Have you had your summer holiday yet? Did you stay local or did you fly away somewhere exotic?
How do you fancy this three thousand mile trip:First stop off in France to soak up the culture then on to Mont Blanc and the Swiss alps for a few weeks rest and recuperation in the beautiful mountain scenery. It can be cool in the mountains, even in the summer so head south into Italy, perhaps Tuscany or further south again to Sicily. If that isn’t warm enough, take a short hop over the Mediterranean Sea to Libya then across the Sahara to Lake Chad.
It’s not an itinerary that you’ll find in many travel brochures but it is quite popular in certain circles. Mungo, a bird from near Loch Katrine made that very trip and met up with Chance who travelled by a different route from Loch Katrine, via Belgium and Austria, and Chris from the Norfolk Broads. They are all Cuckoo’s that have been tagged by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in order to track their annual migrations to Africa. Chris is a veteran who was tagged last year so this is his second recorded journey. His route to Lake Chad this year is similar to the route last year but one of the other tagged birds from Norfolk, Lyster, has travelled by quite different routes last year and this year.
They’re trip isn’t over yet. It is likely that they will continue south, perhaps to the Congo basin before returning to the UK.
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IllustrationFrom John:
On Sunday at 1:45 p.m. at Waterfront Metro, while waiting for the Green Line toward Chinatown, I was assaulted.
I was leaning against the rail at the bottom of the stairs waiting for my train when all of a sudden I got sucker punched from the back on my right temple.
My glasses flew off my face. My vision is really bad without my glasses, so the first thing I thought was to find them.
I was looking around for them on the ground while three people casually and slowly walked up the stairs, sort of trying to gauge what my response was going to be.
I found my glasses halfway up the stairs, so the person who assaulted me must have grabbed them in the same punch and threw them. The three were chuckling to themselves and then hurried up the rest of the stairs.
They didn't try to steal anything. Not sure what the hell they were thinking. Maybe they were just bored and wanted a laugh.
The three were Waterfront area black kids, in their late teens or early twenties. One of them was wearing a white t-shirt that was a Southwest crew/gang shirt.
I went to the station manager and told her I just got assaulted by the kids who just walked by her and that I didn't know if they left the station or went back downstairs on the other side.
All the manager said was "Oh yeah, they just hopped the gate."
She did not give a flying f*ck what happened.
