Normally I work hard to exclude my own shadow, but it wouldn’t go away.
Late this afternoon we drove out to Mudeford, where
the Isle of Wight and The Needles benefited from the clear light,
as did holiday homes and beach huts.
Two gentlemen wheeled their boat onto dry land.
Distant rain clouds released their precipitation,
while those over the harbour displayed silver linings.
We motored on into the forest. Sheep in a field alongside Snails Lane, Ringwood, basked in the last rays of the sun.
By the time we reached Abbotswell
dusk had arrived
bringing a pink trim
to soft mink clouds.
This evening we dined on succulent pork chops served with tasty Lincolnshire pork sausages on a bed of mushrooms, peppers, and mushrooms; cauliflower in cheese sauce; mashed potato and swede; and green beans. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the malbec.
This morning was spent helping the garden recover from the battering winds. This involved gathering up broken branches; tying up plants, like the rose Summer Wine, that had come adrift; a certain amount of watering; and preparing ground for chrysanthemums and bulbs.
After lunch we deposited another orange bag of cuttings in the recycling centre, and drove along the coast road to Milton on Sea.
When the sun emerged from the rapidly moving clouds The Isle of Wight and The Needles benefited from a bright clear light.
Waves still rolled thunderously onto the rocks at the water’s edge.
The clifftop had experienced more erosion since my last venture up there a few months ago.
The bricks in the foreground of this image once formed part of a long-gone structure,
and the path shown here was set further away from the edge last year.
We may have finished our lunch, but a gentleman seated on a bench, mirrored by another eating a banana in his cab,
was still enjoying his.
On the village green a group of elderly cyclists tucked into their own snacks.
I am occasionally asked about the safety of the free roaming animals. Continuing to the north of the forest we noticed this hit and run sign beside Roger Penny Way – not that unusual a phenomenon, particularly during the tourist season.
Were I ever to take it into my head to climb a tree again, I might choose this one bearing useful bracket fungus
at the side of a somewhat waterlogged lane through farmland just to the north of Cadnam,
where sheep wandered across the road.
Initially inquisitive, these creatures, when I invaded too much of their space, turned tail and made for the field from which they had wandered.
We were soon aware of a golf course on our left. A putting session was in progress.
On our return home, I photographed the Hordle Lane housing development from the rear.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s luscious liver casserole, mashed potato, green beans, and orange carrots. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden, and I finished the Fleurie.
A couple of days ago Jackie made a new sign for The Dragon Bed, and left a photograph on my camera.
Paul and Margery made a brief visit at lunchtime in order to deliver a birthday present ordered from their last exhibition. Both were looking in fine fettle.
Afterwards, Jackie drove us around the forest.
Like many other plants this year, the heather seemed to be blooming early.
Not that the ponies noticed.
They just kept their eyes on the grass.
On the outskirts of Burley we took a pot-holed drive down Tyrell’s Lane,
where I was struck by the topiary fronting a house called Ladywell. This reflected the thatched roofing
which bears a peacock motif on top.
Next door, Tyrell’s Way’s garden sports a magnificent gunnera.
As I have occasionally mentioned, sheep are inquisitive creatures. This one in a field at the end of Tyrell’s drive, even lifted its head from its grazing at my approach.
This was in stark contrast to the low maintenance ovine mother and child occupying a garden in Furzley, who completely ignored me.
Stony Cross Plain, just north of the A31, seems to be the province of Shetland ponies,
one of which thought that a discarded tissue was not to be sniffed at.
A recumbent foal
occasionally stirred itself to stand. This creature has become accustomed to flies,
which is more than can be said for its younger cousin at Nomansland, still skipping in confusion at the irritation.
A visit to Eyeworth Pond revealed nothing of interest, except for this post box near the Royal Oak, that we had not noticed before. Shultze gunpowder factory operated near the pond from the 1860s until the early 20th century. This receptacle was erected to make the postman’s life easier, in the days before delivery vans. It was recently restored by the Forestry Commission.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s roast chicken, savoury rice, breaded mushrooms, tempura vegetables, and salad. She drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the cabernet sauvignon/tempranillo.
