My dream has come true, not quite. A local English newspaper has reported that giant foorptints have been found in the lovely Cotswolds area of Central England.

Sadly, i am skeptical as the footprint shown in the picture could have been formed by many ‘non bigfoot’ means. Anyway here is the story.

Bigfoot in the north Cotswolds?

Tewksbury ADMAG. 30th August 2012

A SPOOKY set of huge footprints found at Mill Dene Garden in Blockley have baffled people in the Cotswolds.

Melanie Aston, who teaches swimming at Mill Dene and often takes her dog for a walk in Bourton Wood on Saturday mornings, found some large unshod footprints near the toilets by the car park earlier  this month.

Her size seven wellies were dwarfed by the huge prints, which she said seemed fresh. However, she could not see anyone else around.

“They went over some really rough ground but there was quite a distance between each print almost as if they where avoiding the really wet mud,” she said.

Mill Dene owner Wendy Dare said: “I honestly have no idea what it is. The footprints are very large.”

It would be interesting to see what becomes of this story or whether other witnesses have also seen footprints in the area.

A Hunter Valley man named Dean, who did not wish to be identified further, thinks he may have caught a glimpse of one of the creatures, a kind of an Australian version of Bigfoot, as he was driving along the section of road in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Dean, whose work sees him driving more than 5000km a week around NSW, was travelling south along the Pacific Hwy, north of Grafton just before 2.30am when he took the Centenary Dr bypass. Shortly after turning into the road he saw something that shook him to the core.

“I reached the top of the hill and I was coming around the sweeping corner to the right when I noticed something a lot larger than a kangaroo in the middle of the road – my headlights weren’t on it yet but it was a bright night and I saw what looked like a large person stooped over, with a big overcoat on,” Dean said.

“At the time I thought ‘you silly old thing, what are you doing in the middle of the road at this time of the morning’, but next thing I knew my headlights started to light it up and it took one giant step off the road, it went from standing up like a person to going down on all fours and then it disappeared into the scrub in about three bounds.”

Dean, who is used to night-driving and fatigue management, slowed down and was looking into the scrub for the creature and said he saw it silhouetted against the sky.

“It had an almost sort of a square, shaggy block head sitting straight on its shoulders – I’m a pretty big guy but it made me absolutely awe-struck how huge its body was – it had its arm up against a tree and it had about a foot of hair hanging from under its biceps.”

He estimated the creature to be at least two metres tall and covered in what looked like jet-black hair.

Dean said he had no idea what to think until he described the incident to colleagues later who said it was similar to yowie-sighting stories they’d heard in their travels.

Since then Dean said he had been researching … to rationally explain what he saw but has yet to find a satisfactory answer.

“Anybody who knows me knows I’m the ultimate realist but this was an awe-inspiring moment, it’s definitely made me a believer,” Dean said.

During his search for answers however, Dean came across the website of Australian yowie researcher, Paul Cropper who was very interested in his story.

Mr Cropper, who has also co-written a book on yowies, said Dean’s story wasn’t unusual.

“In our book we recorded around 350 reports going back to the late 1700s, early 1800s, but I imagine there’s a lot more than that which don’t ever reach the media – people have these experiences and then just keep it to themselves,” Mr Cropper said.

Theories abound as to what yowies could be, including an unknown species of ape or even an undiscovered close relative to homo sapiens, he said.

“One thing you can say with absolute certainty is that Aborigines and Europeans have been recording these things for a long time – the Aboriginal stories go back to the Dreamtime and the European stories go back to basically the first settlement … there’s just this consistent thread of stories up until Tuesday morning,” he said.

(  The Daily Examiner – 19th May 2011 )

BRIT explorers claim they have spotted a legendary ape man believed to inhabit an island jungle — and snapped its footprints.

The four-strong team and their Indonesian guide were tracking through dense jungle in Sumatra when two of them caught a glimpse of the famous Orang Pendek — or short man.

The group brought back a hair sample and a piece of chewed palm from the island’s Kerinci National Park they hope will provide DNA evidence of the beast.

They also snapped a strange footprint thought to belong to the creature.

Sightings of the hairy human-like monster have been made in the area since colonial times — and it is alleged to be immensely powerful.

The explorers hope the sample of rattan palm, which is thought to have been munched on by the Orang Pendek, will contain some of its cells. The palm and hair sample have been sent for testing.

 Elusive

 Witnesses have described the beast as being about 5ft tall and say that it walks on two legs.

It is thought to be extremely powerful — with reports of onlookers seeing it ripping apart logs.

After a spate of sightings around Lake Gunung Tuju, in the Kerinci national park, a team from the Devon based Centre for Fortean Zoology — which investigates unknown species of animals — embarked on a two-week mission to the region to see if they could obtain evidence of the creature.

The elusive Orang Pendek shares its habitat with the Sumatran Tiger, pythons, and Saltwater crocodiles.

Richard Freeman, the expedition zoologist and zoological director at the Centre for Fortean Zoology, said he believes the creature is an unidentified species of ape.

“We are not talking about a unicorn or a griffin, we are talking about an ape that’s unknown to science,” he said.

“It’s name means ‘short man’ in Indonesian.

“It’s supposed to be a powerfully built upright walking ape.

“It walks on two legs rather than four – like a man, about five foot tall with dark fur – immensely strong.

“It’s been seen since colonial times.

“It’s quite possible that in some museum there are skull and bones of the Orang Pendek that have been labelled orangutan.”

The team, who have just returned from their two-week expedition, hailed it a success and are awaiting the results of the DNA tests.

www.thesun.co.uk article by By LEON WATSON

Deos the Yeti suffer from Split ends?

Could the mystery of the Yeti finally be solved? A few hair strands supplied to the BBC by a napalese man have proven impossible to identify.

Dipu Marek found the hairs deep in the jungle after a forrestry worker had seen the yeti on three conseqative days.

In England, highly sophisticated microscopes were used to examine the hairs and by a process of elimination the indiginous animals of that region were discarded as being the source.
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The tests were carried out at Oxford Brookes University in central England with award-winning primatologist Anna Nekaris and microscopy expert Jon Wells from the university’s anthropology department.

Ian Redmiond a primatologist and senior consultant for the UN’s Great Ape Survival Project has said that the Hairs are ‘potentially very exciting’ and along with Nekaris, agree there is “every chance” they could belong to an unknown species of primate.

Another exciting aspect is that the hairs contain identifiable follicles which means that there are cells present. As a result the hairs are being subjected to a more thorough DNA analysis.

Watch this space..