The case of the disappearing pictures

I need the aid of a blog detective to find my missing pictures. I have been looking through my blog archives and find that quite a number of past posts have lost one or more of the photographs that were featured in them. Any clues?

Another mystery

Driving to see lovely friend D of 60goingon16, yesterday, I pulled into a lay-by to look at the stunning view of Exmoor and to check the directions and this is what I saw under the hedge. I have been pondering the significance of the carefully arranged thermos (minus its stopper and cup) inside the remains of a tyre ever since.
Is it some secret sign among Gentlemen of the Road? Have the Cornish piskies been holidaying in Devon? Or could it have any connection with the Winterbourne Mystery?

Winterbourne Mystery#2

As a child, some of my favourite poems were those with an air of mystery such as The Listeners by Walter de la Mare, Yeats's The Song of Wandering Aengus and William Allingham's The Fairies. I am still hoping that someone will produce a poem or story of this kind to attach to the picture of the boots, in the meantime, here is one of my old favourites which springs to mind when I consider that strange find by the stream at the edge of the woods:

The Way through the woods

THEY shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

You lovers of Kipling will have recognised it, of course.

The Winterbourne Mystery

The hotel we stayed in at the weekend has lovely grounds and is surrounded by beautiful country lanes. I went walking with friend Crinny and our cameras and took lots of photos of flora and fauna for my collection. Running alongside the lane was a stream and on the bank we saw this perfectly good pair of walking boots. We felt certain that there must be an interesting story to go with them. I would love to hear what you think that story might be.

Mystery object

I have collected kitchen gadgets for many years. My family and friends used to find it easy to buy me birthday and Christmas presents, more or less anything from a kitchenware department would do. Naturally, as the years have passed, my cupboards have filled and the chances of them finding anything I don't already own have diminished. The MM came up trumps at Christmas with this one, though.

The only problem is we don't know what it is!

It looks like a wooden spoon but it has a hole in the middle.
Am I missing the obvious? Would it produce lighter cake batter than a regular wooden spoon? Or could it be for measuring spaghetti portions? Perhaps it isn't a kitchen gadget at all.

If you know what it is for, or if you can think of a (printable) use for it, please let me know. The sender of the best answer, as judged my the MM and me, may choose any paperback book from my library, as shown in my LibraryThing.