IPIP Blog

Kent, United Kingdom (PRWEB UK) 9 May 2012

Nigel Marven got a sneak preview of the stylish Livingstone Cottage near Ashford when he stayed with his family this week.

During his stay at the unique rural retreat, Nigel came face to face with some of the wild animal park’s residents including an Eastern indigo snake, the entire meerkat clan, belted ruffed lemurs and a herd of giraffe.

Watch his video to see what he got up to.

Nigel said: I love an adventure, particularly where there is wildlife involved, so what better way to spend my vacation than at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park’s new Livingstone Cottage experience? With views overlooking an African savannah and animals including giraffe, zebra and rhino as my neighbours, I felt right at home. The gorgeous cottage has all the creature comforts anyone could want and the authentic African food, cooked by Christo was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten – definitely in my top five. It’s been one of my favourite adventures yet!’

Livingstone Cottage offers views over 100 acres of Kentish savannah where animals including giraffe, black rhino, ostrich, wildebeest and zebra can be seen, roaming freely as if on the plains of Africa.

The experience includes a dusk safari with one of the parks expert rangers, who will give visitors a unique insight into the conservation work of The Aspinall Foundation, as they introduce many of Port Lympne’s endangered animals.

‘In these tough economic times most of us cannot afford to travel far afield, Livingstone Cottage offers a real safari adventure, like no other, right here in the UK that everyone can experience.’ Added Nigel.

For further information and to book a unique African experience in Kent visit

http://www.aspinallfoundation.org/short-breaks/livingstone-cottage/nigel-marvens-stay

Editor’s Notes

The Aspinall Foundation’s Port Lympne and Howletts Wild Animal Parks in Kent were set up by the late John Aspinall to be centres of excellence for animal husbandry within which to protect and breed threatened species, with a view to returning them to the wild wherever possible.

The Aspinall Foundation is a world leading conservation charity dedicated to keeping John Aspinall’s innovative conservation ethos alive leading the way through education, captive breeding and reintroduction. The Aspinall Foundation has projects both in the UK and overseas, including Java, Madagascar, Congo and The Gabon. Working in conjunction with the parks, The Aspinall Foundation has so far returned to the wild Przewalskis horses, black rhino, Cape buffalo, Burmese pythons and western lowland gorillas.

To paraphrase an old folk song, the skies they be a-changin.

Ancient astronomers espoused the idea that the heavens were fixed and unchanging, except for a few stars that seemed to move against the background of the stars in predictable cycles.

In this day and age by using large and powerful telescopes, astronomers have discovered that stars indeed do, and are, moving, some at incredible speeds toward us and some away.

Galaxies too, those island universes, composed of billions of stars themselves are moving at speeds up of millions of miles per hour. Indeed, in a few million years the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will have a Close Encounter of a collision kind.

We humans, mere mortals that we are, cannot perceive these movements because of the vast distances involved, and our lifetimes are not nearly long enough to really be able to see such movement.

It does, however, give us a small idea of just how big and vast space really is.

We have though been watching the movements of our close planetary neighbors (if by close we mean just a few hundred million miles) these past few weeks as Jupiter and Venus passed each other and both planets in turn have passed other celestial objects for our viewing pleasure.

The moon also got involved in a couple of these meetings, and will do so again in the coming months.

Another kind of movement we can watch is the changing of the guard, if you will, of a seasonal nature as the winter constellations leave the sky to be replaced by those of spring with the summer crew making an early morning appearance with a promise of things to come.

Jupiter is now leaving the western sky while Venus is still climbing in altitude and will continue to do so until the middle of May.

On the other side of the sky in the east, Saturn which has been rising earlier each evening and will reach opposition on April 15. Opposition means it is opposite the sun in the sky and will rise at sunset and set at sunrise and be visible all night.

Mars has been doing its thing too moving in retrograde, or westward, against the background of the stars. It has recently resumed its regular motion eastward against the background of the stars moving away from the bright star Regulus in Leo, the Lion.

