Paintings Art etc.

winter sunset 4

2012-01-28T18:33:00.003Z

winter sunset 3

2012-01-24T16:27:00.002Z

winter sunset 2

2012-01-19T20:28:00.001Z

winter sunset

2012-01-17T19:15:00.003Z

wind water sun

2012-01-11T17:55:00.003Z

Another time lapse film for you which I made recently on the 5th of January. An odd film really as it starts out more dramatic than it ends up, maybe I should reverse the whole thing. This was filmed on a very windy afternoon with the winds gusting up to about force eight. Being a bit untogether I forgot to secure the tripod to the beach properly and as a result the tripod blew over when I was off pottering about by the edge of the sea, hence the edit in the middle. Whoops. Luckily the camera is undamaged, but I should know better by now.

Although our awful overlords have done their best to ruin the environment, along with our helpful and willing blind conformity, the sea sky and sun thing can still be very beautiful. So far there is no tax on natural beauty, although the appreciation and observance of this is very much discouraged, even by modern philosophers who maintain that because beauty cannot be quantified and is a subjective experience it doesn't exist. Good for them. No profit in it you see, standing around looking at natural things and not spending money. The best thing to do is to concentrate on working very very hard as much as you can and then one day you might be able to have the time to stand around looking at stuff, if you can still see at that age or haven't died prematurely by working yourself into the early grave. Rest assured the taxes will continue after you're dead. I am fortunate in that I have many places I can go to see such stuff and I appreciate that not everybody is able to do this.

I don't know if anyone has seen this Renaissance 2.0 series of videos on youtube but I was quite impressed with these, as they offer a good summery of how we got to be where we are today, from an American viewpoint. If you are a clever clogs and already know it all, skip to part five and you will find the place that we are just about to come to. In part six there is even an explanation of what tactics we could use to possibly find a way out of this mess. Ever hopeful me. See what you think.

to sail beyond the sunset

2011-12-30T14:05:00.006Z

Here are some photos of the sunset on Christmas Eve. I stand on this temporary shoreline and observe the passing of another day and am reminded of the people no longer here. Mind you, there's a fair chance I would have been on my own here anyway, but now these people are no longer at home when I get back and I am unable to reach them by telephone. I have my memories of them and they also make an occasional appearance in dreams, which seems an appropriate place to catch up with those who have gone. I also have to consider that whatever I have lost, it has been a worse year for many other people. There are all these plans for the future and all the time in the world but the time runs out unexpectedly one day.

The sea uncovers the remains of a ship, another hope foundered and was abandoned to the incoming tide. What have we learnt from this loss? The wise king Canute has somehow been misrepresented as foolish by history when he seemed to be demonstrating against the sea to "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." and if there isn't then no matter, for whatever net you may try to throw over the universe to contain it makes no difference in the end when you should already know the reason and the answer.

up the snod

2011-12-14T23:02:00.016Z

We leave the dark month of December briefly to look back at this record of a hot and dry morning in late September. The River Sid can be followed inland and upstream to where it connects to The Snodbrook, a small tributary of the Sid, having its source in the hill to the north. A small tarmac lane runs beside the quiet and unseen Snod. In the Sweetcombe Valley we pass by the beautiful Boswell Farm, which originally dates back to pre-Norman times and has a threshing barn built in 1710 which still stands on its original stone monastic pillars.

A couple of cars pass by and then all is quiet again. I don't meet anyone here for the next hour or two and then not until I get back to the bright lights of Sidford. I decide to get off the lane and have a look at the Snod. After working through the abundant plantage the Snod is found to be a dark but clear river about six feet wide. The lane becomes a green lane, unmade and used by ancient packhorses and drovers. These can date back to Bronze Age times, others may be just a few hundred years old. Some are known as Hollow Ways, those that have sunk below the level of the adjacent ground. Hollow Lanes sometimes give the impression of being circular in shape, so you get the sensation of walking down a long tube of flickering light, foliage and track. The lanes in the middle section of the photos are about seven to ten feet wide and are used by the occasional land rover or tractor and for the movement of cows. Gates and other exits or passing places are few and I am glad that I don't meet a herd of cows coming down the lane towards me. The lanes amble around the hills, going nowhere in particular but always connecting the fields and the isolated houses and farms to nearby civilisation.

The word Snod might have its origins in Scotland and the North of England, where it is an adjective used for smooth and sleek or neat and tidy. In old Norse there is snothin - bald and snauthr - bare. It has been suggested by some that it means sweet in Old English. It's a bit like snood, the distinctive headband formally worn by young unmarried women. In Italian Snoda seems to mean winds, in Arabic it might be الرياح . I found it in an extensive Anglo Saxon dictionary produced in 1921, appearing as snoda redimicula, Latin for a band, a necklace, or a girdle. It's even in the Urban Dictionary where Snod is an acronym for Slutty New Outfit Day, described as being when attractive girls wear outfits that are very slutty on the first good day of spring. Snod is also there as drunk and on mushrooms."Dude, I was so snod last night, I don't remember anything...it was awesome!"

These lanes are close to the towns but are quiet and empty and as such they are very much recommended for travel and exploration. The hedgerows contain lots of food, so it is possible to eat as you walk.

'

autumn woods

2011-11-19T10:32:00.005Z

We walk out into the gloom and ascend the hill, where the sights of Autumn surround us. The woods are quiet, many of the birds have flown though we still have the squirrels and their manic scampering for company as we walk. As lovely as the sight of Autumn is it's actually the smell that is remarkable; rotting leaf matter and strange fungoid aromas fill the air.

We've had a mild Autumn which has so far saved me from burning lots of wood, giving us more fuel for the later part of Winter. It's been so mild that I have seen bees and butterflies this week. Last Winter we began having fires at the beginning of October, but here we are in late November and it still isn't very cold. I'm sure it'll come soon enough. My store of wood seems unusually large this year and upon opening the door to the shed I am confronted by what appears to be a huge breaking wave of wood coming towards me. Exchanging a small pile of paper money for an enormous pile of hard wood has always seemed like a very good exchange to me. We bring the hardened sunlight into the house, and being the thief of fire, release its energy. Our own personal mini sun for heat and light against the dark and cold. How fortunate we are.

Short dark days make for long evenings as the world turns and tilts. It gets properly dark before five now, though some days it hardly seems to get very light at all. The air is still today and all would be quiet, but I can hear the faint sound of a choir nearby, practicing carols as I type this, such a seasonal sound.

Water Sky Moon

2011-10-24T03:53:00.004+01:00

I had some fun filming timelapse on the beach in August. First of all it was a long walk on a hot day which was also very windy. Dangerous weather for me on a beach as I am liable to get burnt to crisp. There isn't much possibility of shade or shelter what with it being cliffs on one side and sea the other but fortunately I made it to some large rocks and was able to shelter behind those for few hours while I pointed the camera up and down.

In the first shot the camera ended up being a bit closer to the incoming tide than I was hoping for, so I moved it and got the shot looking down the beach the other way. I still managed to get the camera and lens covered in spray being blown off the sea, as can be seen in the increasingly obscured shot. I really should look after my equipment better.

Photo number two is the moon rising in June I think. Yes it's a moon in June. The third photo was taken earlier this evening and shows the wind picking up nicely. Time to batten down the hatches by the look of it.

some more from the bus

2011-10-20T15:02:00.005+01:00

Just a quick posting of some photos taken back in the summer that I haven't had time to put up before now. These were taken on a bus trip to Okehampton for a walk I had planned and show Dartmoor in the background. The three peaks are at Belstone, where I took last years tor photographs, and the large round hill is what used to be known as Cowsand Beacon and which is now called Cosdon Hill for some reason. The last two are just a couple that got away that I liked.

The old mill at North Tawton

2011-10-14T11:36:00.005+01:00

From the Middle Ages and until late in the 18th century woollen manufacture was Devon's most valuable industry. The first known fulling mill in North Tawton was at Cottles Barton in 1558. As the nineteenth and twentieth century’s progressed the Devonshire woollen mills failed, one by one, although North Tawton’s was one of the last to go. The processes carried out in the factory included sorting, washing, drying, combing, spinning and weaving.

A brief history since 1930

The mill was brought by Hosken Trevithick & Polkinghorne, trading as Farm industries, for use as a store and wool grading centre.

1939-1951. The new shed was requisitioned by the Ministry of Works, and was a major centre for storing Government wool.

1948. The North Devon water Board abstracted water from the leat. Two pumps were built to extract water and the mains water was augmented by the factory supply.

1950. Ambrosia of Lapford rented a building on the site, for the storage of milk and rice, where ten women were employed sorting the grain.

1957. The North Devon Water Board leased the yard and a shed for storage at £25 per annum.

1964. The British Wool Marketing Board took over the premises, and it became an important wool grading centre. Wool buyers came from all over the country to view the board’s samples. The Wool Board made their own electricity until 1991 and sold surplus to the Electricity Board.

1992. Wool stores were closed at Buckfastleigh, Launceston and North Tawton and the business was concentrated in South Molton. Two of the remaining employees were transferred there. A sad end to what was once a great enterprise. In the Okehampton Times of 17 December 1992 it was reported that: West Devon Council issued a development brief for the wool factory, which, it is suggested, could be put to leisure use, e.g. a public sports hall, the mill leat could be developed for water sports, and buildings converted to a restaurant and/or museum connected with the former wool industry.

In 1994 the premises were bought by a local land owner, and have remained empty ever since.

I visited the site on what turned out to be a day of continual rain, which is fairly typical for Devon and not a problem. The site is very large and takes a good while to walk around even quickly as there are numerous sheds and buildings there. Many of the roofs have given way and the rain is getting into a lot of the buildings making them unstable. Some of the roofs contain glass, some of which has fallen and a lot of which still swings in the wind, so these sheds would be best avoided on very windy days. The large and beautiful mill building also seems to be leaking, as when I was inside there was a constant running and dripping of water on the large wooden stairs, so these stairs and possibly the floors above are not to be trusted. All in all an interesting site which was nearly bulldozed earlier on in the year until the plan for rebuilding fell through again and so the mill remains derelict, and is slowly being reclaimed by nature. Visiting the site is trespassing I believe and caution should also be taken due to the dangerous condition of the place.

road station of the sacred groves

2011-09-26T00:39:00.005+01:00

I spend a lot of time travelling on buses or as is quite often the case, waiting around for buses to arrive. These photos were taken on a bus trip returning from North Tawton one evening in July, on one of those occasions when the light and cloud conspire to do something striking, so the camera comes out to record the passing. The weather around Dartmoor can change very quickly, so there is often much drama in its movement.

North Tawton is the place that Ted Hughes brought Sylvia Plath to live back in the 1960s and with all due respect to the people here, it is still a very small and insular town that couldn't have been much fun for a cultivated and sensitive American woman to spend the winter in, more than a bit thoughtless of Ted really.

There are the remains of a roman fort in North Tawton, just over the bridge and to the south, which had the name of Nemetostatio, meaning "The road-station of the sacred groves" and there are other places in the general area which still have similar names, such as Nymet Rowland and Nymet Tracey or Bishop's Nympton. A nemeton was a sacred space of the ancient Celtic religion and names like this are found all the way from Scotland to as far south as Spain and as far east as Turkey, and maybe even further away if anyone can think of any.

The roman poet Lucan gives this seemingly exaggerated account of a nemeton near Marseille (another place which provides traces of very ancient settlement with its 30,000 year old cave paintings)

'No bird nested in the nemeton, nor did any animal lurk nearby; the leaves constantly shivered though no breeze stirred. Altars stood in its midst, and the images of the gods. Every tree was stained with sacrificial blood. the very earth groaned, dead yews revived; unconsumed trees were surrounded with flame, and huge serpents twined round the oaks. The people feared to approach the grove, and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight lest he should then meet its divine guardian.'

North Tawton gets its current name from the river Taw, which I have photographed nearer to its source on Dartmoor and which were put up here last year I think. In the Syriac alphabet, as in the Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets, taw (ܬ) is the last letter in the alphabet but then there is also the Welsh Taw, meaning silent, and which describes the river as it meanders across Taw plain on Dartmoor very nicely. We will return to North Tawton soon and have a look round the disused mill.

Legal Illegal - Frances Black

2011-09-23T23:06:00.001+01:00

Songwriter: Ewan McColl

Every time you pick up a newspaper,
Every time you switch on the T.V.,
You can bet your old boots that at some point you'll see,
A high ranking Garda or else a T.P.
Calling on all who are meant to be free,
To stand up and defend law and order.

It's illegal to rip off a payroll,
It's illegal to hold up a train,
But it's legal to rip off a million or two,
That comes from the labour that other folk do,
To plunder the many on behalf of the few,
Is a thing that is perfectly legal.

It's illegal to kill off your landlord
Or to trespass upon his estate
But to charge a high rent for a slum is O.K.
To condemn two adults and three children to stay
In a hovel that's rotten with damp and decay
It's a thing that is perfectly legal.

If your job turns you into a zombie
Then it's legal to feel some despair
But don't get agressive and don't get too smart
For Christ's sake don't upset the old applecart
Remember you boss has your interest at heart
And it grieves him to see you unhappy.

If you fashion a bomb in your kitchen,
You're guilty of breaking the law,
But a bloody great nuclear plant is O.K.,
And plutonium processing hastens the day,
This tight little isle will be blasted away,
Nonetheless it is perfectly legal.

It's illegal if you are a traveller,
To camp by the side of the road,
But it's proper and right for the rich and the great,
To live in a mansion or own an estate,
That was got from the people by pillage and rape,
That is what they call a tradition.

It's illegal to kill off your missus,
Or put poison in your old man's tea,
But poison the river's the seas or the skies,
And poison the minds of a nation with lies,
It's all in the interest of free enterprise,
Nonetheless it's perfectly legal.

Well it's legal to sing on the telly,
But make bloody sure that you don't,
To sing about racists and fascists and creeps,
And those in high places who live off the weak,
And hose who are selling us right up the creek,
The twisters, the takers, the conmen, the fakers,
The whole bloody gang of exploiters.

okehampton castle

2011-08-29T00:07:00.003+01:00

The evenings are drawing in now, the nights begin to have a chill and the air begins to smell of autumn as we face the prospect of another long dark winter ahead, so I can present to you one of the spookier places that I spend some time in on occasion.

