Royal Mail meltdown and Ariel landscapes !

I feel the need to have a bit of a rant regarding the current state of the Royal Mail postal service! I don't know how reliable it is for you chaps but around here in the Medway area of Kent it is appalling, no other word for it. I'm not knocking the individual posties for one moment, but the  reliability of the service is very patchy and they will admit that they are unable to maintain a daily delivery service and that agency and courier staff are employed to cover some weekends. I have had several examples of poor service in the last couple of weeks alone. Firstly, a 10 day wait for a first class signed for package posted to me by Old John and containing a Graham Farish 0-6-0 tank locomotive purchased on my behalf from John's friends shop. When it failed to arrive I checked the tracker which showed a failed delivery attempt on the Sunday (!) with no card left. I was in all day that day and mostly sat painting by the window and with Poppy the dog in the room who always barks when the door knocks. I  duly booked a redelivery for the Thursday, waited in and again it failed to arrive. This left me having to wait over Easter thinking it would be delivered on the Tuesday but again nothing. On Wednesday I managed to catch the postman who suggested I rebook again but said he would check at the delivery office. On Thursday he pulled up in his van at 3.40pm and knocked on the door saying "I think this is what you have been waiting for". This was a great relief to me and also to John and his wife Cynthia (who had posted the package), and I know it caused them a lot of stress and worry. 

In addition to the above a package from eBay due to be delivered on a Thursday arrived on the following Monday and this last week a 1st class letter posted to me on the previous Wednesday was delivered on Monday. I think you will agree this is a rather shoddy state of affairs.

Creating terrain tiles for 'Battle Cry'.

With the PVC game mat now on order from Tinywargames I have been thinking about putting together other components required for the game. I have sourced the  rules from the 150th Anniversary Edition, a printer friendly set of replacement command cards and even printable patches for the dice. Now to the question of terrain tiles. My idea has been to print the tiles and glue to 75mm MDF hexes, it is possible to find the original tile designs but I want to make my own using satellite or drone images. I have had some success in this, a few examples/ideas you can see below including woods, corn and wheat fields etc. I also have hilltops and roads rivers etc. It's a fun exercise and I hope to have something ready to print by the weekend. My main issue is finding a suitable town hex design but I have some ideas. In sharing a few example images I should state that all are readily found on Google and will only be used for my personal use.

Wheatfield?

Cornfield?

'Unofficial' BC tile.

Unofficial 'Dunker Church'

I like this for woods.

'Peach Orchard'

Wheatfield.