Spiders are cool

Spiders are cool. Like, really really cool. There's this massive stigma that they're absolutely terrifying, but, I've never really understood why. There's nothing more gross about a spider than there is a grasshopper, or a beetle, or even a butterfly- just because they're a different shape and like to come and chill in the corners of your bedroom in the winter, apparently that makes them incredibly scary.

The most impressive thing I think about spiders, are their webs. When I got lost on Godlingston Heath with the boyfriend a couple of weeks ago (no doubt I'll write about that eventually, there's lots to tell), we blundered across so many spiders, it was like something out of Aragog's lair, or Shelob's minions or something equally fantasy-bookish. We were a bit busy trying to work out which way through the forest of gorse bushes towards Agglestone Rock was least prickly, so we neglected to take pictures of the (hundreds) of spiders we came across (and their webs), but we found something even better once we got to Agglestone.

 Boyfriend for scale

This absolute beast of a web completely covered just one gorse bush next to Agglestone- strangely, every other gorse bush around was normal, with only a few webs here and there. It was this one specific bush, that didn't seem different or special from the rest, that was utterly covered. To the touch, it wasn't sticky, just very firm, with layers and layers of web.
Thankfully touching it didn't reward something like this (which I do admit, would have been a little bit frightening). It was amazing what such tiny creatures had managed to construct though, covering the whole bush so well!

I've seen webs cover gorse before, but not to quite the same amazing extent, and there's always been a few other webs around on nearby bushes, so this was quite a surprise! Especially when, poking the gorse itself, the webs were actually fairly good protection from the spines- something we had found out hurt all too well only half an hour before, when trying to get to Agglestone in the first place.
Now, with a little bit of googling and some good luck, I've found that these webs weren't actually woven by spiders, but something called gorse spider mite. Technically not spiders, they live in colonies and spin webs that act as shelters. This was a really massive colony! It's a biological pest control method that's used in a few countries where gorse is a weed, as they can cause massive damage to the host plants. This one looked fairly happy though, despite being absolutely swamped. Hopefully both will survive the winter season!

After an impromptu hiatus...

Whoops, I let this slip a little. Summer has been so busy though; I've been out enjoying the lovely weather, rather than being inside writing! It's not so nice today though (rather grey), so time to re-start this little project of mine.

Hopefully this will give me a few things to write about in the next few weeks though, with a stack of things I've done. Also, lots of photos.

The thing I've done most this week, on my few days off, is rock balancing. It seems like a bit of a weird thing to do, but after an afternoon wander to Peveril Point a couple of weeks ago, I had the idea when someone else had left a couple of piles of rocks. They weren't especially difficult, but looked really cool. So, when I had nothing else to do at the start of this week (and the weather was nice), what better to do than head out to the point again and give it a go myself?

As a kid, I tried this a couple of times on Chesil Bay, which is a bit of a way down the coast, and has much more prevalent rock than Swanage beach. Unfortunately, I was pretty terrible at it, so never gave it another thought after then. Turns out I am actually fairly good at it once I get started though... As I was working on some of the taller stacks (11 is my current top number of rocks balanced on one another), it struck me how similar it was to dry stone walling. You have to find the right rock to balance (just like the right rock for the hole to fill in a wall), otherwise it's not right.

I did start to get a little bit carried away with it, and ended up making quite a lot of stacks the first day. There were a lot of comments too as I was working, near the end, as some of the stacks were fairly tall, and balanced on quite precarious edges!

 There are different techniques to rock balancing apparently, as a quick google afforded me that evening when I had come back and was uploading my pictures. The technique I had been using was called 'pure balance'; each rock is in near-point balance on one another. If you take the top rock off, the rest of the stack's still okay (unless you knock it). Another techinque some of the better rock balancers use is called 'counter balance' though, which affords some impossible looking structures, with rocks balanced at crazy angles. If you take off one rock, the rest is likely to fall.

The next day I used more angular rocks, which gave me a few crazy stacks like the one above. There were more impressive stacks I made, but forgot to take pictures. By the end of the day, I had ended up with 24 of my own stacks, and 1 other that someone had made overnight, apparently inspired by my own left-over creations!

Unfortunately the next day I went to try and stack rocks, it was much too windy and every pile I tried ended up falling over only a few minutes after I'd managed to put them together. A lot of the stacks I had left the day before had gone too, so I called it a day fairly quickly. When the conditions improve a bit more though, no doubt I'll be out there again!