In them olden days

Replying to Darrell's post yesterday reminded me of some birding practices as they were back in the 70's and 80's. Seawatching at Dungeness was either from the seawatch hide over The Patch (mostly in spring) or from The Point. In those days the Obs had a huge binocular telescope that we used to wheel down (it had it's own pram) over the concrete roads to the hide. The bin scope was always going out of align because of bumping it down to the hide (even in its special box and on the pram) but at the time it was an awesome tool so well worth the effort. Occasionally I used to set off to the hide straight after the pub and sleep with the bin scope in the seawatch hide so I didn't over-sleep and miss the seawatch. We never played music in the seawatch hide, however the Point was different. The trick was to reverse a hatchback vehicle or van on the boards over the shingle - these were the fishermen's roads but one went right out onto the point. Then sit on the floor of the van / hatchback with the stereo (or more usually a battery powered ghetto blaster) on warp factor nine. These of course were the days of cassette tape so there was no real selecting tracks, it could not easily be fixed to arrange Pretty Vacant to Med Gull or London Calling to Bonxie.