After shopping at Ferndene Farm Shop this warm, overcast, afternoon we returned home via Burley Golf Course which, for a change, now that Covid restrictions have been relaxed, was occupied by more golfers than ponies, although the equine maintenance crew continued shaving the sward and spreading their hazardous heaps.
The golfers, apparently oblivious of the ponies carrying on with their tasks equally regardless, cross from one side of the road to the other in order to continue their rounds.
When I crossed to the Holmsley Passage side my activity was somewhat hampered by an escaped rooster resident in the gorse bushes which pecked at my ankles whenever my back was turned.
However, between attacks I managed to keep a lens on proceedings.
Dinner this evening consisted of flavoursome chicken Kiev; creamy mashed potatoes; succulent ratatouille; firm broccoli and tender runner beans, with which I drank Mendoza El Tesoro Red Blend 2019, and Jackie abstained.
I spent the bulk of the morning in boring administration, earning a trip out in the warm and sunny afternoon.
Our first pheasant sighting was just a few hundred yards away, strutting along Hordle Lane.
Most verges displayed golden celandines and varieties of daffodils. These embellished those of Barrows Lane.
Walkers at the high point of Middle Lane could, as I did, look down on a bucolic landscape featuring a grazing grey horse cropping a field.
Most forest views were dotted with foraging ponies, such as these along Burley Road,
or these beside Forest Road.
One attempted to enter the Modus
before enjoying a scratch on the lichen coated tree trunk;
another sported a fine head of lockdown hair.
In recent days we have acquired a new young couple of collared doves. While preparing this evening’s dinner Jackie, sadly, witnessed a lightning sparrow hawk swoop and carry one off, leaving a pile of fresh feathers. Its mate is wailing its grief.
Said dinner consisted of breaded cod fillets; cheese-centred haddock fish cakes; moist ratatouille; and creamy mashed potatoes, with which I finished the Cabernet Shiraz and Jackie drank sparkling water.
We enjoyed glorious sunshine throughout this rather warmer day, beginning with a drive into the forest.
A trio of ponies cropped the verge of Burley’s Bennett’s Lane, until approached by a horse and rider.
A jogger had paused asking me if I wanted to take a picture. Not wishing to disturb her rhythm, I waved her on.
Just around the corner more ponies, one seemingly narcissism personified, carried out further roadside maintenance.
At the end of Bennett’s Lane we turned into Mill Lane, where Jackie parked and I wandered past the house to the left of this picture, admiring its
garden’s display of daffodils.
My target was a reflecting pool above which pussy willows burgeoned, and beside which lichen-covered twigs littered the turf.
Residents here enjoyed spacious, colourful, landscapes.
While I wandered, Jackie photographed a weather vane bearing a dog she thought might be a Labrador.
A string of horses stretched across the road beside the junction at Burley War Memorial were oblivious of the traffic tearing down the hill to the left of the picture. As Jackie drove up the slope a motorcycle sped past on the opposite side. It would have needed to avoid the leading equine.
We ventured out again this afternoon. Almost every verge has its carpet of primroses, celandines, as in Sandy Down,
and daffodils, as in Church Lane, Boldre.
A few sleepy ponies waited for a bus on Jordan’s Lane, Pilley;
others played with the traffic.
From her spot at the end of the road, Jackie watched me communing with the ponies,
and recorded her discovery of the reason that so many road signs are bent.
This evening we reprised yesterday’s pasta arrabbiata and runner beans with more of the same beverages.
Scanning the dull granite skies did not look promising today, so I scanned the next half dozen of Charles Keeping’s sinuous line illustrations to Charles Dickens’s ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’, followed by colour slides of a visit to Nunhead Cemetery on a much brighter day in September 2008.
‘An anxious shade came upon his contented face when his glance encountered the dull brow of his companion’
‘I am the most miserable man in the world’
‘Fresh horses came and went and came again’
‘In the throats and maws of dark no-thoroughfares near Todgers’s’ gives the artist an opportunity to display his perfectly receding perspective in an accurate presentation of a cramped warehouse scene of the period.
