More painting and Herculaneum

I’ve been fairly busy this week, with another holiday next week. Mainly though gradually improving my health. However, the painting is progressing fairly well.

First up I have finally painted my first unit of Japanese Samurai/Ashigaru, these are all Perry figures and were quicker than I expected to paint 

Steve gifted me a few extra 15mm bits recently and I have painted these up for North Africa

Some extra Sherman’s

Panzerjager and anti aircraft gun or simple paint schemes

Finally and perhaps my favourite this week a unit of French Carabiniers, Perry plastics painted in their slightly earlier 1810 uniforms 

A rare shot of the sunshine in the Lake District this afternoon.

Finally some more shots from our recent holiday as well as Pompeii of course Vesuvius in 79AD destroyed the smaller town of Herculaneum 

A shot over the preserved town as it is today, the current ground level is shown in the background and the whole of Herculaneum has been excavated below this level, buried as it was in about 8 metres of volcanic rock. Part of the difference between the two famous sites was their preservation due to the type of volcanic rock they were buried by, this means the preservation at Herculaneum was because it wasn’t impacted by volcanic ash.

The site is famous for the level of preservation with lots of wooden items and structures such as the screen above, one of the things you don’t get from other sites is perhaps just how crowded with stuff Roman houses would have been

Also plenty of preserved roadside advertising signs this one outside a shop I think

Like Pompeii lots of shops selling food 

Plenty of mosaics preserved

Herculaneum is very famous for its bath house , but sadly it is currently closed to visitors whilst they work out how to balance tourism with preservation ? The shop above was taken through the locked door 🙂

The site also has many buildings which are preserved to a second or third story and again plenty of garish decorations on show 

I won’t go through the history of excavation at the site which is in itself very interesting, but for a long time they didn’t find any bodies thinking that the majority of the occupants had perhaps escaped, more recent excavations in the area closest to the waterfront at the time found this was the final resting place of many of the occupants of the town.

Another of the well preserved interiors, as I mentioned with Pompeii I have increasing sense that the Romans would have liked Disneyland rather than elegant white marble.

Thanks as always for checking in, I’m away on holiday again next week some I’m not likely to post much 

Matt 👍