The History of Alderney Harbour, Alderney

the theme of water seems quite adequate for this period because after a few weeks of nice weather, we've been struck again by some thunderstorms and floods...and even woke up to some snow this morning, but by now it has all melted away...well, I don't mind the snow or the rain as much as I mind the constant weather changes which leave me so drowsy and unwilling to get out of my pajamas all day long...

well, we have some nice water quantities on this 2012 FDC from Alderney.

Alderney harbour has been the setting for some formidable feats of maritime engineering and chief amongst them is the 2,700 feet long Breakwater, which was built by the British Admiralty to defend against the threatened invasion of Napoleon.
The completed structure is the longest in the UK, cost £ 1.5 million and posed enormous challenges to contractors, Jackson & Bean.
Sea conditions in Alderney can be severe and Braye Bay is exposed to the full force of the Atlantic and a large tidal range. Added to this, the waters where the Breakwater was to be built reached depths of over 150 feet, greatly magnifying the scale of the task.
Stone and sand were provided locally but all other materials needed to be imported and so Little Crabby Harbour was built to accommodate the tipping (hopper) barges and steam boats that to'd and fro'd.
The Breakwater is formed from a rubble bank, topped by a masonry wall with a promenade and slipway on the harbour side. The foundation stone was laid in 1847 and by the late 1850's over half a million tonnes a year were being tipped.
The development created a booming quarrying industry and the Commercial Quay was opened in 1897 to help with export. It remains a lifeline for islanders, providing berthing for passenger ferries as well as food and freight deliveries. In 2011, a multimillion-pound refurbishment was completed, making it fit for the 21st century.
The Breakwater construction proved far more difficult than anticipated, went vastly over budget and was blighted by winter storms. Building stopped in 1864 but the task of maintaining it continues.
Today it remains a bustling working harbour that provides shelter for the quays and moorings but also for the shoreline around Braye Bay, where clusters of houses still dot the low-lying land.

Top row, from left to right: Douglas Quay, Braye Harbour c.1800; - Breakwater c1866; - SS Courier c.1926
Bottom row from left to right: Little Crabby Harbour c.1985; - RNLI Lifeboat - Roy Barker 1 c.1995; - Commercial Quay - built 2011


Wanna see more water beauties? Then just visit Violet's post for today's Sunday Stamps

Sunday Stamps

Prehistorical Animals - Australias Age of Dinosaurs, Australia

After an early 5 am morning rise for watching the Australian Open, it is time to post some Australian stamps too.
Ok, I will admit that I was actually a bit lazy to search for some nice shaped stamps I have...it was simply easier to go for something Australian...but it did fit in nicely with the current AO event :)

I really love this sheet of stamps issued in 2013, showing a number of dinasours. The colours are just so beautiful and even the dinasours dont seem so terrifying...except for that first guy with the name of Koolasuchus. My knowledge on dinasours is, let's just say, non-existent, so I'll just give you a few facts on each one, relying on what google has to say about this bunch of guys here.
I already mentioned the Koolacushus, which was an aquatic temnospondyl estimated to have been around 4 to 5 metres, with a mass of up to 500kg. It is an extinct genus of brachyopoid temnospondyl in the family Chigutisauridae. Fossils have been found from Victoria, Australia and date back 120 Ma to the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous. Koolasuchus is the latest known temnospondyl.

On the following stamp we have two representatives of Serendipaceratops, a dubious genus of herbivorous ornithischian dinosaur from the early Cretaceous Period of Australia.

The third stamp shows the Timimus, a genus of small coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Australia. It was originally identified as an ornithomimosaur, but now it is thought to be a different kind of theropod, possibly a tyrannosauroid or unenlagiine

The fourth one, on the top, is a Diamantinasaurus, (meaning "Diamantina River lizard") is a genus of derived titanosaurian dinosaur from late Albian (Early Cretaceous)-age rocks of Australia

Below the River lizard are two representatives of the Qantassaurus, a genus of two-legged, plant-eating ornithischian dinosaur that lived in Australia about 115 million years ago, when the continent was still partly south of the Antarctic Circle. It was named after Qantas, the Australian airline ( in honor of the Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service, which shipped fossils around the country as part of the Great Russian Dinosaurs Exhibit between 1993 and 1996, and sponsored expeditions to South America and Eastern Europe).

And the last guy on our exhibit here is an Australovenator, (or a Southern hunter), a genus of megaraptoran theropod dinosaur from Albian (Early Cretaceous)-age rocks (dated to 95 million years ago) of Australia.