‘Down they came directly, singing as they came’
‘Cuffey fell back into a dark corner’
Nunhead Cemetery is one of ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and managed by the local authority, Southwark Borough Council.
My post ‘Council Housing’ describes the policies of the 1980s that led to the transfer of the
West Lodge to private ownership. When Southwark Council bought the cemetery for £1 in 1976 both East and West Lodges were derelict. The West one was refurbished to provide council accommodation. The tenant bought the property at a reduced price under the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme, and subsequently sold it at its true market value.
Refurbishment of the octagonal chapel was also required. At the time of my visit with writer John Turpin
the gate, for example, had been renewed, but it was still without a roof.
A sensitively sculpted angel was garlanded with ivy.
The afternoon, although still cool and breezy, brightened considerably. Jackie attended to water features while I cleared up clippings and took them to the compost bins.
Later we dined on the Culinary Queen’s spicy pasta arrabbiata and tender runner beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Hardy’s Endeavour Cabernet Shiraz 2020
On a sun-bright, but still chilly, breezy, morning we took a drive to the east of the forest.
Jackie parked the Modus on the verge of Sowley Lane and decanted me and my camera.
Ponies shared the broad verge pasturage with basking cattle, one of whom looked askance at me when I photographed her feet. The close-up of the sorrel pony demonstrates why they all sport wrinkled noses to enable them to nibble the short grass.
A cock pheasant canoodled with a spotlit hen beside a gated path leading to Sowley Lake until they and others disappeared with harsh squawks.
A wide-wing-spanned buzzard, taking care to keep naked branches between itself and my probing lens, glided smoothly overhead, until an eerie silence rent the air.
Meanwhile, Jackie photographed another pheasant hiding in the shrubbery on the opposite side of the road.
Similarly, the Assistant Photographer focussed on a camouflaged chaffinch I captured in plain sight.
A dead tree stretched over the animals on the verge; a brightly clad cyclist blended well with the myriads of brightly-hued daffodils lining the lanes,
which were rife with other groups of pedallers practicing defensive cycling. The first of these trios was happy to collect a convoy behind a delivery van on Lodge Lane; the second swept round a bend on South Baddersley Road carrying out a debate about where they were.
Pheasants usually scuttle off into the hedgerows when we arrive. This one, its feathers all puffed up remained motionless enough for me to become concerned enough to disembark for investigation. It was ambulant enough to walk slowly across the road. Another trick of these birds is to dash from the undergrowth in an apparent suicide attempt on vehicles’ wheels. We wondered whether this had been a survivor from such a game of chicken.
Having, through a five-barred gate, spotted another pheasant approaching a couple of horses on the far side of a field on Lodge Lane, I poked my camera over the gate in order to picture the impending encounter. In ample time, as the equines picked up speed, the bird veered off to avoid their thudding hooves.
Leather-lipped donkeys munched prickly gorse at East End, where, a few days ago, I had photographed a thatcher at work.
We now see he had crowned his roof with a fox chasing a hare which would never be caught.
As we passed Lymington harbour yachts we noticed a man descending rigging.
This evening for dinner we enjoyed our second sitting of Hordle Chinese Take Away fare, which keeps well for two days, and the same accompanying beverages.
Fierce winds, having raged overnight, continued for a good part of the day, sending us to Milford on Sea’s coastline,
to photograph the ocean with its spraying, creamy, waves pounding the breakwaters and the sea wall.
Jackie watched the play of my writhing jacket.
A formation of distant kite surfers took us off to Keyhaven for a closer look. Hurst Castle appears in this last image.
Like speedboats the surfers sent up their own spray; wrestled on the shingle with the kites flung into life by the blustery winds; and performed silhouetted aerobatics. Meanwhile sea defence trucks travelled along the spit.
Once the kites were in the air and the time had come for departure the surfers set about battling to bring them down, sometimes one aeronaut anchoring another.
We also enjoyed a closer look at Hurst Castle.