Sam and Holly, Malachi and Orlaith arrived today to spend a few days towards the end of their UK trip.
Malachi is a great reader, so his first visit was to the library from which I was happy to pass on to him a selection of books.
Lexulous is the Scrabble-like game I play on line. He wanted to challenge me, so he and Sam needed to work out how to load it onto Sam’s device.
First they operated together.
Mal continued on his own.
One of the advantages of having your opponent across the room is that you can give him the eye when you have him in trouble.
Orlaith broke her arm falling from a climbing frame in Snowdonia, and has become a dab hand at working with just one. Take drawing for example. As she said,0 it was a good thing she hadn’t broken her drawing hand.
She was also able to take over the Lexulous game on Sam’s mobile phone.
Meanwhile Malachi was quick to learn the Bookworm game on Jackie’s p.c.
After this Sam took his son off to the library to practice his violin playing. The music was really very pleasant, as it drifted through the kitchen.
This left Jackie free to help Orlaith build a tower
which, with the addition of the man himself in rodent form and black and white sheep as lions, she announced to be Nelson’s Column.
If there are any glaring errors in this post, my excuse is that the tower, the mice, the sheep, and the numbers board were all transported to my desk where I was encouraged to play with them.
This evening we dined on Hordle Chinese Take Away fare, supplemented by fish fingers, cauliflower cheese, and strawberries and cream. Holly and I finished the malbec, Jackie drank Peroni, and Sam drank Doom Bar.
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It wasn’t until early evening that the clarity of the dawn skies was to be repeated today.
Jackie discovered that the Big Beast had dug its way under her reinforced log last night, further trampled the cyclamen, and knocked over the obelisk. Undeterred, she put back the loose soil and buried more, lower, stakes around the wooden peg.
Elizabeth came for lunch which consisted of cold meats and salads. After this she and I photographed bugs on the diamond jubilee tulips. The first is mine with my Canon EOS 5D;
the next two with my Canon SX700;
and finally, Elizabeth’s with her i-Phone, by which time the bugs had fled.
Later, we took a drive to the north of the forest.
On Flexford Lane in Sway, we needed to wait on the verge for a horse and rider with a cycling escort, followed by a white van, to pass.
The gorse-covered hills below Abbot’s Well at Frogham glowed in the evening light.
Jackie and Elizabeth turned and spotted me photographing them as they stood in the car park.
The colourfully attired gentleman beside them obligingly took his own camera into the landscape, thus providing a foil to my photographs.
As we left, a pony drank from a reflective pool.
As we approached the Cadnam roundabout near the end of Roger Penny Way, we noticed a flock of sheep blocking a turning to our left. As soon as she could Jackie turned around so we could see what was happening. The woolly animals were steadfastly making their way past our car to the aforementioned major road,
where they caused a total standstill.
Looking back down the lane we saw what seemed like the final stragglers,
who picked up speed and galloped in panic after the main group.
In fact they were not the last. Two more had been left behind. We hoped they found their friends.
Further along this lane a very small sow snuffling against a wall, became excited by our presence, perhaps hoping for a chat.
Around the next bend a couple of ducks had taken possession of a watery verge.
One was an Indian runner. We didn’t recognise the other.
Finally, a collection of chickens scampered from the verge when we stopped beside them.
This evening the three of us dined on Jackie’s splendid chilli con carne, savoury rice, and green beans. The ladies drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Malbec.
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Today I continued the scanning of colour negatives made in Cumbria on 18th August 1992, and last mentioned in ‘Welcome To The World’.
We visited a popular boating lake,
on which Jessica rowed our friend Alison Barran.
I have occasionally mentioned my fear of heights. This is described in particular in ‘Vertigo’.
Jessica never gave up trying to get me up mountains. Place Fell, which we scaled on the day in question was a case in point.
A sparkling waterfall fairly near the bottom was not too scary. I could have settled for that.
The cleft in this granite boulder was an example of the rugged nature of the terrain.