Okehampton is situated in the geographical centre of Devon and to the south are the largest hills of Dartmoor, tree covered from this aspect, they rise quickly to 620 metres at High Willhays and Yes tor. A short walk from the town and to west are the ruins of the old castle. This castle was not ruined as is often by war, but by time, neglect and abandonment and also the fact that the locals nicked a lot of the stone to build houses from. An engraving from 1734 shows it already in an advanced state of decay.

The castle has been here for a very long time, the oldest portion being the part that looks like, but isn't, a large chimney and the walls surrounding it, which is in fact the remains of a stairway. This forward keep was built on a motte (an enditched mound) in the late 11th century and is one of the famous symbols of Devon. The larger keep behind it, which actually has the spookier atmosphere, (pictured above in photo nine) was built in the early 14th century.

The castle was first mentioned in 1086 in the Domesday book and is thought to have first been established in 1068. In 1274 the castle was described as 'an old motte which is worth nothing, and outside the motte a hall, chamber and kitchen poorly built.' although this should not be regarded as a full description of the whole site.

Okehampton shows signs of settlement going back a few thousand years and the choice of location for the castle is a natural spur of shale projecting into the valley of the West Okement river, which also gave control of a nearby river crossing. The field between the castle and river was waterlogged until at least 1800 and was probably so in medieval times. The slope underneath the keep is very steep indeed, and a tight path runs around the walls up there where you can scare yourself with the possibility of falling off, a prospect that the children seem to enjoy very much here as they run merrily around it. It has a long drop which is not really apparent in the photos.

There are many ghost stories associated with the castle (The Maid has one) which I haven't got the space to go into here unfortunately though I can say that I consider the best time to view the castle is any time after about 5:30, as the National Trust gatekeeper drives away and you are free to hop over the fence and walk around without paying for the privilege of your own history. Also at that time you can savour the pleasing sound of an enormous amount of Jackdaws and Rooks that inhabit two large neighbouring trees as they kick up their evening racket. They do very much add to the atmosphere.

east dartmoor walk

2011-08-14T16:14:00.004+01:00

A good walk out on the east of Dartmoor to see if I can locate the other stone circle in the area. To the south is the more famous Scorhill (pronounced skoh-rull) stone circle which is easy to get to by walking from Gidleigh and which is popular both with walkers and photographers, and it is a beauty. I get off the bus at South Zeal and walk south a few miles down the lane avoiding the massive shape of Cosdon Hill which at 550 metres I don't need to be walking up today and then out onto the moor by following a lane made up of large stones, up over a hill and tor and down the other side heading westwards.

It is very difficult to locate anything out here as the landscape is so vast and empty that there isn't much in the way of landmark to orient yourself to. Finding a small stone circle in a landscape that is liberally covered in rocks turns out to be more of a challenge than I expected and I miss the circle completely on the way down. Realising that I had probably missed it I decide to work my way back up the hill again to see if I can see it on the way back, and there, just at the point of my giving up finding it, it appears, a low collection of stones arranged as a circle in exactly the same place as they were set about 4000 years ago.

Dartmoor is an odd and empty place and although very green is as close to a desert landscape as we get around here. Lots of sky, lots of grass and then the occasional sheep, cattle and dartmoor pony, but very little else. Easy to get lonely in this emptiness as you are made very much aware of your own insignificance, not only in space but in time as well. All afternoon and to the east I have been observing a large dark cloud shifting and spinning, building itself up to a large raincloud. It promises rain but as so often lately, it doesn't deliver.

east devon way

2011-07-29T12:10:00.002+01:00

An evening walk along part of the east devon way; the dirt lane seen in the above photos which meanders across the heathlands around Newton Poppleford and Ayelsbeare. At around 8 in the evening the place is deserted and quiet, apart from the singing of birds. Nice easy levelish walking with good views of the sea, Woodbury common and the hills around Sidmouth.

Despite it seeming to rain plenty lately the ground is very dry here and all the small streams are without water and the rivers down to a trickle. Spring was unusually dry, with it not really raining for about three months and what rain we have had doesn't seem to sink in. It's been very good weather for apple trees apparently with a bumper crop ripening two months early.

On the way back with it getting dark now, or dimsy as it's known, (maybe as in ' it's getting dim see') we encounter a large hare sitting on the path ahead. He moves off into the field and down the hill only to appear again a hundred yards on, sitting on the path again. Once more he jumps through a gap in the hedge and I see him taking large, easy bouncing strides down the hill. Again and for a final time he appears sitting on the path ahead and then moves off. Hares are a rare sight around here, or most places for that matter and you can go many years without meeting one or even never see them at all, so a special encounter indeed.

The evening darkens further and we make our way back along the scented lanes down past the wheat fields to Newton Pop for the bus.

Salcombe Regis

2011-07-14T09:55:00.005+01:00

Across the cliffs from Dunscombe and Lincombe and we finally descend the steep path into Salcombe, to take a look around the churchyard. Salcombe must be one of the smallest and prettiest villages around here, a collection of maybe not even a dozen houses and a few small farms, no shops or pubs and just the one lonely phone box. If you like a nice quiet beach, there is a good mile walk down the combe to Salcombe beach, accessed by a hundred or so steps. The walk back to the top of the hill from the beach can best be described as knackering.

The complicated history of Salcombe Church is best explained by W.G.Hoskins in his book: Devon, published in 1954.

"The village is situated in a warm and fertile combe facing S., about a mile back from the sea. The church (St. Peter) was originally a 12th century building with a N. aisle. About 1300 the chancel was lengthened, a S. aisle added, and the arches of the N. arcade remodeled, leaving the Norman pillars. About 1430 the aisles were widened, and given new windows, and the W. tower added."

The church also went through extensive renovation in about 1850. The landscape is remeniscent of the painting 'Our English Coasts' by William Holman Hunt, which was actually painted in Kent. We leave the village by climbing the small but steep hill to the west, pausing for a rest on the war memorial situated at the top of the hill. Even a parish as small as this one has its own stone memorial to the local men killed fighting in the two world wars, no village seems exempt from this.

Cliff walk at Dunscombe to see the Elder

2011-06-29T13:33:00.005+01:00

A walk along the clifftops today, seeing as it's summer and the view is good. One of the reasons for walking about in June is to see the Elders in flower, as this is the time that they make themselves visible and we can play spot the Elderflower. Elderflower makes good wine and later on there will be Elderberries too. Pick them while the sun is shining.

This walk is partly along the South West Coast Path, which you can walk along for about 630 miles if you have the time. This particular stretch is graded as severe to strenuous and the ground can be very flinty so this walk is not for the faint of heart. One of the things that I like about the path is that in these days of over enthusiastic health and safety (unless you are a large corporation in which case no law seems to apply) the path brings you within a foot or two of the edge of the cliff in some places, so you have to be pretty careful around here and watch for sudden gusts of wind or wet and slippery ground. People do fall off these cliffs on a fairly regular basis and depending on where you fall you either end up very quickly down on the beach about 500 feet below, or you get stuck in a tree or bush and you might get rescued. These parts of the walk always give me the heebie-jeebies anyway.

The days are long here now, with it starting to get light after 3:30 and getting properly dark at around 10. In the winter it gets light after 8 in the morning and will be dark again just after 5, so lots of daylight to enjoy at the moment. In the next part of this walk we will get to Salcombe church, which is very nice indeed if you enjoy that sort of thing. It's certainly peaceful there, as there is hardly any traffic on any of the lanes. There is a bench in the first photo where we can take a rest and enjoy the view for now.

timelapse

2011-06-01T12:23:00.006+01:00

The time is out of joint; a bone slipped from its socket. The radioactive decay of some elements sitting quietly in laboratories on Earth seemed to be influenced by activities inside the sun, 93 million miles away. Constants are found inconstant and the scientist arrives at the top of the mountain to find the philosopher, again. The temper, like the time, is fugitive, as bright colours flee from the sun. Serius est quam cogitas

Could this alter our perception of time? Other timeless states seem to exist.
The effect is of a vaporous, time-forgetting absorption in the appearance of things - as if, in gazing at leaves rustling in a tree, Drake might have seen them in slow-motion, a shade uncanny and perhaps preternaturally beautiful. Such sensitive "slow vision" would account for much in the mood and substance of his work.

May turns into June.

Something slightly different and some good news for you today in that the pictures can now move to become movies, or films as we know them here, unless you go to the cinema in which case you go to the pictures. To my mind films can be good when they are short. One of the many reasons I don't go to the cinema is because many films are too long, or epic, as they are possibly known. I used to like a nice tightly edited 90 minutes and then off to the pub. There are exceptions of course, Tarkovsky being one of them, even though his name does roughly translate as bumflattener in most languages.

In other late medieval news we have decided that the descriptions of the old giant worms, not The Lambton Worm but other smaller forest dwelling types could well have been a large form of slug. Not that it matters much anymore.

If the above films don't work for some reason I can save you time and tell you that it's a lot of whizzy clouds. More static pictures coming soon. And more timelapses coming as and when they occur. Hope you enjoy, good friends!

hawthorn - the may tree

2011-05-22T19:08:00.004+01:00

First a couple of oak apples which we don't usually see as fresh as this but May is the month when it all happens here springwise. In the space of a few weeks the bare earth becomes covered in a sudden lush growth.

Hawthorn is at its most prominent in the landscape when it blossoms during the month of May, and probably the most popular of its many vernacular names is the May-tree. It is often to be found as part of a hedge rather than freestanding so is usually unseen until it actually flowers.

In Celtic lore the fairies had an affinity for the hawthorn which was one of the Three Sacred Trees, along with Oak & Ash. Thomas the Rhymer, the famous thirteenth century Scottish mystic and poet, once met the Faery Queen by a hawthorn bush from which a cuckoo was calling. She led him into the Faery Underworld for a brief sojourn, but upon reemerging into the world of mortals he found he had been absent for seven years. Themes of people being waylaid by the faery folk to places where time passes differently are common in Celtic mythology, and the hawthorn was one of, if not the, most likely tree to be inhabited or protected by the Wee Folk. In Ireland most of the isolated trees, or so-called 'lone bushes', found in the landscape and said to be inhabited by faeries, were hawthorn trees. Such trees could not be cut down or damaged in any way without incurring the often fatal wrath of their supernatural guardians.

The blossoms were used for garlands, and large leafy branches were cut, set in the ground outside houses as so-called May bushes and decorated with local wildflowers. Using the blossoms for decorations outside was allowed, but there was a very strong taboo against bringing hawthorn into the house.

Mediaeval country folk also asserted that the smell of hawthorn blossom was just like the smell of the Great Plague in London. Botanists later discovered that the chemical trimethylamine present in hawthorn blossom is also one of the first chemicals formed in decaying animal tissue. In the past, when corpses would have been kept in the house for several days prior to burial, people would have been very familiar with the smell of death, so it is hardly surprising that hawthorn blossom was so unwelcome in the house.

It has also been suggested that some of the hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) folklore may have originated for the related woodland hawthorn (Crataegus laevigata) which may well have been commoner during the early Middle Ages, when a lot of plant folklore was evolving. Woodland hawthorn blossom gives off much more of an unpleasant scent of death soon after it is cut, and it also blooms slightly earlier than hawthorn, so that its blossoms would have been more reliably available for May Day celebrations.

Hawthorn leaves are actually edible, sometimes referred to as 'bread and cheese' and the blossom and berries are used to make wines and jellies.

The hawthorn may be spread widely here but the trees can be few and far between, making it a good tree to look out for on a May walk. Most of the blossom is just about done here now and another white flowered tree, the Elder, is beginning to take over.

The other prominent white flower in the hedgerows during May is Cow Parsley, as seen above, whilst the small blue flowers are Wood Bugle.

Much information by Paul Kendall: treesforlife

bluebell wood

2011-05-04T02:46:00.004+01:00

The driest March on record was followed by the driest April though water still comes down off the hill in small streams and the colours of green are fresh. The bluebells have been undisturbed by any strong winds or rain so remain upright but the ground is very dry. There is the sound of humming insect life and birdsong and then the wind picks up. We walk up and away from the bluebell wood and out onto the heathland.

cliff top drama

2011-04-29T13:39:00.003+01:00

More startling and unexpected developments as reported by a trusty local newspaper.

Looking at the photographs of the devastation caused by the tornadoes in America I thought how eerily similar they looked to the Japanese photographs. Houses shredded, trees stripped but still standing and all the upturned cars, people sifting through the remnants of their destroyed property, fires burning.

Watching the youtube footage of the Japanese reporter driving around Fukushima with a geiger counter was like having a science fiction disaster movie become real. The abandoned animals roaming around, the vegetable plots growing what appears to be normal looking food and all the while the increasing click of the counter. Apart from the absence of people the place looked just like any normal town anywhere and I thought how easily this could be my own town. Things that used to look a long way off now seem to be much closer and what was once a distant land appears somehow familiar. There seems to be an enormous amount of earthquake activity around the world lately.

I am woken from a deep sleep this morning by the sound of a bird fluttering its wings very close to me. There isn't a bird in the room so it must have been just outside the window, but I am awake now and the telephone rings almost immediately. We have had plenty of bad news lately from all sorts of different directions but we try to help and support each other the best we can, as all circumstances can change so suddenly.

a spring driven thing

2011-04-20T15:11:00.005+01:00

Spring is here and the land becomes green and covered with flowers. I watch ants and bees at work, doing what they have always done and I see a skylark singing, floating above this beautiful blue morning. The view out here is so quiet and peaceful, with just the song of birds and the living hum of insects. Who would think to look at it that it is now covered with a deadly and invisible radiation? An invisible pollution to go with the electro magnetic pollution and all the other awful stuff that we have covered the planet with, and almost none of it visible.

The world becomes increasingly radioactive in what is starting to appear as a great war to pollute the environment and poison the future. In a search to see how we can protect ourselves from such stuff I have come across so many pieces of advice that it even seems a high salt diet complemented with lots of fag smoking might be a good idea at the moment. This is obviously more than a bit daft.

I was working outside when Chenobyl went down and seeing which way the wind and rain were blowing and the government advice that everything was fine, wondered what I might be able to do to protect myself. Not having much access to information I pulled my hat further over my face and carried on digging holes in the ground.

