Robert Louis Stevenson in 1885 wrote, in ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses.’ :
From a Railway Carriage
‘Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches…
Category: Travels in the South West
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…
Bude, Cornwall in Winter
The wind is everywhere and the sky is over and above and the turf under your feet on the headland is springy. From here, there is a flag pole, and monument that tells you how far it is to the nearest land, and where. It is North America with thousands of miles of sea between. There is the fullness and the emptiness.
Its’ beauty just goes on and on and the world and any cares no longer exist and there is just this beauty and then not even that, just infinity and peace.
Light Show at Salisbury Cathedral
Sarum Lights at Salisbury Cathedral: Son et Lumiere Show beautiful in the dark night of November.
The Hundred Guinea Oak
We went to the Vyne and the house and gardens were lovely, but there was also the Thousand Guinea Oak, which is still there and in good dark green leaf, six hundred and fifty years old. It was safe, given special food and tested for atypical winds. Through time it has hollowed out and is now home for many creatures.
Okehampton Station Re-Opened
We have a line opened full time for all from Exeter all the way through to Okehampton. It has a real station again, not a picture postcard but an active service line that takes people from the heart of Dartmoor and the beaches of North Cornwall back to the beating heart of civilisation via a train. It can take them home to jobs and all that entails in the South and South East of England. It’s doable now and the community must be glad.
SPRING AT WOOLHAMPTON
There is also an Old Man Willow here that is just beginning, as if he heard the notes of Spring and decided to put a push on but then hesitated and is now waiting for a better moment. So the leaves are very gently there, of the palest green. Underneath is the perfect bench for looking at the tiny fronds that are the beginning, just like us.
Snow
From up here we can see fields of white, black trees, hedges, fences, stark in the early morning. There is a tunnel of winter wonderland trees. All the trees are adorned in white as if by a paintbrush, the hedges outlined in white. It’s a joy to see such beauty and be awake so early. We stop at the crossroads at the height of the hills, Seaton is one way and Sidmouth another. The pub up here in this desolate spot is the Hare and Hounds, sitting square to the crossroads.
Snowdrops : Sign of Life
Snowdrops: Sign of Life: There are snowdrops at the foot of a hedge. They are like dots of light.
Later, another day in Somerset, there are snowdrops in an ancient apple orchard in Street. It is snowdrop season and Spring is on its way.
Christmas Tree Festival
Blog by Lynne Pearl DECEMBER’ 22 CHRISTMAS TREES It’s the close of the year and so we have Christmas tree festivals. There used to be ones in every major church in times gone by, but this year there was one in Crediton where they do a splendid one. They have a splendid church to have…
Autumn Sea Storms
Living by the sea autumn brings storms Autumn is about trees and leaves changing colour but also when you are really close to the sea there are other things that are happening too. Autumn means storms and the sea changing. It used to be that one would turn up with swimsuit and towel, ready to dive under the waves and swim as far as possible,