What does all this mean to us? To me it means the sky is an ever-changing tableau of things to watch and be amazed by. It is as though the heavens themselves were providing entertainment for us.

In years gone by such things were noticed and considered normal. Our lives were involved in the outdoors in farming, or livestock, and other outside activity that caused us to notice the sky and its changes. Now we have to depend on people like me to help us take notice.

I do hope you are being entertained, if not amazed, by the things going on over our heads, after all, as it says in Psalm eight, When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?

SKY WATCH: Third quarter moon, April 13. Saturn at opposition, April 15. The moon and Neptune have a close encounter Monday morning, April 16, at 5 am MDT.

NEXT WEEK: More astronomical blathering.

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Bristol Encounters Film Festival invite filmmakers to take part in challenge

Bristol filmmakers are invited to take part in a challenge open to filmmakers on any budget, from anywhere in the world, to create a super-short film, just 90 seconds long, for submission to DepicT, a super-short filmmaking competition from the Watershed which forms part of the Encounters International Film Festival.

Since 1998 DepicT has been challenging filmmakers to create 90 second masterpieces and each year hundreds of entries are received from dozens of countries all around the world, all competing not just for a range of prizes, including a main cash prize of pound;1,500, but also for invaluable industry exposure as the shortlisted filmmakers are invited to screen their films at the DepicT showcase which takes place during the Encounters International Film Festival, which runs this year from 18 to 23 September. After the festival the films will be added to the DepicT online archive.

Films must be under 90 seconds long and completed after September 2011. The competition is open to all genres and production techniques. Each individual can submit a maximum of ten entries. Although DepicT doesnt have a premiere policy filmmakers are actively encouraged to submit films that have been created specifically for the competition.

The closing date for submission is 5.00PM on Monday 09 July.

For further information and the full terms and conditions visit www.depict.org . Shortlisted films from 2011 and previous years can be viewed at the website.

Click here for Bristol Accommodation

Enlarge Hector Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in his popemobile at Miraflores College in Leon, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, on Friday.

Hector Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in his popemobile at Miraflores College in Leon, in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, on Friday.

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March 24, 2012

Crowds of people dressed in white and waving yellow flags lined the highway outside the Leon airport in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato to welcome Pope Benedict XVI. They cheered wildly when the grinning, 84-year-old pontiff sped past in his glass-sided popemobile.

The pope began his weeklong trip to Latin America on Friday afternoon. He’s spending the weekend in Mexico before heading to Cuba.

The throngs of well-wishers stretched for miles along the highway from the airport into the center of Leon. Huge billboards welcomed the pontiff here, but the response elsewhere in Mexico to Benedict’s trip has been lukewarm, given the current violence and political climate.

Annabel Rizo and her sister had been standing in the intense late afternoon sun Friday in hopes of catching a glimpse of the pope.

“We were very close,” she says. “We could see his face, his eyes.”

Her sister Olga says she believes Benedict was sent here at this moment in time by God. “Mexico has so many problems right now,” she says.

She hopes the pope’s visit will help Catholics come together and improve the country.

“For everything — for all the problems we have,” she says, “the poverty, the drug violence, the political problems. Everything.”

Enlarge Gregorio Borgia/AP

Pope Benedict XVI listens to a speech during his welcome ceremony in Mexico.

Gregorio Borgia/AP

Pope Benedict XVI listens to a speech during his welcome ceremony in Mexico.

Benedict comes during a presidential campaign and amidst a brutal drug war that has terrified and desensitized much of the country.

Bernardo Barranco, a scholar with the Center for Religious Studies in Mexico City, says Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was extremely popular in Mexico.

“In 1979, there was a very glamorous, very spectacular encounter between Pope John Paul II and Mexico,” he says.

During Paul’s first two trips to Mexico in 1979 and 1990, Barranco says, an estimated 25 million people flocked to see him.