There seems to be a lot of cancer around these days and it could well be that our poisoned environment is now killing us. I remember reading an article about the examination of ancient egyptian mummies for traces of cancer and that only a very negligible amount of tumourous cells had been discovered, which led me to think that perhaps cancer is pretty much a modern invention, though I would be happy to be wrong about this.

Like a lot of people I was always against nuclear power and nuclear armaments. We protested and were derided and ignored as much as possible and nuclear power and the arms industry went on their merry way with the great help of the governments, whichever left or right position they pretended to be and all of it subsidised by the taxpayer, so that we payed for the privilage of being poisoned and poisoning the rest of the world. Our elected representatives? In what way have our interests ever been represented by these people? I think of all the money and the notion of 'I'll be gone, you'll be gone' and people like Warren Anderson and plenty of others.

The first five photographs were taken a week or two before the following photos and show the way that the woodland changes so rapidly at this time of year. Already they need updating as spring is swift here even though it has been very dry. At the moment the woodland is half in leaf and half bare still, though that is changing rapidly. The wild flower in photo five is Honesty, which is in short supply in many places these days.

Keep up the good work you lot and all the best to you wherever you are.

the beach and full moons - how do I love thee?

2011-04-05T15:14:00.003+01:00

Just a few pictures taken at night during some of the recent full moons. The first photo was taken on the 17th of February and shows the constellation of Orion , a familiar sight to anyone living in the northern hemisphere. The upper orange star is the red giant Betelgeuse and the v shaped constellation to the right is Taurus, the brighter star being Aldebaran.

The rest of the photos were taken on the night of the 20th of March , just after midnight and again on the following night at just after nine o' clock. These were all taken with an exposure of about 30 seconds.

Photo two shows the very low tide that occured during the March perigee moon. This low tide caused five ships to run aground on a bank of shingle not normally exposed, just along the coast from here on the Solent, near the Isle of Wight. Among them was the 2,900 tonne cargo ship Paula-C, on its way to Cowes with a crew of nine.

On the cliff at the top of photo three is a small pale shape which is the house, called The Gazebo, that the author R. F. Delderfield built on Peak Hill. Because of coastal erosion the house is now only a few feet away from the edge of the cliff. It is a two or three bedroom thatched cottage built in the 1950s or 60s to a circular design and is currently up for sale for the substantial price of £795,000.

Other notable local residents of the past include Sir Edmund Leach, the English social anthropologist who was born here. The Duke and Duchess of Kent, being the parents of Queen Victoria, lived in Sidmouth for a time. The Duke had large debts and sought a place where they could live inexpensively. The coast of Devon was recommended to them and The Duke took a lease on Woolbrook Cottage in the town, where he rapidly caught the pneumonia from which he died of on 23 January 1820.

Jane Austin is reputed to have met and fallen in love with a young clergyman while staying in the town in 1801, of whose manners, intelligence and charm her sister, the letter burning Cassandra, most warmly approved. Having gained the permission of the family to continue the friendship later, he died suddenly. Jane gives the resort only one very brief mention in one novel, Persuasion.

The astronomer Sir Norman Lockyer retired here in 1911 and built an observatory on top of Salcombe Hill, which is still in use. Beatrix Potter holidayed here and painted a small watercolour which captures the pleasure of a sunny afternoon on the beach, in a view not much changed. Turner passed through not long after the great gale of 1824 and painted a watercolour of a stormy sea with the town in the background. Included in his painting is a sea stack which was later destroyed by another storm. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her family moved here in 1831 and stayed for about four years. Elizabeth is also supposed to have had an unhappy love affair during her stay in the town.

In which I send Sir David King on a fact finding mission to Fukushima

2011-03-29T14:09:00.006+01:00

High up along the cliffs in the white rocky places a small violet flower gently unfolds and a snake is uncoiling, or in this particular case a slow-worm. Slow-worms look like snakes but are actually lizards and I don't think they are as common in the UK as they used to be. I haven't seen one for about eight years and was just thinking about them on the day I encountered one again. The slow-worm above is a male I think and has come out to enjoy the pleasant sensation of warming the blood in the sun, and what a nice day for it. After such a long and cold winter most of us feel like warming ourselves in the sun and out we step, blinking into the unfamiliar daylight, shedding clothes and able to sit outdoors again without shivering. Such a simple pleasure and as yet untaxable.

Every month as I travel the internet reading news and attempting to keep up with current and maybe not so current affairs I collect images as I go, filing them away in a slightly anal way in folders with names for each month and year. Although this might seem a slightly boring activity, going back through them gives one an interesting overview or feel for a particular time or month. I must say looking over the photos that I picked up for March 2011 it looks to have been the worst month I have ever seen since I have been connected to the internet. Bloody revolutions, fake revolutions, no fly zones, chaos, confusion, death and of course the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns, and all in one month.

Looking at the video's that people recorded of the Japanese tsunami has been absolutely mind buggering. If video footage of such events didn't exist it would be impossible to believe such a thing could ever happen, or the terrifying speed in which it could take place.

Multiple nuclear meltdowns. What can anyone say about such a thing? Astonishingly Sir David King was on Radio Four this morning pimping for the nuclear industry and promoting the building of a new MOX plant in Cumbria in the UK. A report released today says that Britain should recycle used nuclear fuel to generate more power. He said, regarding events in Japan and the public perception of the dangers was that this was just "the somewhat irrational response to this" and in his words "The potential for exposing yourself to radiation if you take an air flight between London to New York is many, many times greater than the potential to suffer from radiation drinking tapwater in Tokyo or in fact walking around Fukushima"

If only I could afford to send him and some sort of radiation measuring equipment on a fact finding mission to Fukushima. I would be very interested to find out what the actual levels are. This is of course no laughing matter but it does seem to me to be verging on insanity that anyone at this particular time could be be pimping for the nuclear industry, but there we go.

welcome to the future

2011-03-04T17:30:00.007Z

Greetings fellow travelers! The road is long and covered with hard flints and who knows where we will end up or what terrible things we may have to become involved in upon our way. All is unexpected as it should be. I for one am extremely grateful that I cannot see the future (apart from what is obvious.) Who would really want to know? I was once given a very nice silver sticker upon which was written in an attractive typeface: THE FUTURE IS STUPID and it now seems to be an accurate statement. I also like the phrase 'Welcome to the future - it's broken' This phrase comes in handy as pretty much everything that is manufactured now seems to work for about ten minutes before it breaks and has to be replaced. So if someone informs me that something is broken I now say to them: Welcome to the future! What fun I have.

I have spent some very dark days in the woods recently. Dark drizzly foggy darkness. I was up there late the other afternoon, scuttling about in the gloaming, and night seemed to fall so suddenly that I didn't have time to get off the hill in any light. Luckily it was so muddy that I seemed to slide right out of the place. A bit like being spat out really, but I don't take it personally.

Interesting things are happening in the woods of late. It looks very much like Spring to me. The green shoots of recovery or summink, but unlike the green shoots of recovery in the economy these green shoots are actually real. Does anyone listen to what politicians say anymore? I do sometimes, though usually to witness the unintended irony, such as Hillary Clintons speech about the Egyptian Government and the Egyptian peoples right to freedom of speech and protest whilst Ray McGovern is being bundled away and arrested in front of her very eyes. If anything Hillary appeared to be enjoying it.

In our own glorious kingdom we have a slice of smegma like William Hague warning Arab leaders that people have a right to peaceful protest. He says this is in a country where the government gets the police force to attack, arrest and also kettle protesters for many hours at a time in freezing cold weather (false imprisonment) and which also kills the occasional bystander (Ian Thomlinson) and then lies about the whole event.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has said that Muammar Gaddafi, and his key aides, will be investigated for possible crimes against humanity but for some reason they seem very slow around those parts to get Tony Blair and the other war criminal scunge into a court of any sort and this being about eight years down the line. Is there anything wrong with this picture? No this is normal service. Welcome to the future.

On a slightly nicer note, I can introduce you to the first Primrose of the year, which is a very welcome sight indeed and not broken at all.

Tors at Belstone 2

2011-02-13T14:49:00.006Z

And now we wind our way slowly back across the hill to descend at Belstone, stopping to have a look at some more of the unusual tors on the way.

I have been busy looking up other interesting tors on the internet and have found a real beauty which I am intending to walk to as soon as I am able to find the right combination of time and weather conditions. This particular tor is a long way out and I have not yet decided whether I will be able to walk all the way there and back in one day, so this particular trip might involve a bit of overnight camping.

As you can see, Dartmoor is not really the easiest of places to yomp across, as it seems designed to twist the ankle with pretty much every step and it's too far to hop back across all these hills on one leg.

There are such things as mires around here on the lower ground, which should be avoided unless you are very confident about jumping from tussock to tussock. The river cleaves are treacherously rocky and almost every step has to be fully considered. The hilltops, though covered with clitter are ok to walk on, though you get the full force of the weather on top and it is easy to end up walking inside a cloud. All in all none of the distances covered here are that easy and a good stout walking stick is recommended as well as a map and compass. I have walked out here on my own today which is also not really that good an idea, as plenty can go wrong in these short days.

Well that's all for another time and plenty to look forward to. In the meantime we will get back down to Belstone and off to Sticklepath and the bus. The light here is already becoming somewhat lunar, the hills will settle into darkness again soon and this really isn't the place to be out walking at night.

Tors at Belstone, Dartmoor

2011-01-30T23:43:00.004Z

It is sunny when I set off on the bus for Sticklepath but the weather can change suddenly on Dartmoor so it is best to take waterproof clothing, whatever the weather looks like. Surprisingly it is still sunny when I get off the second bus and remains so for the whole day. Usually Dartmoor is covered in mists, fogs and rain and generally appears as Devons answer to Mordor, lurking darkly in the distance with its spectacular views hidden, but they won't be today.

First we must walk about half an hour to Belstone, a small village next to the moor and then we will walk around the hill on the north and west side and observe the tors from a distance so as to get the measure of them a bit. Then we shall ascend the hill at Winter Tor and then on up to about 479 Meters (1,572 feet) and back over the top of Belstone Common, stopping to look at some of the tors. That's the plan anyway.

Tor is a Celtic word meaning hill. Dartmoor is a large area of exposed granite, so all the tors are granite and we get a little bit of radon and become a little bit more radioactive for our pleasures. Tors are the result of millions of years of weathering; rain, ice, wind and water all thrown at a nice old prehistoric forest, resulting in this empty and rocky landscape. As the weathering of the tors continues, the rock is broken down into ever smaller sizes and many hillsides are covered with loose rocks, known as clitter, which has been used as a building material here for thousands of years. Eventually the granite is weathered down to a sandy gravel, known as growan, which consists of individual crystals. If you stand here long enough you can hear it happening. At least it feels that way.

Each tor has its own distinct character and presence, some are very castle like whilst others encourage an anthropomorphic response. It is sometimes difficult to believe that the shapes and balances are accidental.

On a day like today and with the right set of eyes you can see as far as the horizon, if not a bit further, and almost all the way back again. The air takes on a chill now and the wind becomes a November taste of colder winds coming. It does feel like you are flying up here, probably something to do with the Psilocybe Semilanceata that's all over the place, (not for me though) and there is the sensation of somehow being in the sky. Well, on we go, the shadows are lengthening and there are plenty more interesting and stranger looking stones to see before we get off the hill.

snow

2011-01-02T14:45:00.004Z

We adapt to changes in a surprisingly fast manner and new habits can be learned quickly, an example being that when coming in from the snow we now bang our boots on the wall on both sides of the door to knock the excess snow off of them. Because the pavements are frozen and as slippery as ice-rinks we walk in the road, as they have been cleared of snow and ice and are actually safer to walk on, even with the close proximity of the traffic. Our false economy says that it is better to have pedestrians in the road or slipping over and ending up in hospital than it is to spread some sand, grit or salt on the pavements.

Our chancellor George "We're all in this together" Gideon Oliver Osborne, is taking a luxury break at Prince Charles’s favourite ski resort, Klosters in Switzerland where chalets can cost as much as £10,000 per night. Osborne is part of the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy, known in Ireland as the Ascendancy. He is the heir to the Osborne baronetcy, so has been born into a family that has been lording it over us since at least 1620.

Tory MP Frank Zacharias Robin "Zac" Goldsmith is on holiday at an £8,000-a-week villa in the Caribbean over the New Year but then he does have about 300 million quid of his fathers to fritter away.

I'm not exactly sure what George means when he says "We're all in this together" but then maybe my invitation to go to Klosters with him has just not turned up here yet for some reason. Goldsmith speaks and writes about environmental causes in Britain but can see nothing strange or contradictory about flying himself all the way round the world for a short holiday. It's funny how the rich are happy to spout all sorts of twaddle about how other people must cut back on their already meagre existences just as long as their own extravagant and opulent lifestyles remain unquestioned and unchallenged.

A good game that I play is that whenever a politician starts talking I imagine that the opposite of what they are saying is actually the truth. This works surprisingly well for a lot of their pronouncements and at least gives me some small amount of entertainment as well.

frost

2010-12-10T01:35:00.003Z

A short walk before sunset and there is just time to take a few photos of a frosty lane in mid-Devon before it gets dark again. The sunlight has melted the frost where it can but the shadows still remain frozen. The rectangle on the right hand side of the horizon in photo five is the church at Lapford, which originally dates back to the 12th century. This stone church is believed to have been built by William De Tracey as penance for his part in the murder of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas a Beckett on 29th December 1170. The church was extended in the 15th century.

skaigh three

2010-12-02T13:55:00.004Z

Well here we are again and apologies for leaving you all by a river on Dartmoor for the last two weeks. Much has changed since we started this walk: Autumn has come and gone in this time and it is most definitely Winter here now. We've even had snow here and what a pleasure it was to watch the swirling snow being blown about by the strong wind here last night.

Up on Dartmoor we follow the river Taw towards its source high on the moor, passing by some interesting gates, one of which is made from an old bedstead and has as its post a lovely piece of Dartmoor granite. We move around Belstone with its tempting pub and get to have a look at a tor from a distance with a darkening raincloud blowing in and we also see the wall known as Irishman's Wall which crosses Belstone Common at this point.