Others littered the sloping hillsides on which hikers had trodden a clear path along which Jessica fearlessly strode,
eventually reaching the summit. In order to avoid any misunderstanding I am honour bound to state that
I may just about have managed to stand at a high point to depict her gazing across the lumpy terrain,
but there was no way it would have been perched alongside this marker cairn.
Indeed I felt more than somewhat queasy enough when taking some of these shots on the way up. Note the sheep in the second picture.
Unfortunately most of the compositions did not lend themselves to cropping out the unsightly date stamp.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s Post House Pie served with carrots, green beans, and cauliflower. Dessert was lemon Swiss roll and vanilla ice cream. I finished the Bordeaux.
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This is an extract from the website of Rookin House Farm Equestrian & Activity Centre at Troutbeck in Cumbria:
‘Rookin House is an established adventure venue in Cumbria, the Lake District and has been offering a wide variety of outdoor activities for over 20 years. Family owned and operated, Rookin House has a strong focus on both fun and safety.
The centre is just 4 miles from Ullswater, and 8 miles from both Keswick and Penrith and easily accessible from the A66. All of the activities (unless otherwise stated) are based on one site with Blencathra providing a spectacular Lakeland backdrop.
Whilst we do have self-catering accommodation here at Rookin House, you don’t have to stay on site to take part in activity sessions with us. You don’t have to be part of a larger group either (although minimum numbers do apply to some activities).’
I have photographic evidence that the establishment is at least twenty four and a half years old. This comes in the form of a set of colour negatives made on 17th August 1992. I am not a fan of the facility for dating each frame, but on this occasion it was perhaps fortunate that I didn’t turn it off. When scanning these images today, where possible, I cropped out the offending numbers.
The pictures represent a trip to the quad bike school at Rookin House. Louisa is in the red outfit, and Sam is in yellow. Friend James is barely discernible in his white helmet in the shots including the instructor. It is lovely to see the children’s growing confidence; and interesting to witness the nonchalance of the normally curious sheep.
The three unhelmeted friends posed after the event.
The visit was made during a holiday at Towcett, in a cottage owned by one of Jessica’s cousins. Louisa has fond memories of sleeping on the sofa so she could set the alarm to go off at 5 a.m. without disturbing the rest of us. She would then go to the farm next door, round up the cattle on the farmer’s quad bike, assist with the milking, and bring back warm milk for breakfast.
This evening we dined at Lal Quilla in Lymington. My main meal was Goan king prawns, and Jackie’s was chicken dupiaza. We shared special fried rice and an egg paratha.
The rain pounding the pavement as we left the restaurant was so fiercely vertical as to ensure than what missed us on the way down caught us on the rebound.
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The pale pastel pink and blue skies that Dawn ushered in this morning showed a certain amount of promise. But she was only kidding. Within half an hour or so, she slid a slate canopy over our heads, and steady rain set in.
We paid a visit to Gordleton Barn where we found a new idea for our fireplace. we will ask Baz to vet it tomorrow.
Obviously I made a few more photographs of the artefacts on display.
A tributary of the River Avon runs under Silver Street, the home of the barn.
On one side of the winding road lies Gordleton Mill, the race of which speedily rushed along.
On the other, a couple of woolly sheep snuffled among the sodden leaves.
By late afternoon, the canopy had, albeit temporarily, been retracted, enabling a fine sunset,
tingeing houses on the Isle of Wight, to put in an appearance over Milton on Sea.
A small group enjoyed the shoreline,
others preferred the clifftop.
It is not unusual for Jackie to spot a potential view and sit in the car willing me to turn and see it. This was the case with this boat on the horizon. She yelled at me from her Modus. Naturally, I grabbed the opportunity. Neither of us realised that the vessel was visible approaching the sunbeams in my earlier shots.
For our dinner this evening, Jackie supplemented a second sitting of yesterday’s Chinese takeaway with shredded duck, cucumber, spring onions, and pancakes, with which I drank more of the Chilean Shiraz first opened a couple of days ago.
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On a bright and sunny morning Jackie drove us out to Flexford Bridge to survey the scene that had been waterlogged on our last visit.
