Very Old Friends....and Some New...Plus More Holiday Images

 I have commented a couple of times recently on other blogs regarding the charms or otherwise of figures from 40+ years ago. One of these blogs had a number of recently painted Mnifigs 25mm SYW grenadiers - and I suddenly remembered that in some dusty corner of the barracks, amongst my long neglected FIW collection, I, too, had some examples of figures from my extreme youth - lets say circa 1978!

Many years ago, Julian and I decided to do a FIW campaign using the Canadian Wargames Group Habitants and Highlanders rule set and map. This was the only campaign I have ever participated in and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Over the course of a couple of months of weekly encounters, we fought out the whole six-seven year period of the campaign.

But times were tough - I only had very limited financial resources, and to cut down on costs, I pulled out some ancient figures I had bought in my mid teens with a view to "doing" the Jacobite Rebellion. Some of these were Minifigs and others were from a rather basic, specific '45 range I discovered at a wargames show in either Edinburgh or Glasgow back in the late 70's.

These were dragged out of storage, repainted, rebased to suit the Canadian rules - 12 figures per btn on 4 bases of three figures - very old school! - and I had three battalions to get started with. Around the same time, fortuitously, our local wargaming shop, run by Mark of 1866 and all That fame, had a deal on the FIW Front Rank range - figures were $1 each instead of the usual $1.30...something like that. A small investment was made and another half dozen battalions worth of figures purchased - and that was basically all that was required for us to refight the entire FIW campaign - I wish things were still that simple!

Anyhoo, here are the figures. I cant remember the name of the "other" brand - they are all the figures, bar the grenadiers, of the 40th and 45th regiments. All of the 15th are Minifigs, as you will doubtless be able to tell. If anyone recognises the other brand, I would be interested to know.

The 15th Foot, all Minifigs, grenadiers below

The 40th Foot, only the grenadiers (below) are Minifigs

OK - the drummer and officer are Minifigs too!

The 45th Foot, ditto

And of course, we cannot forget the gunners - they get everywhere (geddit!)

Rounding off the toys tonight is the second Armourfast Achilles 17lb self propelled anti tank gun, with crew from Airfix

All four vehicles, decaled up as part of the 11th Armoured Division - the tanks being the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry, as Forfar is a town not a million miles from where I lived at Montrose (indeed, the county, now called Angus, was, a hundred years ago, called Forfarshire!)

Now, day two of our recent holiday

Walk one of the day was around the rather lovely Lake Mangamahoe, about twenty minutes drive inland from New Plymouth

After a very nice walk with some stunning views, we returned to town and followed the course of a local waterway as it meandered through the heart of the city.

Some interesting "warlike" history if you are interested to read it!

Along the way, one of the side routes took us into the historic Te Henui cemetery.

I found a number of interesting, military related gravestones

The stones below simply had a name and service number. As they were adjacent to the above, I assume they were all soldiers of the 43rd Regiment

Some sad stories are reflected in the notations on the graves

Its hard to believe from these views that we were in the heart of the city and at one point walked under a four lane highway and railway tracks

Some of the more moderns houses along the banks of the small river,

Next, we drove about half an hour south to take a look at a historic lighthouse at Cape Egmont

Unfortunately, the lighthouse seems to be currently undergoing repairs and this was about as close as we could get to it!

On the way back to the main road, I stopped to take some images of the very strange looking farmland, which seemed to be a mass of giant molehills - I have no idea what has caused this odd looking phenomena!

Halfway back to New Plymouth we did our fourth walk of the day along the banks of the aptly name (if unusually spelled) Stony River.

This is a ford - so obviously, the river can be quite a bit higher than it was the day we visited!

Finally, for dinner, we went to a lovely vineyard tapas restaurant at Okurukuru on the coast south of New Plymouth, and enjoyed some beautiful food accompanied by a glass of the locally produced red, whilst overlooking the stunning view of the Tasman Sea, Thanks to Covid fears (I assume) and the fact it was the middle of the week, we had the place virtually to ourselves - there were two other couples out on the balcony area that would easily have seated thirty or forty people.

A great end to another wonderful day!