As you may see when we finally get out onto the open moor there are hardly any trees out here as most of them will not grow in these conditions and the ones that do remain very small and windbent. Oddly, even though it has hardly any trees this whole area is known as Dartmoor Forest, the reason being that the areas known as forests were actually hunting grounds for the king and these areas would cover much land including woods and also moorland without trees but they were called forests anyway. This also applies to The New Forest in Dorset/Hampsire which is mostly heathland with small amounts of woodland but is called a forest anyway, so for anyone thinking of buying one of our forests, best to check first that it actually has trees in it. Alternatively I can sell you a London Bridge for a good price.

One of the other odd things about Dartmoor is how hard it is to gauge the distance or size of anything out here, largely because there is nothing to compare anything to. A pile of rocks can be any size and likewise a hill. Without trees or buildings of any sort the eye cannot grasp the scale of anything and because the weather changes so fast things can look very far away or nearby, depending upon the current aerial perspective.

If you have keen eyes you may be able to see one of the wild Dartmoor ponies, there were quite a lot of them around and quite frisky they can be. This is as far out on the moor as we get today with our walk and we have to turn back now as the weather changes suddenly and we are caught in a very strong sideways shower of rain. There are not many places to shelter out here so I head for the river bank to hunker down and get out of the worst of it. The sheep have made themselves lots of tiny burrows under rocks and trees to get out of the weather and tempting though they look I think we better move on back to Belstone, with just a quick wave to the squaddies who are loudly shouting at each other, running up and down the hill and generally hogging the skyline.

skaigh two

2010-11-14T18:54:00.007Z

Crockern Tor, way across the moor to the south of here, is said to be the home of the mythical Old Crockern, variously described as a spectral figure on horseback, galloping across the moor on a skeleton horse with his phantom Wisht Hounds; or as a local god of the moor in pre-Christian times.

“The gurt old sperit of the moors, Old Crockern himself, grey as granite, and his eyebrows hanging down over his glimmering eyes like sedge, and his eyes as deep as peat water pools.”

The Wisht Hounds, stabled at nearby Wistman's Wood, are a pack of fearful hounds who hunt across the moors at night in search of lost souls and unwary traveller's. Old Crockern sometimes appears to the locals in their dreams, to give warnings about not disturbing the apparent emptiness of the moors and for them to pass on these warnings to whomever might be causing offence. People have tried to farm or otherwise tame the moor but these plans never work for long and the moors are littered with the remains of such attempts.

Crockern Tor, was also the venue for Devon's Stannary Parliament. The Stannary Parliaments (there was another for Cornwall) were the tin miners' own parliaments with their own set of laws which generally overruled the English Laws. These parliaments date back to the 12th century and Devon's Parliament last met in 1748. There are some unusual acoustics at Crockern, which give the effect of a natural amphitheatre and make it a suitable venue for speaking.

Crockern Tor is almost in the centre of Dartmoor, a little north of Two Bridges, making it the omphalos of Dartmoor. Tors are also known as pixie, or rather locally as 'piskie' castles. If a fog comes down here and you lose your path and get lost it is described as being piskie-led. The piskies also have their own parliament.

The rivers here can become quite dangerous and people do drown in them every year, to the extent that the river Dart even has this local rhyme associated with it;

"Dart, Dart, cruel Dart, every year she claims a heart"

or

"River of Dart, oh, river of Dart!
Every year thou claimest a heart"

When we leave the woods we should be able to get a glimpse of a tor.

Information from High Dartmoor by Eric Hemery (Robert Hale 1983) drawing upon folklore research by Theo Brown [kindly supplied by Tracy Brown of Wisht Maen magazine].
And the fantastic website Legendary Dartmoor: which is very much recommended.http://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/index.htm

skaigh valley

2010-11-09T14:40:00.000Z

This morning we set out to walk onto Dartmoor proper, first by traveling to Sticklepath and following the river Taw upstream in the Skaigh Valley, around Belstone Cleave and out past Belstone and onto the moor. This is a very pretty walk this time of year as it is early Autumn and the leaves are just beginning to turn. The path is mostly fine for walking but does become rocky and slippery in places so good walking boots are very much recommended and keep an eye on those rocks underfoot as we don't want to turn an ankle out here.

The river Taw where we are walking is mentioned as a location in Henry Williamsons Tarka the Otter and the river winds its way northwards from here until it meets the coast of Devon 45 miles away. The Taw is in a sunless valley this time of year for most of the first part of the walk and the river courses over many rocks and boulders on its way. As we reach the latter parts of the walk we will come out onto the open wilds of Dartmoor where there will be another very rocky part of river and finally a very quiet smooth stretch on the moor to look forward to. We should also be able to see some Tors on the tops of the hills but we won't have enough time to go up and look at them today so we must save them for another time. There will probably be wild Dartmoor ponies too, which I will not eat my sandwiches in front of so as to not upset them or arouse their curiosity.

The weather as we set off is very fine; still and sunny and bright, though this being Devon and more specifically Dartmoor it can change pretty much instantly into torrential rain or dense fog, so it is good that I am fully equipped with my all terrain mountain hiking slippers, kiss me quick hat, a bit of water, sandwiches and of course plenty of good healthy cigarettes to help invigorate the lungs. Actually it already looks like its going to rain soon and although we are out of the wind down here we won't be when we get out onto the moor. I'm starting to think that waterproof trousers would have been a very good idea and seriously, a compass and a map are a must.

Hopefully next time I might have the space to talk about some of the myths and legends associated with Dartmoor. There are more legends and myths around these parts than sticks can be shaken at, even here with all these sticks we have at hand to shake at things. You go on for a bit and I'll catch you up, I've got a few photos to take and a fag to smoke. See you in a bit.

yew tree three

2010-10-31T16:16:00.003Z

And welcome to the last part of our voyage around the yew tree. Here are the last of the yew tree photos, showing some detail of the berries and some photos of the general effect that yews have in a churchyard. The berries in photo five are just slightly larger than life size on my monitor, so unless you are viewing this on a giant screen in a contingency bunker under a mountain they should be about the same for you.

It was announced here last week that the government plans to sell off about half of the 1.85 million acres of woodland overseen by the Forestry Commission. The news was greeted with a large degree of dismay because these things can only be sold once and will probably be sold off very cheaply (though not to us little people) and they are not really the governments to sell anyway.

The thought of walking through one of our forests and coming up against a large fence erected by Dismayland or McDogshitz doesn't really gladden the heart. Large parts of our woodland are what are sometimes referred to as 'conifer desert' meaning that because the trees are planted so close together no light can reach the ground and nothing else will grow there. These forests would admittedly not be missed very much but I wouldn't trust private companies to be willing to allow access, as it has been hard enough already to gain these rights to roam that we have. It seems to me to be part of the proposed fire sale of the countries assets to pay for some tiny part of the bank bailout, which also gives the kind of people who caused this mess in the first place the opportunity to pick up important parts of any countries infrastructure at a knock down price. A bit of a cheek really which hasn't gone unnoticed.

The other parts that would be interesting to investors would be the 'famous bits' like something called Sherwood Forest, so we can look forward to a funfair experience and hotels in the middle of a forest instead of peace and quiet. Another idea has been for the use of golf courses. I am not a huge fan of golf and I don't know a lot about the game but a forest doesn't seem to me to be the best place for a round of golf, what with there being rather a lot of trees in the way, though I expect something could be done about that particular problem.

Coming soon. We finally leave the graveyard and have a nice river walk, somehow ending up on the wilds of Dartmoor. Well fresh.

yew tree two

2010-10-26T13:18:00.005+01:00

Well, plenty going on as usual. Here we have the inquest into the events of 7/7/05 which is being ignored by the media as much as possible but luckily there's some good catch-up and comment at places like this http://stefzucconi.blogspot.com/

Austerity measures have been coming in so thick and fast that it is difficult to put the whole picture together, needless to say that it's looking pretty bad as well as a bit mad. The Government seem to be doing a good job of pissing off nearly everybody with their cuts and are apparently happy to be pissing off the police as well as the armed forces, so are making plenty of fairly powerful enemies for themselves. Most people that I talk to are perfectly aware as to how the government and the banks have stitched us up and that this mess wasn't caused by poor people with big televisions. What can be done about any of this is another problem and all is quiet here so far.

The strikes in France have been interesting to follow. The subject is simplified for us here by the media telling us that the french strikes are all about them not wanting the retirement age raised, but I would guess there might be a bit more to it than that.

There was an amusing piece by a Radio 4 reporter the other day where he went to various locations to catch up with the strike action only to find when he arrived that the strikers had all moved on. It went something along the lines of: "I've been told there were strikers causing disruption at the train station and they were sitting on the tracks stopping a train from going to Paris but when I arrived they had caused disruption and seemed to have moved on before the police turned up" He visited other locations where the same thing happened, with him arriving to report on all the action but with there being nothing left to see.

How unfair of the strikers not to be playing the game properly. They are supposed to strike all day in the same place, giving the police plenty of time to get there and turn the strike into a riot and enabling the media to get their shots of rioting strikers. It's almost as if they had got wise to the fact that hanging around all day and letting the police beat you up might not actually be a very good idea and that you can take your disruption elsewhere or just come back later when the police have gone and have another go. How naughty of them not to play by the approved rules and thanks for the tip BBC!

Above are photos of yew tree two, who is swallowing a gravestone. Yew tree two is a tree that looks good for climbing, comfy for sitting in and is shaped in the 'lightning strike slow motion dance' form. More yew trees coming soon.

Yew Tree

2010-10-15T15:22:00.006+01:00

There are many good yew trees in Devon and most of the oldest are found in the churchyards. This tree, though not particularly ancient, is a lovely example and is in Sidmouth to the northwest of the church, hiding in plain sight right by the footpath that runs past the splendid bowling green. These photos are all of this one tree but there are other interesting yews around here, so I will put up some pictures of those in a few days time.

For some reason I don't find a lot of yew trees in my travels and explorations of the woods around here. Some smaller yews can always be found but the large ancient yews do not seem to be in the woods here anymore, or if they are I haven't found them yet. They usually grow as solitary trees but groves of them do still exist, the nearest one that I know of is in Wiltshire and is on a private estate. The yew offers very good shelter and protection from the rain and other elements, making it a useful friend to be around. At the moment the yews are dropping their berries, as can be observed in the photos. Despite what most people think, the flesh of the berries is actually edible and it is rather the seed contained within them that is extremely poisonous. This place is covered with squirrels and their caperings do lighten the sombre mood of the place somewhat.

Here is a short extract from The Sacred Yew by Anand Chetan and Diana Brueton.

Perhaps the most famous yew grove in Britain is Druid's Grove in Surrey. It consists of what appears to be the remains of an ancient avenue of yews, plus many scattered ones, growing in a dense, mixed woodland containing many box trees. The oldest here have long been considered ancient. The novelist George Meredith lived nearby from 1867, and he encouraged his visitors to visit the trees, telling them that 'anyone walking under them should remember that they were saplings when Jesus Christ came to earth'.

Allen Meredith first visited the site in 1981 and has returned several times since to document the trees. He writes:

We came across twisted, shattered fragments, the skeleton remains of ancient yews. In the main avenue we saw enormous yews, some upwards of 24 feet in girth. I found a particularly ancient yew, much of it a mere shell, with rotten decayed wood inside, but as so often with aged yews fresh growth has occurred over many centuries. This relic is still a large tree, over 20 feet in girth. Of the most significant trees, five are over 22 feet in girth and four are over 20 feet. For the trees to have reached this kind of size in such a crowded area must have taken many years. This is one of the few remaining ancient woodlands which has trees that would date back to Roman times.

There is no known historic evidence to tell us how Druid's Grove got its name. Allen believes that some of the trees are over 2,000 years old and the name is no coincidence. The trees seem to form an avenue, which suggests purposeful planting rather than natural distribution. The intended use of the grove is much more open to speculation. Many people have commented on the unusual atmosphere of the place. Some strange things have happened there which, although not dramatic in their own right, when added together suggest that this is a special place. Allen has twice found that he has 'stepped out of time' while in Druid's Grove - that when he has left the grove his watch has shown the same time as when he entered it, despite the watch apparently working perfectly. This also happened to him when he visited Knowlton. On another visit to the grove he came across just one other person, whose name was also Allen Meredith.

The wonder of the world
The beauty and the power,
The shapes of things,
Their colours, lights and shades,
These I saw.
Look ye also while life lasts

a gathering

2010-10-07T22:02:00.010+01:00

A Hawthorn tree with it's full display of berries. This particular tree is on the top of a cliff where it is very windy and so becomes bent and shaped by the wind. Hawthorn berries are edible but not straight from the tree because of their bitter taste. They need to be made into jellies and the like. Lichen grows freely here which is taken as a sign of good clean air.

The wonderful Sloes growing on the Blackthorn tree . A good harvest of these this year. Best picked when they have a pale bloom, they can be as large as the size of your thumbnail unlike the Whortleberry, which though unrelated, are only the size of your little fingernail or smaller, making them much slower to pick. We managed to pick three and a half pounds of Sloes in forty five minutes which is enough for our needs.

These photos were taken on two separate walks in September on two different local hills. At the moment the Autumn weather is veering between very hot summerlike days, to fog and damp darkness to gales and intense squally storms and showers, all of which can happen in one day - though generally don't.

Reality does seem a lot better out here. There is a peace and vastness of sea to experience and the sight and smell of nature getting on with it all, unbothered about whether we are here or not. Picking berries is good because instead of just being an observer you become an active part of the landscape, involved and concentrating on the picking of Sloes and on not catching your hands on the very sharp thorns of the Blackthorn, which protect the berries and can leave the careless picker with a bloody puncture that will go septic. A scratch you might get away with.

the field of the cloth of gold

2010-09-22T15:13:00.004+01:00

Summer slowly changes into Autumn, the colours of the landscape change from green to a golden hue and just now the trees are beginning to turn again. On Radio 5 there is much time to talk about the England/Pakistan cricket matches but what is happening to people affected by the flood in Pakistan goes without mention.

Up on top of the hills whortleberries are harvested with sloes coming soon. Whortleberries are about the same size as the nail on your little finger making picking them a slow process. Down below grapes are ripening, the last cucumber has been cut and carrots are lifted from the ground. Standardised supermarket carrots bear little resemblance to the uniqueness and the earthy flavour of organically grown carrots, with many having the shape of a small figure or other amusing similarities. Marrows, Squashes, Beetroot, French Beans, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Tomatoes and assorted salad leaves are harvested, along with Cobnuts.