These muddy-looking snowdrops had been struggling to keep their heads above water then.
Banks of others lined the verges of
Flexford Lane which offers another view of Sway Tower, otherwise known as Peterson’s Folly.
The numerous catkins no longer bore droplets of rain.
On that earlier day sheep had held the higher ground that led down to the Avon stream;
today they cropped the fields of Bridge Farm.
To reach the livestock I had walked up a pitted byway,
passing a number of derelict sheds,
holes in one of which neatly framed a group of distant trees.
This afternoon Jackie cut back the clematis Campaniflora in the front garden. Unfortunately this climbs on the arch alongside one of the three manhole covers laid along the pipeline to the septic tank that carries our effluent. She decided to check this one. it was full of thick shit and toilet paper soup. She tipped a couple of buckets down it, to no avail. I took over the task and had the bright idea of shovelling out the mess, putting it in a bucket, and emptying it into the last hole. It hasn’t helped, which means there is a blockage between the first two manholes. It seems that the problem stems from inadequate equipment in the guest bathroom above. I deferred the next stage to tomorrow. It always pays to think about a problem. And I was knackered.
Probably everyone knows that unpleasant aromas linger in the nostrils long after you’ve scrubbed up. Today was no exception. It seemed like a touch of sea air was needed to blast the pong away. We therefore drove out to Calshot
just before sunset,
where a sailboarder was wending his way back to his car.
Against the backdrop of Fawley Power Station, boats and buoys rested on the silt at low tide,
whilst geese honked overhead.
This evening we dined on belly of pork served with boiled potatoes, carrots and broccoli. Jackie drank Hoegaarden whilst I drank more of the Cabernet Sauvignon opened a couple of days ago.
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This morning I checked with Owen the chimney sweep that the 20″ swan’s nest baskets available at Gordleton Barn would not be too wide for our chimney, and that Streets ironmongers in Brockenhurst could supply smaller ones if necessary. Jackie and I therefore made a further visit to the barn. Unfortunately Richard’s offerings were too deep.
In order not to have a wasted journey I photographed the hub of the cartwheel that decorates the front of the shop.
In the muddy field alongside Hordle Lane on our way out, my driver, who has eyes everywhere, spotted a group of cock pheasants engaged in a stag party.
This particular farmer is not rambler friendly, but at least he has attached a warning notice to a newly erected electric fence. That is the yellow blob in the foreground above.
From Gordleton, we proceeded to Brockenhurst and Streets, Jackie’s favourite kind of shop. (Yes, that is our car in need of a wash, but it will only become filthy again on one trip around the wet, salted, roads.)
The windows, alone, are most enticing.
There we bought an iron grate of the correct size, and ordered a house name sign.
The burnt gorse and waterlogged terrain near Sway offered yet another scene that would have inspired Paul Nash’s war paintings.
At Flexford, the Avon tributary that flows through the grounds of Gordleton Mill was overflowing so as to provide snowdrops with more liquid refreshment than they would probably have liked.
The stream rushed over and around the banks, swirling around trees and shrubs, and even threatening to bath the horse on higher ground. Fresh green catkins were suspended safely out of reach of the spate.
Sheep on a hillside seemed to be out of harm’s way.
I was rash enough to leave my Canon SX700 HS in the car. Jackie therefore amused herself by taking photographs of me photographing the scene,
and speaking to a woman whose job it was to look after the horses. She carried what I took to be a sack of feed. She confirmed that the river was much higher than usual, and that the land was considerably waterlogged.
Wondering what the Isle of Wight might look like in this rainy weather, we diverted to the coast before returning home. The island was invisible, but the horizon on the edge of the fields presented interesting layers of mist.
Our route up Downton Lane was temporarily blocked by the delivery of two mobile homes to Shorefield Caravan Park. This convoy of very long container trucks was led by a brightly lit escort.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s chicken jalfrezi of which many an Indian chef would be proud; her flavoursome pilau rice with added egg and mushrooms; and vegetable samosas. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Chateau Les Croisille Cahors 2011. This smooth. full bodied, wine was a gift from Shelly and Ron.
