Another Batch of "Old Contemptibles" and more scenic views

 As I mentioned in my reply to Rays comments a few hours ago - I have realised over the last couple of days that I do have a few more of my original 25mm figures from days of yore - so tonight I have pulled out as many as I can think of. Somewhere, I am pretty sure, I have Napoleon on foot. I also had him mounted of course, but I think I may have included the figure when I sold off a lot of my original figures many years ago via our local version of eBay - I was surprised by the price I got for them too, as many were from a "complete army" of a lesser known brand that had around 100 infantry and 20 cavalry for something like £14.95 or maybe £19.95 - a bargain, even when I bought them in the late 70's or early 80's. In the mid 90's, I got something like $250 for them, which pleased me greatly and enabled me to invest in an upgrade to Front Rank figures! (I kept the cavalry and they are included below)

My original Murat and ADC - these are as I painted them when I was in my mid teens. There is some obvious wear and tear on them, but they dont look too bad for a fifteen or sixteen year old painter.

The First Chasseurs above - the bugler is from a local sculptor who worked with Mark but sadly passed away at quite a young age, and when he had only completed relatively few sculpts

The Fifth Chasseurs - again, the two carbine armed figures are from the NZ made range

The first of my "bargain army" cavalry - the Dutch Lancers of the Guard - the guidon bearer is Minifigs

The 7th Cuirassiers - my second cheapo cavalry unit, again with a couple of Minifigs additions as the original units were only eight figures strong

The First Dragoons - mainly Minifigs but with a smattering of the local figures again

A Minifigs caisson

Minifigs Foot artillery and gun

A slight change - this is a Hinchcliffe figure - he came in a pack of three and there was a British equivalent. I am pretty sure the two packs were purchased on a trip to London, from the famous Hamleys toy store

Finally, some more figures that saw the light of day - and some paint - thanks to another gaming project Julian and I did. This time, it was the Scottish Wars of Independence and I bulked out the Scots mounted arm with some Minifigs Normans and Teutonic Knights that I had possessed for twenty years at the time but had never done anything with, including painting them!

I "made up" the heraldry here and only realised too late that green wasn't a heraldic colour in the British Isles - I just left them though!

These two are Normans

A Teutonic knight, flanked by two Normans

And finally, one Norman, flanked on each side by a pair of Teutonic Knights. I think these are all genuine coats of arms of the Scottish nobility - 90% sure the extreme right is Hay and the extreme left is Campbell. I know the black Y on white is a real one too - just cant remember what!

Day three of out trip to New Plymouth saw as back at the base of Mt Egmont/Taranaki, although minus the mist this time. The walks were pleasant but with nothing of particular note and I didn't take any photos

The road to and from the visitor centre - bocage anyone?!

A few miles down the road back to New Plymouth was a signpost for Tupare - on a whim, we turned down the road, and we were glad we had done!

Tupare is a regional park open every day of the year at no charge. Its the grounds of what was the private house of a prominent local family in the 1930's-1960's - Russell and Mary Matthews

Russell was a civil engineer and ran his own company, mainly building roads for the local council. In the winter season, his road crews were employed cheaply in the construction of the house and surrounding gardens

A river flows at the end of the "garden" 

The house viewed from near the river

The house was designed by James Chapman-Taylor, famous for his English cottage style. The Matthews' had seen the style on their honeymoon in Europe and America - which - considering this was in the early 30's at the time of the Great Depression, indicates they were a pretty wealthy family

There are a lot of tar macadam paths, which were a real novelty at the time, and were made possible by Russells civil engineering skills and his access to the equipment and materials being used in road construction at the time.

After lunch at a very nice local cafe, where I had paella for the first time in many years, we headed up a long, narrow country road for our afternoon wander. Once again, although the walk was fine, it was really just more of the same bush, and I saw nothing interesting enough to photograph. The initial route was across about 2km of farmers fields and the view over the farmland back to the west coast I thought was worth a piccy!

That evening, we decided to walk to a restaurant on the main drag, Devon Street, It was 421 and Ruth said it was about 2,5 km - no problem. We set off and passed about thirty eateries en route to 421 Devon Street. When we arrived after about forty minutes walk, there was no sign of a restaurant

Now, the thing about Devon Street is - that's not its full name. It is either Devon Street East, or....Devon Street West. And of course, once Ruth checked her phone, she found we should have been on Devon Street West! We headed back but by the time we got to the hotel, I needed a quick "comfort stop" and we decided we had walked enough and took the car. Upon arrival at the intended destination, we both agreed it looked pretty unprepossessing, so we decided not to eat there. Instead we went to very nice Italian restaurant, Porto Fino, which was literally right next door to the hotel we were staying in! Still, at least we had a good appetite for scallopini ai fungi, a couple of nice glasses of Chianti and rounded off with a shared tiramisu

A nice old building we passed on our 5km walk to the restaurant next door. I assume it will look quite familiar to our N American and Australian readers, but a bit of a novelty to those of you in the UK - and I mean the architectural style, not the blue sky!

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!