The woods remain lush and dark and at this time of year many are impenetrable due to the scale of their overgrown condition, where attempting to pass through them would cause too much destruction they are best left to clear themselves for a while and for visitors to remain outside.

Horsetail Ferns can be seen in photo 12. They are called ferns though they are actually Equisetaceae, which has no direct affinity with any other group of British plants. These used to grow to the size of trees in the Carboniferous Period, but like the Dragonfly we now just have a smaller version. They grow in wet places and the dark green woods in these photos follow small rivers down to the sea and so remain well watered for most of the time. These small valleys are known locally as Combes whereas in Dorset and the Isle of Wight they are called Chines. The nights grow longer again as the planets above perfom their alignments and the wind in the Poplar tree sings a lower and darker note, signaling the change of the seasons.

Vernon Hill - The Arcadian Calendar for 1910

2010-08-30T19:48:00.010+01:00

Vernon Hill's illustrations for the Arcadian Calendar for 1910 accurately describe the progression of the months and seasons here in our part of the northern hemisphere. His two characters, male and female, seem fairly at ease with the sometimes terrifying appearance of the presiding deity. It has been suggested that the presentation of the child in January is somehow blasphemous or peculiar but I would have thought that this is not a depiction of the Christ child but merely of the New Year, as an aged figure turns up in December being led away upon what seems to be a donkey. (hmm, maybe this isn't helping)

One of the things that I like is that there is the depiction of much sound in the illustrations. The deity plays bagpipes and other forms of wind instruments which the couple sometimes respond to by dancing. In another we can almost see the sound of a gun going off and in August the deity seems to be regaling the couple with stories of some sort. We can hear the sound of the wind screaming in many of the others.

The deity also appears affected by the weather, as in June he lays under a tree to rest in the shade from the hot sun and in October he blows upon his hands to warm them up against the weather. He often wears bells so that a tinkling sound would accompany him, though in March the bells become apples, windblown and then spiked upon his pointed garb. In January his mouth forms the sound of surprise. The two figures have been described as being stock characters but there is nothing stock about his depiction of the deity which seems to be a figure of singular invention.

Born in Halifax in 1887 Vernon Hill's career in illustration seems to last only about two years. The Arcadian Calendar of 1910, The New Inferno and Ballads Weird and Wonderful is all there is to see of it, although there are other later drawings. In this short period of time his style changes from these linear and decorative post Beardsley pictures into something that seem to me much less powerful and more like designs for woodcarvings, which is appropriate, as he appears to have spent the rest of his life working on carvings for the churches and cathedrals across England, so that from this slightly unusual beginning he went on to find a place for himself in the structure of the orthodox Christian church in England.

unreal city

2010-08-14T15:01:00.017+01:00

“Like a man travelling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, though in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.”

The summer cools and the west wind brings back the moist air again. A pattern seems to have formed here over the last few years: a dry and hot early summer followed by a cloudy and rainy August - just in time to slightly spoil the school holidays for the children who will be back at school in September when the weather clears again for a nice bit of Indian summer. You get two months of pretty much unbroken sunlight and then people complain when the rain comes again, as if we don't need the rain. Weather predictions are rarely accurate so all rights are reserved etc.

English people are fairly obsessed with the weather and any small conversation can at first involve a few straightforward remarks about the weather of the day, as people are unthreatened by this comforting cliche. Anything you say beyond that is your own lookout. As someone once pointed out, the english always complain about the weather but no-one does a damn thing about it.

Flow time flow, a river of perpetual now, our dreams of the future like leaves that are carried away and disappear under the bridge.

All the things you could be by now if Sigmund Freud's wife was your mother. I don't know about being obsessed with the weather, it's songs that always seem to be on this brain and any phrase spoken or image observed might remind me of a song lyric. What is all this garbage that swirls around the brain? Lyrics from the should-be long forgotten Netherlandic entry into the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest. I haven't seen TV for a few years now but I can still find myself humming the tunes from adverts of the 1970's and it's doubtful I'll be able to shake them off now. I do actually notice what's going on around me when I'm out walking but it's strange what else enters the thoughts at these random moments.

A mental map of the area I lived in 25 years ago, most of the geography in reality now probably changed beyond all recognition. The exact placing of about 10,000 items in a supermarket of the past. Round and round in the fog it all swirls. There's too much information. There's too much dis/mis-information and there's also a lot of seemingly useless information.

How the world became plastic. How to win friends. How to fool most of the people. How to make a reality that falls apart after a few days. So out again now, and cloaking myself in the beautiful fog.

Come Rain and Sun

2010-07-27T13:12:00.005+01:00

Over the hills and along the coast we walk on a hot summer day to get away and find some peace and quiet. There's no mechanical sound up here as we are well away from the roads that are hidden behind the hills. Nature has been particularly lush this year for some reason and the plantlife appears somewhat larger than most years, with some grasses having grown to well over six feet in height. Rare and unusual plants and flowers are found like the example in photo four. Also seen are butterflies like the Marbled White and Common Blue, with the Peacock now making a late appearance. It seems as if the flowers lift up and take flight on the breeze.

Photos five to eleven were taken in a place that nobody much knows about, so it is nice to give a glimpse of some of these places.

In the last photo we find some Chicory growing in a field, for some reason although it is considered a native, Chicory is rarely encountered here. Nature is out and about on these long days and short nights and I have met young badgers happily snuffling up the road and passing by unaware of my presence. Other much larger badgers were alarmed at being caught out and have galloped down the hill, making their exit through the nearest hedges with a noisy crashing sound. The native seven spotted ladybird is also making an appearance again after being in decline for some time due to an invasive species.

After leaving the word hedgehog in my list of labels for the last post out of wishful thinking, as I haven't seen a hedgehog for a good number of years, two young fellows arrive just outside the window from where I was sat a couple of nights ago, announcing their arrival with much snuffling and foraging about. It was certainly a very welcome sight to meet these delightful creatures again. It has been quite dry here this summer so they might have been looking for water, and water is left outside for the birds, insects and now hedgehogs because of the ongoing scarcity.

Many years ago a hedgehog found his way into the house I was living in and crawled into the hem of a curtain to have a kip. Not realising that it was a hedgehog and presuming it was a drunken friend passing through the house as they sometimes used to on their way through the village, the sound was ignored till the next morning when the hedgehog was discovered and helped upon it's way. I then found out that hedgehog shit is actually a fairly persistent substance.

For no particular reason other than it has been on my mind lately included here is the short story of St. Odran, mainly as a reminder that the truth of a situation is not always welcome news.

When St Columba decided to build a church, he found that the chosen site was infested with demons. He discovered that these creatures could be driven away only if a holy man were buried alive on the spot. St Odran volunteered for this honour, and was duly entombed. After three days, St Columba decided to dig St Odran up, and ask for news of Heaven. The latter declared that there is no wonder in Death, and Hell is not as is reported. On hearing this, Columba cried out, 'Earth again upon the mouth of Odran, that he may blab no more.'

Serfs Up!

2010-07-04T19:29:00.006+01:00

In amongst the disturbing video's of fizzing and bubbling seas on Pensacola Beach and the strange earthquake warning signs or Haarp signatures of these lights in the sky over the Gulf of Mexico, G20 black bloc agent provocateurs doing the usual "left alone by the police" photo opps before the cops move in and arrest lots of peaceful protesters and unfortunates out on the streets of Toronto, footage of everything from sea birds to dragon flies covered in oil and various other terrible things going on round the world, news hasn't been very cheery of late, as I expect everybody has noticed.

Regarding the black bloc, I do wonder what the police would do if the peaceful protesters became not so peaceful and actually turned on the black bloc and started beating them up, would they wade in to help the black bloc? Who knows? They always seemed to give the BNP plenty of protection to march up and down, but it might be an interesting experiment if it wasn't a bit illegal.

Meanwhile the sun comes up and goes down as the summer weaves it's lazy course like the river that I can't manage to reach because it goes through some posh peoples private land. I met an old man who asked me about the possibility of following this gentle river and I had to disappoint him by explaining that it wasn't possible. Is a nice tiny footpath on some of the only flat land around, perfect for old folk to walk upon too much to ask? Apparently so.

Land, land, we are surrounded by land, most of it just used for grazing, but can we have a little bit to live on sir? Not really because you're not allowed to build on it and you can't afford to buy it anyway. Land prices around here vary a bit but a quick check reveals these prices; One acre near Kingsbridge with no planning permission £20,000 (US$30,000). Three acres near Stodleigh with no planning permission £45,000 (US$68,000). As Mr. Deek might say; "Greetings landless peasant scum" and lets hope it stays this way, God help the status quo if we could actually have a patch of our own country to live on, where would it all end?

Well The Diggers tried it on common land and look what happened to them, honestly! What an idiotic idea, the stupid bastards. The common land around here has the army running up and down on it, practicing killing people and leaving their shit lying around all over the place.

Down here we had The Enclosures and up north they had The Highland Clearances which is how we get to where we are today where people like the Duke of Buccleuch, the largest landowner in Britain owns 270,000 acres, spanning parts of Scotland and England. The Ministry of Defence owns 240,000 acres though they still insist on arsing about on common land. I'm not having a pop at landowners, well I am a bit, but not Dr. Fish 'cos he's nice and he lives in a big country, but this is a small country with a large population. It's my own fault for being such a povvy bastard anyway.

Well that's enough of my moaning for now and certainly enough history for the present.

night and day

2010-06-13T21:08:00.004+01:00

Unusually for this country we seem to be having a proper summer so far, in that the sun has been shining. It didn't really do this for the last two years so I have been out and about a lot and not on the internet as much as I usually am, so apologies if I am a bit slow in getting back to anyone at the moment.

The first couple of photos were taken on the beach around the time of the last full moon in May. I lightened the second photo a bit to make it easier to see. The exposure for this was 20 seconds with an ISO of 800. It is quite odd on the beach at the time of a low tide and full moon. I don't like to get near the cliffs as they crumble and fall so often, making it a dangerous place to be. Under a moon at night they seem even more imposing for some reason. The red stone is about 250 million years old and at that time it is reckoned that this place was a desert.

The last two photos are of a swallow flying out of a mill door. I tried to take photos of the swallow flying in through the mill door but it just came in too fast. Instead I took it from the inside, as it had to fly round the interior before exiting, so it was moving a lot slower. After about an hour I had five pictures, these were taken at 1/1250 of a second. I was trying not to disturb the bird but it was very busy and didn't appear to be bothered by my presence. I don't have the type of lens that is good for taking pictures of birds and it isn't often I can get this close to one so it was a nice thing to try.

The nearest I usually get to a bird is the very cheeky blackbird who hops in through the back door to shout for food, something that I try to discourage at this time of the year as there is plenty around outside for it.

All the birds here are very busy now and the days are about as long as they get. It starts to get light at around a quarter to four in the morning and doesn't get dark until ten o'clock. In the winter it gets light after eight in the morning and is dark again at five, though some days it doesn't really seem to get that light at all. If you stay up at night now you can easily follow the progress of the sun as it moves round just below the northern horizon to come back up in the east again.

Across a field and through a hedge

2010-05-28T16:43:00.012+01:00

I'm in a fair bit of pain today due to some heavy duty dental work. I can't talk at the moment, although some who know me might say that's not too bad a thing. Unfortunately I can still type. I once read a medieval description of dental pain where it is described as a large worm burrowing around inside your gums and teeth and this is exactly how it can feel sometimes. I can't remember who said the thing about us coming into the world crying and covered in blood and very often leaving in this state too. We all get pain at some time, we have that in common.

There is much ugliness in the world, there is a lot of ugliness here and I think that this country has exported much that is ugly and destructive. I could show you the photos of how ugly this country can be as I have plenty, but there is also much to find that is beautiful here. Strangely I find most of it is the stuff that mankind has not got hold of and mucked around with.

When I was quite young I had a year in a classroom almost within reach of the woods and trees that I grew up with and loved so much. The woods were just outside the classroom and behind a fence. One of the oak trees had grown up over the fence nearby and I would spend plenty of time gazing at it. I would observe it catching the morning sunlight in the spring when all the leaves were fresh, like they are here now. I was captivated by this beautiful sight, so simple yet holding so much magic and promise. I always wanted to be able to get out of the classroom and get into the woods, a feeling of freedom and wanting to escape that has never left me. Usually as soon as I got out of school I would be in the woods being filled with wonder by things, like the first time I encountered a giant rhododendron towering over me in full flower.

There was the tricky nature of finding beauty in the industrial landscape across the water from where I lived, which was a huge oil refinery and power station. You may remember the beginning of Bladerunner, it was that sort of a thing. When sat on the beach at night there was the spectacle of this infernal city, flames of gas flares, smoking chimneys and much banging and blast. It was obviously horrible and destructively polluting but it was also somehow beautiful as well, a bit like sitting on a beach observing a vision of hell from a distance, lighting the clouds up and reflected in the sea. What is this captivating ugliness?

I consider myself very fortunate to have had the time to spend exploring the woods. I am constantly surprised where my small curiosity has lead me. I sit on a fallen tree in a place already largely a secret and see a small gap that I hadn't noticed before. This turns out to be a tiny path which leads to other beautiful hidden places, and again the site suddenly increases in unimagined size. The location where these photos were taken has some nice and unusual plant species and is a place to tread very lightly.

I see destruction of nature going on around the world and I think it is intentional. For a long time I thought that these things happened because of an uncaring attitude and incompetence but I don't think it is incompetence anymore, I think it has been intentional all along.

Bluebell Woods

2010-05-16T16:48:00.006+01:00

Up in the woods it's bluebell time again and their attractive purple haze is spread lightly across the warming hillsides. These are common bluebells and are the older and native species of flower, differing from the Spanish bluebell which is now often found in gardens in the UK. The common bluebell has a deeper colour than the Spanish variety.

Bluebells are used as an indicator of ancient woodland and have been around here since the ice retreated about 12,000 years ago. Also out at the moment are the Ransoms, a form of wild garlic with an attractive smell and nice white flowers. These are similar to the three cornered leeks which like the ransom are also edible. The bulbs can be smoked and eaten, that is smoked like a fish rather than in a pipe, although I haven't tried smoking them in a pipe yet.

The first couple of photos show the bluebells as they were just coming out a couple of weeks ago and most of the rest were taken yesterday, which is a lot more up to the minute than I can usually manage.

