Lunch and a Walk Today

[LovelyLadyLux]

The sun was out, wind was cold but I figured I needed to get out for a bit. Went down to Nanoose which is several miles north to the Rocking Horse Pub designed with a British motif.



Fireplace with a real wood burning fireplace. HUGE set of horns with several stuffed wild birds, horse brasses. What interested me the most was the large carved wooden pot (just to the LEFT of the fireplace. Even the handle was carved of wood.



As this particular pub is way out in the country lots of pastures and llama and horses inside. Old buggy on the lawn outside and one red rhodo that was just magnificent.








After lunch I went to Moorecroft Regional Park. I have a suspicion it is a Regional Park and once it is improved sufficiently it will be re-designated a Provincial Park and will fill up with summer tourists coming in and camping. Am basing this theory as I'm seeing electrical lines going down the main pathway to the ocean.



Once you get through the trees you come to a typical beach for this area which sort of shows the volcanic type rocks - large sharp layered. And it is often theorized we're sitting at the top of volcanoes given the number of round beaches - some large and like this one small.







As always our beaches are full of boom logs.





Just liked this chunk of log with all the knot holes Was debating dragging it home



This last building is very typical of some of the real early houses that were built here. Made out of cedar they last forever, usually have no windows or 1 or 2 small ones and were built up on wood blocks. This particular place didn't strike me as being terribly old but it has been taken over by the gov't and signs on the other side indicated it was unsafe to enter so from this side you're not really seeing too much but the foundation blocks are interesting as almost all old building here were built on them.





Home now, got the hot tub turned on and am waiting to go soak my old bones

[Horus]

Thanks for posting this LLL. Always nice to see someone else’s locality. Your typical English pub strikes me as a mixture of English and Canadian heritage and even the name may be a joke, a well used comment to a Pub Landlord who’s beer was a bit off was often “this ale tastes like rocking horse p**s” you can fill in the asterisks yourself. Is it possible that the large wooden bucket thing is a ‘coal scuttle’ but used for storing logs for immediate use on the fire?

I always enjoy looking at your woodland and beach pictures, they look so unspoiled and even wild, I can imagine you can wander for miles without seeing anyone. Purely on a personal note, do you walk there alone? And if so, as a woman do you feel safe in such remote areas? Maybe it is an impertinent question because as a man I often walk in remote places, so the same could be asked of me I suppose. But it does look like a lovely place to share with some other company, a nice walk and then call in the pub for a meal and a drink, my sort of day out I reckon.

The beaches always look as if they can get very wild in the Winter weather and I can imagine high winds and waves crashing on those beaches. The boom logs do have a certain attraction to them, but I am surprised that they do not allow people to utilise them, I cannot imagine that they would all be taken or cause damage if they did so, or am I wrong in thinking that? I agree about that piece of drift wood, it would look great set up vertically in a garden with some big natural beach stones and some gravel around the base, a great feature.

Your paddocks look very much like our do at this time of the year and I could even show you a similar photo with Llamas and other animals in it and it would be hard to tell in which country the picture was taken. I really like the old wooden buggy and the gnarled old tree stump, we don’t have anything like that, our old hay carts are much different. Your Rhododendron picture made me realise that ours will or should be out soon, so I must get to go somewhere and take some pictures one day soon. That old hut looks like it has seen a few storms and no doubt it is put on those thick timbers to keep it off the ground, I bet the local wildlife make good use of the underside for shelter, makes you wonder who would live somewhere like that.

So thanks again LLL for taking the time to post, as we have said before it is a time consuming task that often goes unappreciated other than by us loyal few. It has given me a very pleasant start to what is going to be a dull day here in UK and a few images to mull over in my mind.

[Kiya]

Super pictures LLL...& I agree with Horus in saying I thought it was a wood skuttle too.

Love the fireplace & the bottom layer looks to be sheats of slate ?

Thanks for sharing

[Jayway]

Great photos LLL, thankyou. Your scenery is so different than mine. are there no beaches with actual sand ? Are there animals in those woods? Bears and wolves ? Do you have any means of defence ? I am not fond of forests. If your country takes in the invaders, I dont expect your logs will last too long, they will be taken for firewood .- - haaa haaaa

[LovelyLadyLux]

As for walking in the woods alone - I've always felt safe and never really worried about wild animals. If I saw a bear I'd just turn and go back. Never saw a cougar but a few probably saw me Anyway I'm too big for a cougar to attack (Unless really old and sick) however they will grab small dogs and little children. They're predators so not going to tackle something big that might attack back and they're apparently quite easy to scare off (you face them take off your coat or shirt and flap it at them - make you as big as possible and they'll go). Bears are different - you want to basically assume the fetal position and hold your neck and PRAY they go away.