This evening we dined on Mr Chan’s Hordle Chinese Take Away excellent fare with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Mendoza Malbec 2019.
Now I am going to settle down to watch the last Six Nations rugby match, between France and Scotland.
On a very dull and wet morning we visited Mum at Woodpeckers. As usual, we had to be separated by a screen in which Jackie is reflected. In the second picture here my mother indicates where she recently had her second, painless, Covid vaccination.
It was not until 4 p.m. that the rain desisted and the sun put in an appearance.
Then I put down my book and took up my camera to look round the garden where sparkling precipitation prevailed, mostly on hellebores, and additionally on the amanogawa cherry blossom, camellia and others. Euphorbia, daffodils, primroses and the lichen flower on the Nottingham Castle bench are also pictured.
This evening we dined on Hunter’s Chicken Kiev; oven chips; and baked beans, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Dao.
This morning we visited Ferndene Farm Shop to buy three large bags of compost and a couple of trays of pansies, after which we took a drive into the forest, where
my quiet communing with an inquisitive pony opposite the entrance to Ibsley Drove was disturbed by the clear voices of a couple of approaching cyclists, and
the sudden explosion of raucous cawing by nesting rooks taking to the skies.
I then proceeded to bend my back more than I thought possible in order to photograph the
constant toing and froing of the prospective new parents as I imagined the males kept the incubating females supplied with provender, and occasionally did sentry duty. It may be that there were hungry infants in the nests, but, even by craning my neck, I couldn’t tell.
Looking down across the landscape at Ogdens North beneath leaden skies
we espied a pair of be-rugged field horses sharing their paddock with a herd of deer, including a rare white one.
This evening we reprised yesterday’s roast pork dinner with more of the same beverages.
On an albeit cool day of sunny interludes on which
winter flowering and amanogawa cherry blossoms flourished alongside each other, I produced
a snapshot of the garden. As usual titles of the individual pictures will be found when accessing the gallery with a click on any one image.
This evening Elizabeth came to dinner which consisted of succulent roast pork, with cracking crackling; crisp Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes and parsnips; crunchy carrots; firm broccoli and cauliflower; and meaty gravy. Dessert was cherry pie and custard. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden while my sister and I drank Pinha Ribiero Santo Dao 2019.
Early on this bright, sunny, morning Jackie drove us to Ferndene Farm Shop where she stocked up on fresh provisions while I sat in the car with plenty of time to photograph
this colour-co-ordinated woman selecting six pots of tete-a-tetes through my passenger window. Each one was carefully selected by picking them up, carefully examining them, retaining some, and replacing others.
Afterwards we continued on a forest drive.
As I stepped out to photograph this beautiful landscape, I immediately came upon an unsightly spread of fly-tipping.
I looked down upon a pair of separated ponies grazing on soggy terrain.
Towards the Thorney Hill end of the road I again stepped out to photograph the landscape dotted with ponies who were very quickly to surprise me by following each other
up the slope, off the gorse-laden moorland and into the road along which they clopped past me to
drink at an extensive winterbourne pool.
Completely oblivious of the steady flow of traffic, further waves of ponies gathered from all directions with the one purpose of slaking their thirst.
At one point a trio of bays advanced through the gorse behind me. They were not going to stop. I realised I was standing on their trail beside the trough, and just had time to scramble off it, turn, and photograph the leader before they get their heads down to slake their thirsts.
Stragglers, through which vehicles slalomed their way down, continued to climb along the road, taking their turns to drink.
Once satisfied, some groups wandered off towards Thorney Hill; others remained to chew gorse.
Along Tiptoe Road I stopped to photograph a pair of kids on the far side of a field. As I returned to the car, their owner, the very friendly Lizzie Knight, approached and invited me in to make more photographs. Her pets were just four days old and independent enough to sample anything that looked edible. As always, clicking on any image will access its gallery, and further clicks will enlarge the pictures.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s flavoursome chicken and vegetable stewp and fresh crusty bread, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Mendoza Red Blend.