It has been a long cold winter and it is good to be able to spend more time pottering through the woods enjoying these signs of returning growth. Nature gets on with her business seemingly unhindered by the increasing foolishness of man. I think she will sort things out in the long run, somehow, although we are not really helping her much as a species at the moment.

Amazing Volcanic Ash Red Sunset Photos

2010-05-10T18:29:00.009+01:00

Volcanic ash from the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano spread quickly across the UK sky, turning our normally lame sunsets an unusual dark red hue, a sight not seen in this country since the Krakatoa eruption of 1883. The above photo perfectly illustrates the massive difference that the volcanic ash made to our skies. Or at least it would do if I had taken this photo in April but unfortunately for the official narrative I took this picture in January, well before the eruption and subsequent phony ash cloud story.

I was enjoying the sky being clear of jet aircraft so much that I didn't doubt the official story until the Daily Mail had to overdo it and publish this on the 16th of April. Spectacular-sunsets-blue-moons-dirty-cars--volcano In which they describe the spectacular red sunsets seen all across the UK on the previous night. That was the moment when I started to have some serious doubts because I had been out looking at these wonderful skies, clear of jets alright, but the one remarkable thing about the sky and the sunsets was how blue they had been.

Below is a panoramic picture, stitched together from photos taken on the evening of the 16th of April of a spread of about 180 degrees. As you might be able to see, the sky is very blue, with a little hint of yellow at the bottom. If anyone is interested in sunsets you may have noticed how often all the really colourful stuff happens after the sun has gone down.

It is typical of the UK's weather not to play ball. Usually at this time of year it should be cloudy and rainy, with the odd bit of red sunset, but right across the whole period the skies were abnormally clear and blue. How very inconvenient, but it doesn't stop the Daily Mail printing a really bullshit story and thus alerting anyone with eyes that something was amiss with the official version. Thanks Daily Mail!

The dangerous ash cloud lingers on somehow and air traffic is still affected in the north sometimes even though when I looked at this site www.sat24.com at the appropriate time the cloud was vaguely blowing in our direction but still looked a long way away. Other nice satellite photos can be found here Dundee Satellite Receiving Station but you do have to sign up a bit.

In the above blue sunset photo we did have a little discussion about the nature of the small cloud to the very right. Bonfire of some sort? Starlings flocking perhaps? No, I remembered that my charming assistant of the evening, Miss Boo, had been sat on the bench next to me puffing a nice big cigarette. Mystery solved. I also learned that just because I like a story and find the effects agreeable it doesn't always make it right either.

The Lizard to Kynance Cove

2010-04-29T10:13:00.005+01:00

Here are the last photos of my long walk around The Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. The most southerly point of the UK is in the second photograph above, the first photo illustrates the most southerly example of english humour in the UK.

Todays walk is a nice easy stroll in comparison to yesterdays six hour epic and clocks in at a comfortable two hours, with a forty minute walk back to The Lizard and the bus stop, pausing briefly in the village to check out the two pubs and drink some Rattler scrumpy in them.

The journey along the coast passes the lifeboat station which is one of the few places where you can actually reach the shoreline around here. There is a large beach a bit further on which is now unreachable due to the unstable cliffs. Kynance cove has some nice islands and is one of the few beaches I know of where the tide comes in from two different sides, which can be confusing if you are pottering about on the farther side.

Cornwall has many beautiful stone walls across it's landscape, one of which can be seen in the picture above, though I think that they could be the subject of a serious photographic study in themselves.

The ocean roared against the shore

2010-04-14T12:29:00.009+01:00

The ocean roared against the shore, in the dark before the day. I pulled my coat around my throat and I turned my face away. So sung Robin Williamson in his song By Weary Well, in a set of lyrics so fine that I was tempted to just put his song up here instead of my own blathering, but blather I must I suppose.

Cornwall is a rocky place and has a fine reputation for its often lethal and unpredictable waters. The number of ships wrecked around the south Cornish coast has been estimated to be as many as three thousand, though full information seems to be difficult to find.

I had a few run-in's with the sea around here as a child, firstly mistiming my passage through a large atlantic wave at Sennen Cove so that it landed on my head, and after much tumbling and banging about I ended up about a hundred feet inshore in around six inches of water with a nicely dazed bonce. Another time on a very calm afternoon sitting on the harbour wall at Mullion (see picture above) with many others, a freak wave suddenly came over the top, drenching us all, though luckily not sending us all into the harbour.

The name of this area, The Lizard, has nothing to do with the animal but seems to be named after the cornish word, lezou, meaning headland. The Cornish have their own language, known as kernewek which is a recognised minority language of the UK and is similar to the Welsh and Breton languages, brought here by the early settlers who moved up around the western coasts a few thousand years ago.

There's not a lot of shelter around here apart from the occasional rock and a few hollows for sheep or cattle to get out of the wind. I choose a large overhanging rock to shelter under for a quick smoke and a sarnie, as stopping when wet will soon make you cold, so it is best to keep moving if possible.

Well onward and into the weather we go friends, as there's a good few miles to walk yet and then tomorrow there's the most southerly point to do and with it the walk back up to Kynance Cove. (Moves forward humming excerpts from Vaughan Williams English Folk Song Suite which is soon lost to the sound of wind and rain).

Ogu-dour Cove to Mullion

2010-03-31T20:01:00.008+01:00

In Cornwall, between the roads the A3083 and the B3296 near Mullion is a small bridleway leading off towards Predannack Airfield. Walk along this bridleway for a couple of miles and you meet a lane, go left down the lane and eventually you come out above Ogu- dour Cove. From here you can either turn left southwards along the coast to Soapy Cove or you can turn northwards and walk along to Mullion Harbour. The descent into Mullion Harbour is steep and can get slippery, the rest of the walk isn't too difficult, depending on the weather.

All the rock along here is Serpentine which is good to see wet as it brings out the various shades of red, green white and black. The rock changes to Hornblende Schistes and Slate just further north.

It is said that you can walk all the way from Mullion down to the The Lizard in about three hours or so, but you will not see much on the way at that speed. This stretch of coast would be better done in three days rather than three hours, to take some time to have a good look around. Between Ogu-dour and Kynance Cove is the most solitary part, as it is well away from any lanes or carparks.

The coast between Mullion and the Lizard faces west. The Lizard is the most southerly tip of the UK and sticks out into the Atlantic, ensuring windy weather and high seas. Not many trees will grow on The Lizard due to the strength of the prevailing winds and the ones that do are bent over and will not get any higher than about eight to ten feet. The trees growing closest to the water were Tamarisk, but we also saw Blackthorn and brambles and a bit of Willow.

The weather was very wet and windy in late March which makes it a bit rough along the coast. Above the cliffs and inland it is partly moorlike and can be boggy. There a few houses and farms and small hamlets and villages. The coastline is crinkly-edged to the point that if you were mocking up a rocky coast most of this could be rejected as being a bit fanciful or unlikely, but there it is.

The first part of this walk takes us past Ogu-dour Cove and then around the coast to the north, where we get our first glimpse of Mullion Island and receive a good healthy facefull of rain.

Fog and Filthy Air

2010-03-13T21:48:00.003Z

Most consequential choices involve shades of gray, and some fog is often useful in getting things done.

Tim Geithner

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.

A quiet and foggy day on Mutters Moor in January. Many places here take their name from the feature that they replace; Orchard Way, the orchard now covered with houses, and so on.

Mutter's Moor takes its name from Abraham Mutter. Mutter was one of Jack Rattenbury's accomplices, and helped to distribute contraband. Mutter cut wood and turf at Peak Hill and carried the fuel into nearby towns for sale. This innocent activity acted as a convenient cover for the transport and sale of contraband, especially so since the biggest houses would consume large quantities of both fuel and brandy. Frequent visits by Mutter's carts and donkeys therefore aroused no suspicion.

Jack Rattenbury, Beer, 1778. He describes how a smuggling brig in which he was travelling was captured by a French privateer, and he was left at the helm to steer for a French port while the crew got drunk below...

'I began to conceive a hope not only of escaping, but also of being revenged on the enemy. A fog too came on, which befriended the design I had in view...'

Rattenbury steered for the English coast, and when they came in sight of Portland Bill, he convinced the crew that this was Alderney; similarly, St Albans became Cape La Hogue. When they got closer to the shore, Jack persuaded them to lower a boat and go and get a pilot — he eventually completed his escape by diving overboard and swimming into Swanage harbour. He hurried to the local customs authorities, who sent a cutter to recapture the brig from the French.

I have carried scores of kegs up the cliff. We used to strike a match and hold it in our hands a moment to call the boats in. The loads were then shouldered into a pit with a lid at Paccombe Bottom, or by the turnpike in the hedge there, and waggoned on afterwards. Once they were in Slade cellar but the revenue officers called and the kegs were only just in time started down the drain; it made the rats squeak. It was a pity for they were a nice lot of tubs...The goods used to come in a cutter called Primrose...it was her J Rattenbury steered with his foot...She was taken often by the coastguards, but generally had her papers right. She used to bring potatoes from Guernsey, but one day they caught her in a gale without ballast; she had just started discharging her cargo and that determined them [identified the crew as smugglers]. They sawed her in half, for they said nothing else would stop her. I knew Rattenbury and have heard he cut the officer up for crab bait, but Jack always laughed if it was thrown up at him and said it happened down Dawlish way by a Sussex man. The last cargo was Mutter's laid up under High Peak. G Salter watched all day from under a furze bush but about 4pm a stranger (gentleman to look at) came under Cliff and strolled right up to the tubs. The man in charge got as mad as fire but he had to lump it for if he'd spoken they would have taken him.

The Mutters' involvement apparently ended when the railway brought cheap coal to the area, killing off the convenient and effective cover.

I have a fondness for the smalltime dishonesties of old; people just trying to get ahead a bit it seems to me. The words to describe what it is that Goldman Sachs, the bankers in government and all those other pieces of shit do around the world fail me.

Two Paintings of Sidmouth

2010-03-05T02:56:00.010Z

Well this blog is called paintings-art so some paintings should appear here once in a while, it is somehow inevitable.

I have painted three pictures over the course of the last few winter months of 2010. Two of them are landscapes, the first being a view on the beach of Sidmouth looking west towards Higher Peak and the second being a view from the Peak Hill side of Ladram Bay looking west towards Budleigh. Both are painted in oil and measure 40cm by 40cm.

At one time I thought that the first painting was finished and hung it on the wall indoors to have a look at it. In the low winter light it appeared to be almost completely black and it was fairly obvious that I was going to have to lighten it considerably. In the end it became a sort of very early morning in winter scene, as if it was only just starting to get light. It still looks a bit dark in the photo but is actually a little bit lighter than this.

The second painting came out a lot slower, and I watched with some dismay as the tide rolled out and back in again as I attempted to get the large cliff to work. The first big cliff would somehow overpower the rest of them, so the famous red cliffs of East Devon are now in part a murky Paynes Grey due to a shadow falling on them, but it did seem to work and you have to know to walk away if a painting seems done. Sometimes I have gone in to just alter a tiny detail and somehow ended up mucking the whole thing up, which is all part of the fun.

Seeing as winter (which seems to start October/November, looking at watch..March) is almost gone I am hoping to be able to paint for longer again, as the 'studio' will not be so much of an icebox. Hurrah for spring coming soon and more painterly stuff and also other things.

Beaches in Autumn and Winter

2010-02-14T18:36:00.008Z

The first four photos are from a nice big storm that we had last November. Lots of people come out to enjoy the spectacle, many cameras appear and also a few people who like to play chicken with the waves, not the safest of pastimes.

The next few photos are some of the coast with a rare covering of snow, something that doesn't happen this close to the sea very often so well worth getting a few photographs of it.

The last are of the coast with some very low cloud. Sometimes it is difficult to say whether it is fog or cloud if you happen to be standing in it at the top of a hill. In the photos here it is low cloud.

Beeches of Autumn

2010-01-26T03:47:00.005Z

The low sun in autumn shines sideways through the trees, illuminating all the recently fallen beech leaves. Each particular tree rests in its own small environment. The beech tree seems to bring with it mosses and ferns. Chanterelle mushrooms can also be found nestling beneath them in autumn. The freshly fallen beech leaves could gathered into quilts to sleep through the winter, with a dry rustling sound of leaves turning slowly over. Beech grown as hedges keep their leaves throughout the winter, so provide a good screen and will keep the wind at bay. It chops nicely and it burns lovely, it has a smooth grey bark. Beechnuts are edible and were eaten in neolithic times. In spring the old remaining beech hedge leaves are finally pushed away by the burst of the new green leaves.

The Elusive Norwegian Blue

2010-01-15T12:40:00.018Z

I wake up this morning and the first news headline I see is "Angry Haitians block roads with corpses - witness" Haiti looks like a vision of Hell and I can't really imagine how bad the situation on the ground must be. Aid is coming now but Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world and I doubt it has the machinery to cope with anything of this scale. Where was the aid in the years previous to this catastrophe? It might be cynical of me and in an ideal world we would welcome the help of 10,000 American troops, but this isn't an ideal world and I do wonder exactly what so many American soldiers will be doing there.

On the ninth of December we had the mysterious Norwegian Spiral, something which has been explained in various places as being an experiment called Tequila Sunrise, using the EISCAT (European Incoherent Scatter Radar site) an international ionospheric research facility located in northern Norway near Tromso. This facility is recognised as being a european version of HAARP.

There is some interesting paperwork and information linked at seattle4truth youtube site, RigInt turns up some good research and there is much to be found in many other places. The stunning photos taken in Tromso facing across the harbour and looking south eastwards across the Sawback Mountains seem to point directly to the location of the Eiscat facility which coincidentally or not was in operation at this time. Sometimes "World Days" are organised which co-ordinate two or more of such global apparatus to experiment simultaneously.

The icy polar regions seem to extend their reach north and south, whilst the more central parts of the world are exposed to the sun and fire. I saw somewhere the other day that it was 30.6 degrees Celsius in Melbourne the other night combined with what appear to be unlikely temperatures in the daytime. Around here in the Southwest there has been a thaw and the temperatures are now a balmy 3 to 7 Celsius with more of our typical rain and gales on the way.