Mexico remains one of the most Catholic countries in the world. In the 2010 census, 83 percent of Mexicans identified themselves as Catholic.

Organizers of the trip are expecting up to 300,000 people to attend an open-air Mass by Benedict on Sunday.

But Barranco says Benedict hasn’t captured the public’s imagination the way Paul did.

“Pope Benedict XVI comes during a very different time. With a country wounded, depressed by the prolonged violence,” Barranco says, “a country that doesn’t have a clear vision of its own future.”

Speaking with reporters on his flight from Rome to Mexico, Benedict denounced the drug violence that’s claimed almost 50,000 lives here over the last five years.

This is expected to be one of the leading themes of his visit to Mexico. He’s also expected to call for a return to traditional Catholic values.

The fifth in the series of coffee table books dedicated to wildlife by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), this one contains reproductions of rare lithographs and paintings of Himalayan birds by John Gould, EC Stuart Baker, J. Forbes Royle, JD Hooker,  TC Jerdon and others, some over a 100 years old. For many, this could be the closest we will get to the Monal,  the pristine snow pigeon, the striking blood pheasant, the crested finchbill,  the amazing Cheer pheasant, the stunning Himalayan snowcock, or Satyr tragopan. The large plates, including the 10 double spreads, are almost lifelike and beautifully coloured. The book lists the various mammals in the region with some exciting records of encounters with bears, wolves and leopards. Colonel Kinlochs account of his shooting a leopard from his book written in 1885 is the most riveting as also A Chilling Journey on the Highlands of Tibet from a 1909 book Three Years in Tibet.

Dr. Ashok Kothari and Boman Chhapgar who have put together this book have a long and abiding interest in wildlife and Dr. Kotharis vast collection of rare books has come in handy for the excerpts and visuals. There are some lovely paintings from Sir Francis Younghusbands Kashmir (1909) along with evocative landscapes by Col. G. Strahan. Right from its front cover with a painting of snow leopards to the red panda on the back, the book is a paean to Himalayan wildlife and its pristine natural beauty. Certainly something to be treasured.

Bottomline: A paean to Himalayan wildlife and its pristine natural beauty

Wildlife of The Himalayas and The Terai Region; Edited by Ashok S. Kothari and Boman F. Chhapgar, Oxford University Press, Rs.1,250. 

Dominic, of Harriston Road, Aspatria, lives with his mother Nicola, co-ordinator of the Maryport Schools Extended Partnership, and Tom, a design and technology assistant at Cockermouth School.

The couple come from different backgrounds. Tom never had a pet and always longed for one. Nicola was surrounded by animals of all kinds for as long as she can remember.

When they got together their first pet was a chameleon and their collection has grown from there.

They now have 13 reptiles snakes and lizards and the two hedgehogs.

The couple, with Dominics help, have formed Reptile Encounters, where they take some of the animals to schools, to parties or any other functions.

As well as giving pleasure, their aim is to educate people about the reptiles and also to warn about the challenges of ownership.

Some of our snakes have come from people who can no longer keep them. People buy small snakes at reasonable prices and then they grow, Nicola said.

The Woolleys keep their collection in a heated room in locked cages.

We are not afraid of our animals but we do respect them, Tom said.

We make sure the door is locked so Dominic cannot wander in unaccompanied. He would happily crawl in with Eric, our 11ft python.

They also ensure that Tom, who does most of the handling, does not work with the snakes when he is alone in the house.

Their prime concern, too, is the safety and happiness of the reptiles themselves.

We only ever take reptiles out if we know they will be happy being handled and petted. If a snake goes into moult or is not well, we always reserve the right to cancel an appointment, Nicola said.

The reptiles are their hobby, the Woolleys said. But they also welcome the opportunity to share their knowledge with others.

For more information, visit www.reptile-encounters.co.uk

First published at 19:23, Thursday, 12 April 2012
Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk