These blogs are mainly travels and visits in the South West, but they may take place elsewhere. They are usually about a special kind of place, but that will be different for different people. If we are lucky it will be where we live, if not we may spend time getting to where the poetry of place happens for us, it could be beaches, cafes, moor.
And we need to have to have the means to get to where a poetry of place happens to us. There’s buses, trains, bicycles, on foot…
WISTERIA
The West Country
Blog by Lynne Pearl
It is a sign of Spring, and it is on the front of the Castle. It hangs like a mauve mist. All winter the castle stands folorn and wet and shrouded in mist or fine drizzle sometimes buffeted by high winds, but now the blush of mauve creeps over the port cullis and the flagstones. It curls and frames all the windows and reaches to the sky and the crenelated roof tops.
I felt dedicated to taking photos of magnolias because they are so splendid and brave in the wind and the rain, so extravagantly glorious in the face of human folly. I would wander the morning streets of Devon fascinated by the steadfastness of the magnolia trees. They were obviously old and venerable but somehow knew how to with stand the storms a the sea, lashed by rain, more and glorious.
A few days later, we have had snow every day for three days straight but it melts by the afternoon most of it. But the light is magnificent and the moon in the clear night sky is full and very bright.
It is the end of the year and instead of a forest of Christmas trees as I had expected to write about, the sun has that winter brilliance like crystal and the sea is brittle, hard and bright.
In winter the sea has a soft quality that is not there in summer, it is as if it is resting until the next storm that is. Sometimes we have huge waves and there is roller upon roller chasing in to shore, but most folk will not go in it. We stand, watch and feel its magnificence. And today it is calm and beautiful like a sapphire that you would wear as adornment.
We went to see Bickleigh castle a whole coach load of us, in a small coach that was full with twenty adults out for the day. Our kind driver drove us first of all to Bickleigh Mill, where there was a long stop for a leisurely lunch. It was a cloudy day with puddles everywhere but it was crowded and warm inside.
When everyone had eaten their fill, we set off again, this time to cross the river by that wonderful old stone bridge that inspired Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge over Troubled waters’ so evocative of faithfulness and loyalty. We weren’t going to explore the inside of the castle but roam the grounds.
We had the local agricultural show. There’s a showground on the edge of town, several big fields that are very nearly flat and we had nearly everything. There were the ancient tractors, a whole class in their own right. In fact, just yesterday I saw a notice for a tractor race of sorts hanging on a hedge in Somerset there was going to be a competition on a nice big flat field. It was all for charity and was this coming Sunday. All the old tractors can come out for that. In fact ,in some of the big agricultural shows they a have ploughing competitions and there are still chaps who hitch up a team of heavy horses to demonstrate how it’s done, with a team and very fine the horses look too and what a skill to be able to guide those horses and plough straight in a field. Wonderful to watch.
We also had brass bands and dancers and majorettes. There were the classes of prize bulls of the different breeds, wonderful animals, highland, small and sturdy, dark and with huge horns and the elegant white bull, a beautiful specimen. Then in the stalls outdoors waiting were the sheep, every kind of sheep you can imagine. Curly haired, smooth, black, highland, Dorset they go on and on, the breeds of sheep all specialists in their class.
THE ORCHARD DIARY 3rd Month
May 9 25
Blog by Lynne Pearl
The trees are more awake in fact I think they are now just about fully awake. It’s quite exciting.
They have realised it’s time to wake up.
Poetry on Spring from my ‘Devonheart’ A Collection: a tribute to my home:
DEVON MID AFTERNOON
Butterflies crowd,
Flying from the hedges,
Brown wings
Settled against green blackberry leaves
And mauve blossom.
A cow with a star on her forehead
Gazes with dreamy eyes
And the sheep munch,
Woolly faced,
Staring in unison
And the white cow on the hillside
Stands ready to climb.
Beside the lane
Lie cottages, door ajar
With armchair ready
And a sleeping gnome
Lays against the cottage wall.
A straw owl
Stares down at passers by
On new yellow thatch.
by Lynne Pearl
This orchard though is part of what must surely have once been a grand farm. The trees are pollarded so that when the apples ripen they don’t have very far to fall and in fact standing under the branches one just reaches up and there you are, all the apples you could want. But does anyone eat these apples anymore?
So I am going to keep an account on these trees and their summer and winter. I’ve never had an orchard before, and although it isn’t strictly speaking mine I see it often, as I go by on the way to something else, a meeting, a piece of work a day of teaching. So this way I can keep track of growth and change over a year
With this back drop we all boarded the Tram at Seaton Tramway. Some of the trams are original ones from the 1920s and some are a little newer. The trams run on the line that used to be served by British rail until 1960s when the line that went all the way from Axminster to the sea at Seaton was closed. In its day it had served the farmers who produced milk in the region and shipped the fresh produce in milk churns to the people in the cities far away. There was also a cottage industry producing fine leather for factories.