Ebor Great Northern War Infantry

 I have finished off one base (of three) in the first of six (or more....?) Swedish infantry units for the Great Northern War project. Regular readers will know this not what was intended but hey ho, its a hobby and supposed to be fun, right? To salve my conscience, I have also completed two more bases of the plastic GNW cavalry, and should have the whole unit wrapped up in a day or two, so I am still sort of sticking to the plan!

This unit represents the Sodermanland Regiment for no other reason than a) I found their colours online at no cost and b) it was one of the regiments I managed to find some uniform details for.

As an aside, I located about ten or twelve sets of regimental colours and downloaded and printed them all - so perhaps that indicates the eventual size of this project...?

The regiment seems to have been what we might call "standard" or "regulation" dress for the Swedish army of this period - blue coats faced yellow, with buff leather under jacket and belts. The cartridge box was black leather.

Very nice figures by Ebor and I am happy with how they have turned out - the first six of over one hundred who arrived in the depot recently.

Unlike the Russians or most WSS armies, the Swedes in this period had retained the pike. These are represent on the central, command base. 

For Beneath Lilly Banners, we are using units comprising 18 figures on 3 60mm x 60mm bases - a bit of a departure for me as I have never had more than three or four figures per base before

And now, because if I dont post these soon there wont be any point, and based on feedback from a few readers that they dont object to occasional forays into the New Zealand countryside, here is day two from our weekend away about three or four weeks back

First thing on the Sunday morning we headed off and did this short 6km walk along the bank of Lake Okareka. I have passed the Lake Okareka Loop Road on numerous occasions, including each time we visit Lake Tarawera for our annual wargaming week away, so it was nice to finally turn off the road and drive down to this quiet, picturesque spot

From Okareka, we returned to the main road, adjacent to the Blue and Green Lakes, and walked the 6 or 8km track around the circumference of the former

I think in the following video, you can actually see a colour difference between the two lakes - it was the latter one in the video that we circumnavigated

After a nice lunch in Rotorua, the third walk saw us north east of Rotorua, on the road leading to Whakatane and Tauranga. I am not sure if the walk was in the Rotoiti Forest or the Tarawera Forest but we negotiated about 10km of unsealed road to get to our destination, much to my wife's consternation. Her feelings were not helped by a large red sign with white writing on it at the start of the road, saying something like "Extreme Danger! Logging Trucks operating on this road at all times" Fortunately, being Sunday, we did not encounter any 

Above and below are examples of the road in and out to this very remote walk. Another vehicle had recently passed in the image below, hence the dust cloud - my car was absolutely filthy and we literally could not see anything out the back window till I cleaned it.