Up on the hills some snow has melted, exposing the leafy ground. I see lots of very happy birds foraging in this warm and sunny food zone. On closer examination I observe the first couple of inches of green shoots of bluebells peering through the ground amidst the snow, although Spring could be a long way off still.

It turns out that parrots could have actually existed in Norway. Dr David Waterhouse of Norwich, Norfolk, found that a fossilised wing recovered from a mine in Denmark came from a bird which belonged to the parrot family, though they became extinct 55 million years ago and are thus very much bereft of life.

a little night music

2009-12-30T19:16:00.009Z

I have always enjoyed going for walks at night. For some people this might seem a bit strange and it is true that you do not meet a lot of people walking at night but I recently discovered that Coleridge and Wordsworth and their friends would often go for long walks at night, so it seems that this has been happening for quite some time and I am in good company after all.

One of the things that I like about walking at night is the lack of people and traffic, so it is nice and peaceful and it seems that you have most places to yourself. People have asked me whether I am worried that I might meet somebody frightening out walking at night but I point out that I am usually the scariest looking person out and about then, so I don't really have anything much to fear though I can fully understand why women might not feel safe out walking at night.

I had a small insight into this when I threw my back out one time and I had to go out. I realised that if anyone wanted to have a pop at me there was nothing that I could do to defend myself and I thought that this is a sense of vulnerability that women or elderly people might feel all the time, not a pleasant experience. Many years ago I was mugged at knifepoint by three men and since then I have been much more aware of what goes on around me, behind me and so on.

I like to try and take photos at night and although I have been doing this on and off for quite a while I am still learning here so it is always an experiment for me. Here is a small selection of some of my night photographs which I hope you will enjoy.

I had a lot of fun one night trying to photograph an electrical storm. Standing under slight cover for about three hours I managed to get one photograph that actually had some lightning in it (above) a meagre reward photographically but an interesting evening for me all the same. Unfortunately there are not very many of these storms around here which is a shame for me as I find them excellent entertainment and also an interesting photographic subject.

There is also a dusk photo, dusk being one of my favourite times to be out walking and lastly a descending sun picture that I took a while ago which I think is rather pretty, so that goes in here too, seeing as it's the end of the year and just past the solstice. Good luck to you all for next year.

Passed Over and Pissed On

2009-12-17T17:13:00.007Z

A nice Sunday walk in October above Dunscombe to pick sloes on the cliff hedgerows. My two friends manage to pick three pounds of sloes in about an hour as I arse about taking photos. As sloes are not particularly pleasant to eat these have been earmarked for the production of Sloe Gin by a local chef. Haws were eaten in Neolithic times and according to fairy lore sloes should be picked until the eve of November, after which they become the property of the fairys who have passed over them. Blackberries are said locally to be pissed on by the devil at about the same time.

The berries shown on the trees in the later photos are on the Hawthorn trees and are known unsurprisingly as Haws. They are edible and used to make jellies, syrups, sauces and liqueurs, in the same method as Sloe Gin and a wine can also be made as well as adding them to brandy. Drinking is quite big at this time of year.

And Onwards Into The Woods

2009-12-02T11:06:00.011Z

Once upon the path between Axmouth and Lyme Regis there are only two choices, unless I've missed the others, and that is forwards or backwards. Unlike most walks there are no other alternative paths or routes out and in many places it is impossible to even step off the path. It is difficult to even find a spot to sit and rest for a bit unless you sit on the path.

The walking here is dense and difficult with plenty of opportunity to slip or twist an ankle and in some parts it would be very dangerous indeed to come off the path as you can disappear completely down a dark fissure in the rocks which have unknown depth.

In many places you can only see a short distance in front before the path turns again to twist downwards or round or over rocks and under overhanging trees. One of effects of this is to lead the walker onwards and deeper into the woods, as you always want to see whats round that next corner so you forget the time and the amount of time that it will take to get yourself back out again. All too soon the sun is lowering and the shadows are lengthening and the noon has quickly become late afternoon. This is not a place that you want to find yourself trying to get out of at night.

On a sunny day the flickering of the sunlight through the trees has a hypnotic effect which adds to the sense of disorientation similar to the one you get when driving through a road lined with trees with a low sun, a trancelike state is induced like the one that you get walking the green lanes.

The path is very narrow in places and weaves its way tacked lightly onto the side of the hill. The sense of green becomes overpowering and the mind attempts and fails to make sense of what it is looking at. Is that shape an overgrown tree or an overgrown rock? It is not always possible to tell and it is soon gone only to be quickly replaced by another visual conundrum. Occasional vistas open up and the sea can be glimpsed briefly here and there. Along the cliffs falcons can be seen, one of which is the dark speck in the photo of the blue sky above the Bindon landslip cliffs.

A difficult but excellent walk which should not be hurried, take your time and be careful of where you place your feet, it is a beautiful and rewarding place unlike anywhere else that I know of.

Seaton to Lyme Regis and the Bindon Landslip

2009-11-25T13:29:00.005Z

Howling gales and torrential rain here at the moment but on a sunny day in October I went to Seaton to walk into the middle of the woods between Axmouth and Lyme Regis. I usually miss out the photographs of the early part of the walk, but for a bit of a change I have put up some of these and I will be back soon to put up the photos of the woods proper and talk about the walk a bit more. In the meantime here is a little bit of the historical record of the event which began on a stark and dormy night just before Christmas in 1839...

The History of the study of Landforms Or the development of Geomorphology edited by T. P. Burt, R. J. Chorley, D. Bunsden and others.

One of the earliest examples was presented by William Cronybeare (1840) the vicar of Axminster and William Buckland, professor of geology at Oxford, reporting changes produced on the coast of east devon between Axmouth and Lyme Regis by the subsidence of a chasm 200 m wide, 30 m deep and 1.5 km long as a piece of land, known as Goat Island, moved seaward. Of its time, the Bindon event is the most widely documented mass movement in the British Isles. The fortuitous presence in the area of two of the leading catastrophist geologists of the day, Cronybeare and Buckland, meant that Bindon is the first landslide event ever recorded with a full scientific memoir of the Geological Survey.

From Cronybeare

A week or two before Christmas and on the 23rd of December, one of the cottages in the undercliff below began to show signs of subsidence, though not sufficient to create alarm.
At about 4.00 a.m. there came a 'wonderful crack' followed by movements in absolute silence and without vibration. The occupier of the house was only able to open the door with considerable difficulty and wagons brought to remove the household effects only just returned on the path. The journey was described as 'perilous'. Two coastgaurds saw the ground cracking and heard a sound like 'the rending of cloth'. There was a 'heaving and disturbance of the beach, the sea being violently agitated while a dark ridge rose in the water'. There was a 'deafening crashing of falling rocks', 'flashes of fire' and 'a strong smell of sulphur'. So much alarm was generated by the reports that many people were discouraged from visiting the slip. Those who did venture out were 'breathless and bewildered at the sight' and one person was 'led back to a sick bed at Honiton' from which ' he with difficulty recovered'.

From Wanderings in Devon by W. H. Hamilton Rogers MDCCCLXIX

The exact period of the descent, was on the night succeeding Christmas Day, 1839, and it continued gradually sinking or subsiding during the whole of the next day. There was no noise of any kind except from portions of the detached soil falling down. An eye witness who was present on the morning following the descent, and while the mass was still settling, describes the scene as being of a very awful description; to see the vast and apparently bottomless cracks extending, and the mass of land moving, while as if to shroud this vast convulsion in still further mystery, there was a dense fog setting in from the sea, enveloping everything.

About forty five acres of fields growing wheat and turnips were dislodged when a great chasm was formed more than 300 feet (91 m) across, 160 feet (49 m) deep and three quarters of a mile long. The crops remained intact on the top of what became known as "Goat Island" among the newly formed gullies. On February 3 1840, 5 weeks later, there was a second landslip nearby but much smaller than the former. This strange phenomenon attracted many visitors, and the canny farmers charged sixpence for entrance and held a grand reaping party when the wheat ripened.

Woods at Broadhembury

2009-11-09T21:38:00.008Z

A day spent putting succulents to bed for the winter and then the following afternoon I finally find my way into Jeremy's woods, which turns out to be a lovely little wildwood. Long wellington boots are essential in here due to the large amount of water which underlies pretty much everything. Even with these on the wood still needs negotiating with care, so as not to end up getting very wet.

This is a small, friendly seeming wood, tucked away up many lanes near Broadhembury. I get the sensation that people do not enter into these woods very often. I leave huge galumphing footprints in the deep moss behind me which I hope will spring back after I leave. It is almost like walking on a floating green river of plants and moss. Nothing is certain here; what appears to be solid ground quite often isn't. Trees cannot be relied upon to bear weight if you lean against them. Apparently solid branches are actually soft and can just collapse with the slightest touch. Trees fall over and then they regrow themselves from the disintegrating horizontal trunks.

Sidmouth to Budleigh Salterton

2009-11-01T22:25:00.005Z

A couple of good long walks up over the hills and cliffs to Budleigh Salterton in what turned out to be better weather in September than we had most of the summer.

It takes about three and a half hours to walk the roughly seven miles to Budleigh though at this time of the year you are walking into the sun all afternoon, so it is a fairly squinty walk.

Over the first series of hills, those being Peak Hill and Higher Peak, and then down into Ladrum Bay with its interesting stacks and lovely clear water, we encounter a couple of very young looking children apparently skinning up behind the hedge at the caravan park. They look round rather guiltily and scuttle back to the death slide to smoke their spliff.

Ignoring the ice-cream shop in the hope of getting one at Budleigh we move on and past the abundant sloes growing in the hedges along the cliff edge. The hedges have all been recently flailed, destroying many of the lower fruits and making the rest hard to gather, though this still appears a popular spot for families out picking.

We meet a man who has been walking round the entire coast of Britain along the coastal path. He left Brighton heading eastwards and we meet him when he is on the last couple of hundred miles or so. It had taken him about three months which is pretty good going by my reckoning.

Along past the world war two spotter station situated at the lonely location of Brandy Point which would be a nice place to sit out a war, I should think. In earlier times this was used to look out for smugglers, of which there has always been plenty along this coast what with its isolated bays and beaches.

On past freshly ploughed fields and crops of corn growing up to the cliff edges the walker gets right to the beach at Budleigh only to find a river in the way, so a detour inland and up the river is needed to find a bridge to cross. This is not really a problem as the river is so pretty that it is good to see a bit more of it and it does have a lot of interesting birdlife, such as Heron, an Egret and some that might have been Canada Geese.

Finally we arrive in Budleigh Salterton, home of the young Walter Raleigh who isn't around at the moment, and with slightly achy feet we manage to find some fantastic and much needed ice-creams and sorbets. Yum yum!

The Woodcutters Song

2009-10-20T20:25:00.006+01:00

The first cold wind arrived yesterday and the condensation begins to gather on the windows and reminds us that winter is on its way so fuel for keeping warm must be organised and other stocks need to be checked. Then there was a new moon on Monday so hopefully this will be a better month to get things done.

There are a number of poems composed as aids to remember the various characters and qualities of wood for burning. There is The Firewood Poem written by Celia Congreve believed to be first published in The Times newspaper on March 2nd 1930.

Then there is The Woodcutters Song. It has been claimed that it was called Logs To Burn and written by Honor Goodhart during the 1926 General Strike in England and published in Punch in 1926. It has been adapted and set to music by various people over the years, my own favourite being the version by Robin Williamson on his 1978 album A Glint in the Kindling. It is likely that these poems were known in some earlier form in the oral tradition, seeing as it has always been useful information.

Robin Williamsons sung version:

Oak logs will warm you well
That are old and dry
Logs of pine will sweetly smell
But the sparks will fly
Birchs long will burn too fast
Chestnut scarce at all sir
Hawthorn logs are good to last
That are cut well in the fall sir

Why surely you will find
There´s no compare with the hard wood logs
That´s cut in winter time

Holly logs will burn like wax
You could burn them green
Elm logs burn like smouldering flax
With no flames to be seen
Beech logs for winter time
Yew logs as well sir
Green elder logs it is a crime
For any man to sell sir

Why surely you will find
There´s no compare with the hard wood logs
That´s cut in winter time

Pear logs and apple logs
They will scent your room
and cherry logs across the dogs
They smell like flowers of broom
But ash logs smooth and grey
Buy them green or old, sir
and buy up all that comes your way
They´re worth their weight in gold sir

The Firewood Poem

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut's only good they say,
If for logs 'tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold.

Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke,
Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter's cold
But ash wet or ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.

mountain ash and a foggy day

2009-10-12T19:19:00.006+01:00

Or a couple of foggy days really. Foggy weather is rubbish for driving in but always nice for a walk in the countryside. Sound travels differently in foggy weather. The loudest sound I can hear up here is the birdsong and the grasshoppers. It is so quiet I can hear individual leaves falling. Then I discover that it is in fact so quiet I can also hear individual seeds falling from the trees. I always find foggy weather exciting for some reason, and I always try to get out somewhere for a walk in it.

I take a lot of photo's on the first day but when I get them back I find that a lot of them are blurred, so I go back the following day to have another go. I think that the reason that they are blurred is because it is quite dark in the fog and I have not changed the ISO speed on my camera so I am using very long shutterspeeds which make it easy to blur the photo's when using a handheld camera. Photo's viewed on the screen on the back of modern digital cameras never really appear blurred unless they are wildly blurred but a good way to check the sharpness is to use the zoom facility and have a look at them a lot closer, this is the technique I have figured out anyway.

The fungus on the beech tree is known as Artist's Fungus (Ganoderma applanatum) the brown spores collect on the surrounding tree and look a bit like cocoa powder. Patterns scratched into the white layers of the fungus are permanent, and this practice explains the common name of this species.

Like many types of fungus that grow on trees, this type of fungus is not edible. I was amused when googling for 'are artists' the top suggestions were 'are artists crazy' and 'are artists selfish' which tells us quite a lot about the behaviour and common perception of artists.

The red berries further on in the sequence are on the Rowan or Mountain Ash as they are also known because they can grow up to an elevation of 1000ft. The berries are edible and high in vitamin C but do not taste very nice. They can though be made into a jelly. It is common in Scotland to find a rowan tree planted near the front door, supposedly to keeps witches away. Cutting down a rowan tree is considered bad luck which is probably from superstitions about cutting or damaging a tree with ritual use. It is one of the trees associated with the Druids.