Sadly nowadays the woods in some areas are full of homeless who booby trap the trails by way of stringing fish line and wire. They're not the homeless homeless they're more the druggie homeless doing deals and using so I really don't wander about anymore too far into the real wilderness.

I have done - wandered into the wilderness where the moss is a couple of feet thick, totally a feather bed to lie down on and you can also just tell no other feet have been there since the dawn of time. Moss hangs off every branch of every tree, bark is heavy on weathered and the canopy high overhead so you only get dappled sun. Really primordial. Hard to explain probably feeling akin to when you walk into some of your old ancient buildings.

As for beaches here - they're superb and I always feel super safe on the beaches even though you can go miles and never see a soul. The island is/was volcanic now extinct. This has given us quite a few round shallow circular tidal beaches with nothing but white sand. When the tide comes in over the heated sand it is like swimming in soup. This also gives us beaches with the sharp slate type rocks as in these pictures.

Here given the storms one thing nobody does is walk the beaches in winter during a storm. They're magnificent but the waves can and do throw logs. Almost every year somebody is killed walking on a beach and being struck by a log getting tossed to the shore.

Years ago we all went to the beaches and cut up the firewood. Granted it was wood that had floated in salt water so if you exclusively burned it the salt could rot out your metal woodstove. Not exactly sure when the bleeding hearts took over but apparently now was must keep our beaches "Natural" and to remove the wood is to disturb nature.

Well IMO NATURE isn't cutting down the trees and turning them into logs in the first place! Nothing is really being disturbed by removing the logs from the beaches and there was a whole contingent of men who made a living going down to the beach cutting up a load of firewood and then re-selling it. They also haunted the lumber yards. Mostly firewood takes muscle and work (I know cause I heated with it 'til for most of my life) Now you can't so much as remove a rock from a beach. I would have loved to have had that one wood board with all the knot holes but didn't dare drag it up to my car. It is an arrestable offence.

I think the wood bucket was probably being used for the ashes. The wood they had stacked on the other side of the fireplace. I just liked it.

Not all our pubs look like this one but this one IS rather what most of the rural pubs around here look like. Food in this one is particularly good too - Reuben sandwich R us Corned beef, sauerkraut and melted cheese on rye bread. One of my favs.

[Grandad]

Not long got home from lunch with eldest son and family, so just catching up.

A very interesting account LLL with pictures that really elaborate on your story. I too thought the pub looked like many English country pubs. Something that I don't quite understand is about the logs. They have obviously been cut down but why are they floating about in the sea and why, if they are then flotsam, can they not be taken away. What purpose do they serve if any, they seem to be more of a hazard than useful?

Perhaps this is a naive question and I am missing a point but maybe you can explain....

[Horus]

I wondered about that Grandad, they are obviously escapees from logging rafts floating down towards a sawmill or some other destination, but why protect them?

[LovelyLadyLux]

What happens with logging here is that the loggers & fallers go up the mountains and cut the trees down. The chokers then come in and wrap heavy wire around the trees and they're dragged by chain into piles on the side of the mountin. Sikorsky helicopters are then often called in and with grapples lift however many logs and fly them out to the coastal waters and drop them. From there the little boom boats push and amass them into booms.

A boom is when 100 or so logs are joined into a circle. The loose logs are then pushed into the middle of the circle. Once the circle is full the Tugs tow the booms to a mill.

Logs have 2 chances to escape. First is when the helicopter drops them into the open water and the boom boats don't recover them or get them into the boom. The second chance to escape is when a Tug is towing a boom, a storm starts (and our storms on the water start fast. You'll see a black line on the horizon and that is waves coming fast) and the booms break.

You can see in this photo the end of a log (in front of the tree root) that has a hole in it. This log WAS part of a boom. The wire or chain has long since rusted out but it was part of a boom at one point.



Years ago we used to have Beach Combers. It was guys with small boats who went out and salvaged the loose logs. They'd sell them separately to the mills or privately. They'd often scour the beaches and waters and were always out there right after a storm.

