Category: Reviews

Honeycomb – click any image for full size

Lundy De Luca (Londinia Leistone) is a maker of mesh home and garden furnishings under the Hive brand. She also offers her store’s homestead region of Honeycomb as a place others are welcome to visit and explore, as indicated in a recent Destination Guide Highlights blog post from the Lab.

Honeycomb presents a rugged landscape, deeply cut by the sea into a series of headlands linked by a low, forked tongue of land, and two equally rugged islands. The store and landing point occupy the largest of the headlands, located in the north-west of the region, a dirt track dipping down from it, turning north-east at the fork of the tongue, to arrive at small farmstead where horses peacefully graze in a field of grass turned golden brown by the sun. Here sits an old garage with a makeshift wooden deck before it, looking out across one of the inlets towards the middle headland.

Honeycomb

Reached by crossing the local railway line, this middle headland offers a careworn beach on its west side, backed by a tired cabins built on or over its rocky eastern shore. A rickety looking bridge runs out from the beach to the smaller of the two islands, scarcely more than a table of rock rising from the sea, which is surrounded by a small skirt of sand and topped by a tall pier.

The railway line, which emerges from a tunnel beneath the Hive store, curls its way across two trestle bridges and the middle headland to arrive at the larger of the two islands, where it abruptly ends. Here sits another cabin on top of a rocky table, looking westwards towards the setting sun. A board walk and wooden steps offer a means to get down to the water’s edge on the east side of the island, passing under the railway. but to get to the gravelly, overgrown western shoreline of the island requires a bit of a scramble over rocks.

  Honeycomb

While it might sound tired and a little past its prime, the landscape of Honeycomb is nevertheless highly photogenic and evocative, and it is hard to avoid turning the camera slightly left or right and finding another view worthy of a photo. Gulls call from overhead, waves wash against the shores with soft hisses, while geese wander, horses and deer graze, and trawlers work just off the coast. From the tatty/chic beach through the connecting lowlands there are numerous places to sit and while away the time, with rowing boats out on the water offering a chance for a quiet cuddle with a loved one.

All in all, another great place to visit and, if you’re looking for something for your home or garden, or with which to further decorate you land, you might just find the answer in the Hive store!

Honeycomb

SLurl Details

• Honeycomb (Rated: Moderate)

Airship Pirates Town – click any image for full size

Jamisson Burnstein recently drew my attention to a store called Airships Pirates Town, located high over the island of Hakone, and the work of へき (hekirekika Jinn). “Airship Pirates” is actually enough to get a quizzical eyebrow rising, but the build itself really has to be seen to be believed.

The “airships” in this case are not what you might think: they are neither dirigibles, nor are they (well, for the most part!) great galleons sung beneath gigantic gasbags or held aloft by whirling propellers. Rather, they are regular sailing vessels  – a man of war and an armed Chinese junk – berthed against a stone quay, all of which just happen to be 3,500 metres in the air, with the quay attached to the most fantastical and delightful to the eye steampunk town which also extends outwards blow the great stone piers of the quay.

Airship Pirates Town

The landing point for this eye-catching build is a wooden dock, somewhat in need of repair, running out alongside the berthed Chinese junk. Wooden cranes sit idle alongside the dock while a zip line offers a rapid transfer down to the lower levels. However, it is likely to be the strange, piled-up charm of the town, reached by solid wooden stairs, will initially attract visitors on their arrival.

The town is an eclectic mix of buildings, some made of wood, others of brick, still others of wood-framed stone, all of random shapes and sometimes piled one on top of the other without regard – brick upon wood, for example. They are all clustered around one face of an enormous iron, steel and glass island from which huge chimneys and stacks rise and great pipes descend and around which little flying ships circle and even a great black locomotive chugs an endless circular journey from tunnel to wall.

Airship Pirates Town

Clinging to the sides of this strange place on platforms of wood or steel or brick stand huge, slowly turning wheels or creaking wooden windmills. Stairways and steps and ladders provide routes upwards, while individual buildings invite visitors inside. Most are shops, but some offer living and working space. Getting around can be confusing, so look out for the teleport hub at the top of the stone steps or for the TP signs scattered around and within the buildings. Climb high enough, and you’ll find another zip line waiting to carry you back down to the quay.

Nor are explorations restricted to the shops and various levels of the floating island: find the right teleport or the right entrance, and you can enter the heart of the iron island, where sit both  the great generator which presumably keeps the place hovering in the sky, and also an Indiana Jones style course involving switching, swinging bridges, and dodging cogwheels – although the end of this journey is a little abrupt.

Airship Pirates Town

With a dragon keeping an eye on things, and the odd genuine flying boat (emphasis on boat!) either moored higher up or circling the sky and a lot packed into what is a very small area, not to mention the phenomenal steampunk look, Airship Pirates Town is well worth a visit and explore, standing as a wonderful demonstration of the creative whimsy possible in this digital world.

SLurl Details

• Airship Pirates Town (Rated: General)

Osprey Ridge – click any image for full size

Osprey Ridge has passed into the annals of SL history. SLurls have therefor been removed.

Osprey Ridge is a homestead region within the United Sailing Sims located eastward of Blake Sea and a place we’ve often passed when our sailing or boating. Open to the public, the region has been landscaped by Markarius Viper and is cared for by Flo (SweetFloXO) and presents a pleasing environment in which to spend time.

The best place to start a visit is at the moorings on the north side of the island, sheltered from the passage linking Blake Sea with Second Norway by a natural grassy breakwater. From here, visitors can walk eastwards along the moorings and the beach to come to a cosy summer gazebo sitting alongside a reedy pond, or head inland along a wooded track which winds its way to a sturdy and comfortable log cabin.

Osprey Ridge

The cabin sits nestled between tall columns and plateaus rising to the south and west of it, topped by tables of grass from which tress grow. Of these more anon; for now however, take the path onwards around the front of the cabin, and it will turn southwards and lead you between more trees and under the shadow of a another mesa on the east side of the region bore your arrive at the southern shore, a deck overlooking the open waters, with another ribbon of beach pointing westwards.

If you prefer, there is a track on the west side of the cabin, just within the tree line, which leads the way to the waters at the foot of the rocky cliffs, which are in turn spanned by a bridge made from the trunk of an old, fallen tree. From here it is possible to pass between the tall mesas on either side to reach the south-western corner of the island, or scramble over the rocks and into the cavern beneath the west side plateau.

Osprey Ridge

The cavern is a place of peace, watched over by a fae waystone which, for those running with ALM enabled, casts patterns of light across the surrounding rock faces and over the pool of water in which it sits. A narrow opening on the north side of the carven provides a short-cut back to the moorings, which eagle-eyed visitors may have spotted as they followed the rack down towards the cabin from the north side of the island.

The broad, grassy tops of the plateaus are home to a tree house, a camp site, Greedy, Greedy and a romantic cuddle swing. A wooden bridge connects the two plateaus, but how to get up to them without flying or double-click teleporting actually defeated Caitlyn and I (we eventually went the double-click TP route).

Osprey Ridge

The region could perhaps benefit from having the moorings on the north side parcelled-off so that auto-return could be set to say, 60 minutes, to allow those arriving by boat to come ashore and explore without fear of their vessel poofing to Lost and Found as soon as they do so, but this is a minor point. Osprey Ridge offers a pleasing visit to those passing or who are looking for photogenic spots within Second Life, with plenty of places up high and at ground level for simply sitting and enjoying the environment or having an intimate cuddle (including a bed suspended from the trees in the woods!).