Where did Ardoch House go ?

This is the story not about bones but about looking for an old historical building near my village.

It began with an email I got in April. It was from a man called David Forbes who lives in Canada but who used to have relatives in Braco which is the village where I live. He emailed me because he found my blog post about the ice houses on the Ardoch Estate. He told me that he used to have a relative who was a housemaid at Ardoch House over 100 years ago, and that when he came to Scotland in 1984 he visited the old Ardoch House which was now derelict. But he visited again in 1989 and it wasn't there any more !

This is the photograph he took in 1984:

The archeological bones, part 1: the puzzles

This is a story that is too big to say in one blog post so I'm going to spread it over three weeks. It all began when I got an email from a bone collector called Jen who lives in Dundee not far from me. She said that she was moving to Africa and she had some old archeological bones and asked if I wanted them because none of the universities did. I said yes, definitely, and about two weeks ago she came round to my house to drop them off before she moved and meet me and see my bone collection.

(This is one of two big sets of bones I was given this summer. The other came from Ric and I am still working through them but I am going to write about them too.)

I have never had archeological bones before and I asked some questions about the bones but probably not enough. She said some of the bones were 1,000 years old. She brought them in a big box and inside the big box there were sandwich bags of different groups of bones.

Ben's theory about the golden eagle

This week's post is different because it's about someone else's work, not mine. When I wrote about my golden eagle skull a few months ago, I wrote that it had two sets of injuries, one on the back of the head and one on underneath the skull. At the time I thought the first injury was caused by a blow, and the second one underneath was caused a different time by a shotgun pellet.

Ben Garrod, who is a zoologist and skeleton articulator wrote on my Facebook fan page that he had a different theory. This post is about his theory and how I tested it.

The mystery cross, a fox, a kestrel and a castle

This is a story about a walk a had a few weeks ago which I went to check out something strange near my house I'd seen on the satellite pictures on Google Maps. But it was such a great walk that I saw tons more so I'm going to write about all of it.

I use Google Maps a lot on the iPad to look at new places to walk and explore near my house. I wrote about it here. Google Maps is good for finding new woods and old buildings, but it doesn't have contour lines so you need a map as well. Here is what I found and wanted to explore.

My top ten tips for other child bloggers

This is an unusual post for me because it's about blogging, not about bones. It was because I was thinking about the Times article which was yesterday, and thinking about what I would say to another kid about starting a blog.

These are just my tips. The other bloggers in the Times article might do things differently, but these are the ten things that really help me write my blog:

I'm in The Times today (with a video) !

This weekend is a special weekend because I'm in The Times Weekend supplement today ! Today I'm going to write about what it was like to be photographed (together with a video of it !) and tomorrow morning I'm going to write about another post my advice to other kids that want to start blogging.

It all began when I got an email from the journalist Anna Moore who said she wanted to write a piece about child bloggers. She phoned about a week later and did an interview and asked me questions about when did I start and why did I start. Then the next week a photographer came to take the photographs. Here's a timelapse video of the whole photoshoot from start to finish: