I had the great privilege of joining in with Professor Boffin’s walking festival walk around Cowes and East Cowes “The Queen’s Bloomers” on Sunday. What a great walk! If he manages the trip across the Solent to present it again next year I would heartily recommend it. The YouTube video below gives a small taste of the days fun.
Newport’s first Riverfest held last Saturday was a great success! The weather was kind and the days activities were well received by the crowd of well over 2,000 who came along. Alan Titchmarsh arrived on the world’s smallest paddle steamer, which appeared to have the world’s loudest horn! The video below (also available on the YouTube site) gives a bit of a flavour of the day.
Our latest video should be visible below, if not, click here to view it.
Take a look at this clip. It was filmed on Sean’s camera and shows a stunning cloud of Starlings wheeling about over Newport before dropping out of the sky and into the conifers around the College to roost for the night. The UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan was recently updated. It makes changes to those species and habitats defined as priority species or habitats. Some of the new entries are pretty shocking: Hedgehog, Toad, Eel and the dear old Starling. It’s sad to think that a bird once so fantastically common it was almost a pest is now considered a national target for conservation effort.
Here you can see the progress of The Purple Kite from scraps of plywood pulled out of a skip, to the proud craft bobbing down the river below.
Like many projects, it’s the result of a random turn in a conversation. Simon was talking about beavers and streams, then someone said it would be great if we had an inflatable canoe for surveying wildlife in ponds and rivers. After that someone came up with a challenge: to make our own boat in one day using only recycled materials and anything we could find in the office and then row it across the River Medina and back.
We set to work in our small inventions workshop in East Cowes which SEEDA let us use specifically for making interesting and unlikely creations.
Well, we failed to make it in a day and cheated by buying a box of screws, but as it took shape over the next week our confidence grew that it really would stay afloat with us in it. It started to feel more and more like a proper boat.
The more organic lines can be explained by the fact that there weren’t any plans and there wasn’t a lot of measuring either.
This picture shows Simon ceremonially rubbing down the boat in whiskey prior to painting.
There are two port-holes in the bottom for observing fish, rocks, seaweed and submarines passing beneath us.
At this point the boat had no name, but by means of a democratic process, we arrived at The Purple Kite. The Island 2000 logo is of course a purple kite and it is also, by sheer coincidence, the rarest species of sea-bird to be found in the British Isles, never having been observed or recorded.
Launch day - a last minute attack of responsibility makes us leave behind our recycled life-jackets and ask Offshore Challenges next door if they can lend us something more reliable. They hand us two very swanky-looking flotation devices which, we understand, deploy automatically as soon as they get a whiff of sea-water. Simon instructs us that if it looks like we’re going down, we’re to throw them back onto the land to avoid the punitive cost of recharging the gas canisters.
Luckily, this isn’t necessary as it turns out to be the driest rowing boat we’ve been in. We launch from the slipway just next to the car ferry, waved off in a cloud of sherbet by well-wishers and curious staff from Red Funnel. The oars are on the long side for such a small boat, but The Purple Kite is easy to row and very manoeuvrable, sitting surprisingly high in the water.
If you’d like to see the cross-Medina escapade for yourself, take a look at the Youtube video below.
We’re now planning to produce some commentaries on the wildlife of the Isle of Wight’s rivers, viewed and recorded from the water. The Purple Kite is available for other water-borne tasks or challenges. Any suggestions?
I have just discovered the video made by 3angle flims for Portsmouth City Council documenting the rebuilding of Copnor Bridge. Island 2000 worked with local communities and Eccleston George Public Artists to generate some fantastic new public art for the bridge. The video clip below gives some background to the project and some details of the work as it progressed. The bit up to 4:35 is mostly about the construction, so if you’re pushed for time you could fast forward to then (but don’t tell those lovely Highway Engineer chaps at PCC….)
Oh, and of course I should mention we can bring our talents to a bridge near you. Our two trading subsidiaries Island 2000 Ltd. (creative thinking, community development, public arts and anything else we do really) and Arc Environmental Consultants (environmental consultancy surprisingly enough) are always willing to share our unique talents, skills and unique approach with other parts of the UK (or indeed the world, especially sunny places at this time of the year 
)
Thanks to the virtual ranger, diligent microscopist Cat and the wonders of YouTube you can now see a genuine Isle of Wight gribble in action, just play the clip below! (if you’re viewing this in a blog reader, you might need to visit our website to see the clip)
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