I really wish there was some place on Earth where dinasours still existed...for me it is somewhat difficult to grasp the idea of such animals walking around and the whole concept of such creatures existing is really cool! Just don't ask me to pronounce all those names and genus and stuff :)

For more fun choices, visit Violet's blog.

Sunday Stamps

Total Eclipse of the Sun, Hungary

Im not quite sure if this post is exactly fitting today's Sunday Stamps theme of "Organizations, Special Events", but I find the Total Eclipse of the Sun as one very special event and therefore want to share with you today this Hungarian issue from 1999, where this Solar Eclipse is presented.

This Eclipse occurred on 11 August 1999, something that seems quite distant right now, but I actually do remember when it happened even though from here in Macedonia we didn't really have the best experience possible, but I do remember this weird kind of sensation in the sky and all those constant warnings of not to be staring at the Sun directly at that time without any sunglasses and all...as if it is pretty fine to be doing it at other times.

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby totally or partly obscuring the image of the Sun for a viewer on Earth.
A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is larger than the Sun, blocking all direct sunlight, turning day into darkness. Totality occurs in a narrow path across the surface of the Earth, while a partial solar eclipse will be visible over a region thousands of kilometres wide.

The path of the Moon's shadow during this time began in the Atlantic Ocean and, before noon, was traversing the southern United Kingdom, northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, southern Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, and northern Serbia (Vojvodina). Its maximum was in Romania (next to a town called Ocnele Mari near Râmnicu Vâlcea); and it continued across Bulgaria, the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, southern Pakistan and Srikakulam in India and ended in the Bay of Bengal. It was the first total eclipse visible from Europe since 22 July 1990, and the first visible in the United Kingdom since 29 June 1927.

Due to the high population densities in areas of the path, this one is considered as one of the most-viewed total solar eclipse in human history; although some areas in the path of totality (mainly in Western Europe) offered impaired visibility due to adverse weather conditions.

So if you have an experience to share with this or some other Solar eclipse you have witnessed, please do so in the comments section...would be an interesting read :)

Click on the link below and see what others have shared today!

Sunday Stamps 

The 30th Anniversary of the First Manned Moon Landing, Angola

After a few months' absence here comes a new post! Yay! Hurray! (well, I hope it is a 'yay' reaction from your side anyways :P)
In general, for the past months I've been away from everything postal related...a number of reasons for that, if you're curious, you can get some vague info here in my postcards' blog post (in order to avoid repeating myself)
However, I've been trying slowly to get back on track with stuff...and this is one of the spots that still hasn't been taken care of with regards to that. Being that it is Sunday, I recalled today is the day for Sunday stamps and ain't there a better excuse to post something? :)
Just that I realized that while I was gone, some things have changed and Sunday stamps has a new host, that is Violet...so this means that I've been gone for a really long time since I've missed something like this.
Anyways,. I would like to thank Viridian for all the hard work she had put up while hosting SS, I really enjoyed being part of it! And thanks to Violet for taking over and giving us the chance to still enjoy the Sunday stamps ;-)

So this come-back post is supposed to portray some famous people or portraits...maybe the entire post doesn't really fulfill the conditions but the first stamp surely does, and that's the one I wanted to show you...the rest are for your enjoyment :)

I am showing some Angola stamps today, issued in 1999 to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the First Manned Moon Landing, which happened on 20 July 1969, when Apollo 11 took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon. The above stamps shows Armstrong...I don't know why they hadn't issued a stamp depicting Aldrin too though. Maybe cos Armstrong was the one who set foot first. There was another guy, Michael Collins, who piloted the command spacecraft alone in lunar orbit until Armstrong and Aldrin returned to it just under a day later for the trip back to Earth. So he does deserve some recognition within this issue as well I think but anyways.
Armstrong unfortunately ain't among us any more...he passed away at the age of 82, in 2012.

So as I said, that would be my stamp to contribute to to today's Sunday stamps edition. But I simply couldn't leave out the rest of the stamps in the set, so here they are:

Here you have the SBS-4 Satellite on the right and the left is the Space Shuttle Columbia.

In the sheet above you can also see a number of various satellites displayed, while in the one below is our magnificent and mystic Solar system.

I can say nothing else but just that this entire issue of stamps is G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S!
Hope you liked them as well! :)

for more famous people on stamps, click on the link below...and enjoy it! :)

Violet's Sunday Stamps