells which have misfired.  The only way to remove them is to insert the pole, and the disc on the end has some friction pads which grabbed the tip of the round allowing it to withdrawn.  The kettle had a perfect bullet hole in the base!

These two pictures show mountings for 50 Calibre heavy machine guns which were placed on Mount Harriet.  The view in the lower picture covers the route that the Royal Marines came in along before commencing the attack.  Had the Argentinians seen them, they would wrecked the assault and inflicted some very heavy casualties.

 Yet another boot tucked away!

I wonder if anyone used these stretchers?

Tail fin from a mortar

Amazingly the Royal Marines only lost two people.

View towards Stanley from the top of Mount Harriet