At some point when I was living in the USA the rules and laws changed and now for whatever reason nobody can touch the logs on the beach. They just mount up, make the beaches unuseable and rot. I don't really know why this changed but I do know we're heavily heavily heavily PRO-environment and everybody is now so fully concerned about the beaches and forests and I get it that we almost lost all our shellfish when the Vietnamese refugees came in and striped our beaches of everything in a few short years. This has never really recovered but - the logs? No idea why they can no longer be scavenged.

I found this by Googling but it is really not a definitive answer but does give some insight: Beach Combing

As there is interest shown here, I will explain a little further how this works. From the Vancouver area to Cape Caution, which is on the BC mainland about the top end of Vancouver Island, is a "closed area" to beach combing. This means you are required to purchase a lisence to perform this. You must give proof of what boat and equipment you own, then it is decided whether you will receive a lisence or not. There is a term "midnight loggers" these are guys who go out at night and steal logs from booms. booming grounds etc. In the area I have described this is controlled by an organization called "Gulf Log Salvage". This is operated under the stewardship of the "Council of Forest Industries"

What this means is the valuable logs that have got loose, have a stamp inprinted into the ends of the log from the company who logged them, and mostly these logs have been scaled and stumpage fees have been paid to the forest service for these logs. Therefore if you recover them, you must sell them to the "Gulf Log Receiving Stations". For different species and grades of wood there are different values. Bringing these logs to the receiving station, they will be graded and scaled, and you will receive a small percentage of the market value of these logs. So you can see that if you see a good looking log on the beach, lets say hypothetically the log is worth $400, you may receive $80 for that log.

However, above Cape Caution for the rest of the BC coast, you don't have to purchase a lisence, and you can sell the logs to who ever you choose. I may be doing a trip for this purpose in a couple of months. You need to get a permit from the local forestry office, mainly just so they know you are working in the area. Generally you are not allowed to buck anything. Afresh cut end means you may have fell a tree, yarded it in the water and stole it. BELIEVE ME, there is too much of this done. L would expect in Alaska as well. Much akin to cattle rustling. If you find logs on the beach that come from a slide and have roots on, you are alloed to get "a root buck permit" to do this now is easier, as with a digital camera, you can take pictures of logs where they lay, give a GPS lat. & long, so that you can prove where you got them from.

I'll stop now, but as you can see, this is not a simple process.

[LovelyLadyLux]

Since I don't know WHY we can't use logs on our beaches anymore I've been Googling. Just came across this tidbit:

Closure Order 16-03 - Nanaimo Harbour
posted Mar 10, 2016, 11:11 AM by Closure Delegate

A log salvage closure order has been issued for all tidal waters and beaches within Nanaimo Harbour bounded by Jack Point to Gallows Point and Bate Point as per attached map. Approximately 150 sections of boomed logs from mixed ownership and timber marks has broken free. Three yarding tugs and 2 dozer boats are currently engaged in recovery operations. This closure is in effect from 10:30 a.m. Thursday, March 10, 2016 until 10:30 Sunday, March 13, 2016 or until this order is rescinded, amended or extended. Contact information for recovery operations is: Glenn Wheeler, Gowland Towing, Tel:

Not that the above is definitive but seems from just glancing about the pages there are LOTS of beach closures to logging however my impression is that not lots of logs are being recovered!

[Grandad]

Thanks LLL, at least I can understand a little more how and why logs end up on the beaches. And I would have thought that there would have been more action similar to that of your last post.
I can't see anything environmentally considerate by cutting down trees and leaving them to decay on a beach???

[Horus]

I suppose it makes some sort of sense now as each log seems to be someones property even if it is lying on a beach, but that being the case you would think that the logging companies would be under some sort of obligation to clear them from the beaches or relinquish ownership.

[LovelyLadyLux]

I remember a phase here quite a few years ago when some environmental group got all up in arms about people going to the beach and picking up the rocks and allegedly disturbing those teeny tiny crabs (plus other little sea life underneath). They didn't want people and kids exploring!! Was more than ridiculous and I don't know how it all fared in court other than for a while people were nervous about going to the beaches and doing anything but that phase of the crazy Environmentalists here seems to have passed.

I really never researched why our beaches are so full of logs now when before they never really used to be. I just know something changed and now the beaches are always littered with logs in some cases to point you can't even get onto the beaches and nobody is allowed to go and cut up firewood.