The rowan's wood is strong and resilient, making excellent walking sticks, and is suitable for carving. It was often used for tool handles, and spindles and spinning wheels were traditionally made of rowan wood. Druids used the bark and berries to dye the garments worn during lunar ceremonies black, and the bark was also used in the tanning process. Rowan twigs were used for divining, particularly for metals.

The berries can be made into or added to a variety of alcoholic drinks, and different Celtic peoples seem to have had their favourites. As well as the popular wine still made in the Highlands, the Scots made a strong spirit from the berries, the Welsh brewed an ale, the Irish used them to flavour Mead, and even a cider can be made from them. There seems to be a bumper crop of the bright red berries this year.

braunton burrows

2009-09-25T16:36:00.007+01:00

Due to various timetable complications the journey to Braunton Burrows is a phenomenally windy day sandwiched nicely by two calm sunny days, such are the vagaries of the british summer. Braunton Burrows is one the largest systems of dunes in europe and contains many rare and unusual plants, not many of which I can recognise. Over 400 species of plants have been recorded here including Sea Stock, Sand Toadflax and Water Germander. The area is also a Unesco Biosphere Reserve, whatever that is. I became interested in the place again after seeing the dunes in the film 'The Shout' which reminded me what a great place it was and how I hadn't been there in years.

Pathways disappear and the walker is soon plunged into heavy going waist high growth. Climbing the massive dunes one after the other soon turns into a fairly clammy experience for an August afternoon, even with the cooling strong wind. Due to the scale of the place I haven't really got the time to explore the beach side of the dunes and resolve to come back at another date, properly prepared to stay for a longer look.

This area of north devon has a reputation for surfing and has always been a major tourist destination in the summer, so the roads all around the place are an absolute nightmare to negotiate at this time of year. An interesting landscape though and I would like to spend more time here to see it in other lights. For an easier walk I would recommend following the beach side of the dunes around from the car park at the main road, from where you could dip into the dunes wherever you wanted to.

after the rain

2009-09-12T11:12:00.009+01:00

After the rain there is another hot summer day so I can get up Salcombe Hill and walk for a while.

I have a map of the area and noticed that there is an interesting looking footpath that I haven't walked up yet, so locating the road on the other side of Salcombe I walk up what appears to be a small private track that leads to a farm. As I get closer I begin to get the impression that the place is a bit run down as there are abandoned cars scattered around. The farm turns out to be a cabin near a large chicken shed. I am expecting that at any moment a dog will start barking but all is deserted. The lane should turn into a footpath somewhere. I walk around the perimeter of a long electrified fence but cannot find any trace of the footpath; every direction leads to a dead end and I am starting to wonder if the path is obstructed, but eventually I notice what looks like a good footpath on the other side of an electric fence and a hedge. I can't get to the path without damaging the fence and it begins to dawn on me that I have misread the map and I am in fact in completely the wrong place. I scurry myself back out again slightly thankful that it was deserted. A good lousy piece of map reading on my part.

I get around the corner, closer now to the edge of the cliff which has good views back towards Sidmouth and eastwards up the coast towards Beer, (it being the last white cliff in the photo's)This is the quietest place that I have been for a while.

There are no roads within hearing distance, and I can hear nothing mechanical of any sort, in fact I can't really hear anything apart from the sound of the wind blowing through the grass. Farther along there are some birds and then a few sheep, pottering away in the late afternoon, but the silence here is striking.

When I first came to Devon as a child one of the first things that I noticed were the unusual bright red puddles in the red earth. Back home, earth was usually a dark brown colour, or could sometimes be a bright rusty orange clay. The red surprised me and it took a few years to properly appreciate these alarming red puddles.

The Way Back

2009-09-02T10:09:00.005+01:00

Somewhere along these tracks and pathways I took an inconsequential turning and somehow found myself on the road to Wigan Pier, actually there isn't much mining going on around here but there has been trouble at'mill. Anyway it's lovely out here and there's nothing to do but walk all the way back, which should take about three hours, even if I am having trouble with my tenses. It could be done a lot quicker but I like to meander and sidetrack, plus there is the stopping to take photo's. Although over this side of the hills I can hear the constant noise of the distant airport, it is quiet in other ways. I only meet three people the whole time I am out and the space and air has a nice proper emptiness undisturbed by people.

There are plenty of good gates out here which I like; I have a thing about gates and so collect some more photo's. There is also plenty of insect life out here and the butterflies are particularly out in force on this walk. Since the recent disappearance of the blackbird couple there are no garden birds of any sort with us at the moment which does seem strange, but there are plenty of birds out here. Little paths with lots of corners that don't really go anywhere. I get the impression of many places that are not visited very often.

I have enjoyed finding an odd few houses tucked away down these old dirt tracks, I like the fact that even now such a thing is possible in our uptight and fussy country which prefers its land manicured or covered over with tarmac. I know that I am getting near a proper road as the litter starts to become visible again, always a sign of nearing civilisation.

I have to climb up over the hills and as I do the path vanishes from beneath my feet so I have to make one up, never finding the proper path. Near the top of the hill I get a view of the landscape in the summer heat that I have just walked across. The summer has faded now. These photo's were taken in July but the sun is lower again and the nights longer and colder. Wood supplies must be organised soon. I go up and over the hills and then back down slowly through the woods.

Aylesbeare Common

2009-08-23T16:51:00.011+01:00

I get off the bus on Aylesbeare Common, a couple of miles outside of Aylesbeare village to have a short detour from my main walk, which will be walking back over the distant hills into town.

Aylesbeare (pop.527) is only famous in this country for one thing and that is the disappearance on 19th August 1978 of Genette Tate http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news_features/2003/genette_tate_25.shtml when she went missing aged 13 whilst delivering newspapers. Her bicycle and scattered newspapers were found lying in the middle of a country lane only minutes after she had been speaking to two friends. Her story was all over the newspapers at the time and still turns up sometimes, although her disappearance remains a mystery and is unsolved, unfortunately.

I am here in the middle of nowhere to take a look at the tumuli which are marked on the map as being around here somewhere. Actually they turn out to be really easy to find and are very close to the main road indeed. It is strange to think that the bus that I travel to work on and all the traffic that hurtles past this spot are within spitting distance of these tumuli which remain largely ignored by folk here. I myself have hurtled past these tumuli, not knowing of their existence until I was browsing the map one day and spotted them. To find these things all you need is a local map and a bit of curiosity although it does help that there are lots of these things around here. I have in years past found similar mounds hidden in woodland which were not marked on any map which I suppose must mean that they are still undiscovered.

I like to stand on them and survey the countryside around to see in what way they might relate to the landscape, markers on distant hills, gaps in hills, prominent trees, stones etc. and this facility is good here as the tumuli have been recently cleared of growth. This is quite unusual as most are left to grow over and so it is a good opportunity to have a look at the unadorned shape of the tumuli and also their possible relationship to the surrounding landscape.

On the next nearest mound stands the remains of a very large tree. This tree, being right on the skyline of Aylesbeare Common was used as a marker for navigational purposes by the sailors of old and was known as The Lone Pine. The tree which though dead remained standing for many years was planned to be felled but a note was found attached to the tree stating that the person who felled the tree would be cursed, the note being signed at the bottom by The White Witches of Aylesbeare. The tree fell of its own accord a few years ago leaving a tall and lovely shaped guardian stump.

Anyway, I take some photographs and must get on. It is a long walk back and the walking hasn't even really started properly yet. The photo's shown here are partly from my second visit, but in the next posting there will be photo's from the remaining part of the original walk in which I have the immense pleasure of seeing the route back from here for the very first time.

Molly and Morris Dance in Sidmouth Folk Week 2009

2009-08-09T09:34:00.011+01:00

Morris dancing is another tradition that almost died out being revitalised in the nick of time in about 1899. Something old for the new century. It probably gets its name from Moorish.

Molly dancers have been recorded in many parts of the English Midlands and East Anglia. It died out finally in the 1930s, the last dancers seen dancing in Little Downham near Ely, Cambridgeshire in 1933. On this occasion the dances performed included a tango, performed by two male dancers, one dressed as a woman.

The only recorded Molly dances come from Comberton and Girton, villages just outside Cambridge, researched by Russell Wortley and Cyril Papworth. Some examples of the music played for the dancers have survived. These include George Green's College Hornpipe, collected from the Little Downham Melodeon player.

Molly dancing is most associated with Plough Monday, the first Monday after Epiphany. Tradition has it that as a way of filling the gap between Christmas and the start of the Spring ploughing season, the ploughboys would tour around the village landowners, offering to dance for money. Those who refused would be penalised in various ways (see Trick or treat) including having a furrow ploughed across the offender's lawn.

The dancers, wishing to gain employment from those same landowners shortly afterwards, would attempt to conceal their identities by blacking their faces with soot and dressing up in a modified version of their Sunday Best, typically black garments adorned with coloured scarves and other fripperies. It was originally an all-male tradition but with one of the members - the Molly - dressed up as a woman.

These days women and men dance together molly and morris wise though according to a painting of morris dancers at Richmond in 1620 they were danced by both men and women together in those days too, unless they were men dressed as women, there is quite a bit of politics about all this which I don't have the space to get into here.

A nice early picture of morris dancers is an enamelled glass window from Bletley, Staffordshire. Its date is uncertain but it seems to have been made between about 1510 and 1600 something or other.

In the reign of Henry VIII, morris dancing attained great popularity. There seems to have been at that time two principle performers, Robin Hood and Maid Marian; then there was a friar, a piper, a fool, and the rank and file of the dancers. In the parish accounts of Kingston-on-Thames for the year 1537 the Morris Dancers' wardrobe, then in the charge of the churchwardens, consisted of "A fryers cote of russet and a kyrtele weltyd with red cloth, a Mowren's (Moor's) cote of buckram, and four morres dauncars cotes of white fustian spangelid and two gryne saten cotes, and a disardde's (fool's) cote of cotton, and six payre of garters with belles."

Morris sides, or teams, consist of a number of roles. The role of the squire varies. In some sides the squire is the leader, who will speak for the side in public, usually lead or call the dances, and often decide the programme for a performance. In other sides the squire is more of an administrator, with the foreman taking the lead, and the dances called by any experienced dancer.

The foreman teaches and trains the dancers, and is responsible for the style and standard of the side's dancing.

The bagman is traditionally the keeper of the bag — that is to say, the side's funds. In some sides today the bagman acts as secretary (particularly bookings secretary) and there is often a separate treasurer.

On some sides a ragman manages and co-ordinates the team's kit or costume. This may include making bell-pads, ribbon bads, sashes and other accoutrements.

Many sides have one or more fools. A fool will usually be extravagantly dressed, and communicate directly with the audience in speech or mime. The fool will often dance around and even through a dance without appearing really to be a part of it, but it takes a talented dancer to pull off such fooling while actually adding to and not distracting from the main dance set.

Many sides also have a beast: a dancer in a costume made to look like a real or mythical animal. Beasts mainly interact with the audience, particularly children. In some groups this dancer is called the hobby.

Longdown Station

2009-07-30T07:34:00.008+01:00

For some reason the planned trip to Longdown coincided with one of the hottest days of the year so far. It's good to be walking in the shade of trees in sunny weather and there's a nice old place here with a bit of hills and view then down into an old winding path that follows a brook, past a ruined barn and on to an old railway.

The whole area seems to be covered with the Empire of Giant Wood Ants now but up and past them and again past the lake and to the old railwaytrack itself and the inevitable 248 yards of dripping late victorian darkness that is Culver tunnel. Going back isn't really an option at this point so it's through the tunnel whatever.

Back into the light on the other side is Longdown Station, built in 1903 and still complete with platform. It closed to passengers in 1958 so the trains are long gone now. Then there is a very wet track which leads to the second and longer Perridge Tunnel, gated on this end and named after the adjacent posh family The Perridges. Perridge Tunnel (829 yards long and curving) which has collapsed somewhere two thirds of the way through possibly due to a mushroom growing business going pear shaped in 1986, actually lies on a natural fault line of some sort, earthquakes in Okehampton and all that. I have been walking here since I was about 15, it hasn't changed much.

Usually it is quiet in the woods, apart from the pheasant shooting of course, though this time when we were about three quarters of the the way through the tunnel we heard a distant engine sound which turned out to be a tractor coming up the tunnel from behind us, the sound being much more disturbing than the resulting tractor which finally appeared, with a bit of smiling and waving. An interesting acoustic situation indeed. Plenty of drinking water useful around here. I forget how much slower you have to move in the heat.

The tunnels were originally built not because of any specific geological obstacle of any sort but because the folk in the big house didn't want to be disturbed by the railway, which is some indication of the lengths gone to to please these sort of people. It's a lot of work in the dark and an awkward bloody business by the look of it.

The Serpent of Dunscombe

2009-07-14T11:49:00.006+01:00

After the previous fiasco of scuttling like a crab between the barbed wire and the hurtling metal deathboxes on the black ribbon I head back to Dunscombe with some friends to meet the serpent again.

There are structures in Britain dating back as far as 4000 B.C. Many of these have been altered over the following years as habitation of them waxed and waned and they would have been reconstructed at times as defensive positions.

If you stood here on these cliffs in 55B.C. you may have seen one of Caesars little boats creeping up the coast to have a look at the land that would be invaded by them in 43A.D. although there is no evidence that they came as far west as this.

History is of course written by the victors which is why so much of it is rubbish and the Celtic people passed on their information orally so none of it is here to tell, but we have a couple of nice portraits here of the old people and the fair ancient women. First from Ammmianus Marcellinus writing of the Gauls across the water to our south.

"Nearly all the Gauls are of lofty stature, fair and of ruddy complexion: terrible is the sterness of their eyes, very quarellsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance who is usually very strong and with blue eyes; especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and brandishing her sallow arms of enormous size, she begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult."

And here, Dio Cassius's portrait of Boudicca, queen of the Iceni, of the east of Britain in the first century A.D. paints a lovely picture:

"She was huge of frame, terrifying of aspect, and with a harsh voice. A great mass of bright red hair fell to her knees: she wore a great twisted torc, and a tunic of many colours, over which was a thick mantle, fastened by a brooch. Now she grasped a spear, to strike fear into all who watched her."

This one is for the traitors and the bankers in London, and of the hope that one one day we will throw this scum back into the sea.