I took these just two nights ago at Sidmouth and I think they work!
Join in at http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/one-shot-two-ways/
Wekly Photo Challenge: One Shot,Two Ways
Tag: Devon
Sidmouth Folk Festival, a bit of a dance!
For one week every year at the beginning of August the town of Sidmouth burst into life and at the seams with visitors to the folk festival. There is music, dance, theatre and story telling in venues big and small all over the town. Market traders line the seafront and everywhere is a riot of colour. Here are a few of the photos I took last night.
Another good reason for you to come to Devon!
Synchronicity
I spent today doing a craft fair, one of the regulars in Beer, a lovely unspoilt village by the sea in East Devon. Beer is on the Jurassic coast, a World Heritage site as well as the South West Coast Path, England’s longest waymarked footpath at 630 miles. It gets many visitors, mainly British, but I’ve met many from around the world who have popped in to look for hand made gifts.
I always wonder how someone from America, Australia or China ends up in a tiny place like Beer, cities like Exeter twenty two miles away I can understand, but I suppose it’s no stranger than my visit to https://lucidgypsy.wordpress.com/2013/07/21/an-elusive-gorge-and-a-hill-top-perch/ recently.
A couple of weeks ago in Beer I met a lovely lady who knows Chittle Chattle, we had a good old chin wag and both found it amazing that our paths should cross. Last year I learnt that Lynne Braithwaite Sanders had ancestors just a few miles from me in Kenton and I went to photograph the village for her. These are both surprising but nothing compared to today when two ladies from New Zealand came and chatted to me. I’m nosey and always try to cajole people into telling me where they are from and not being satisfied with ‘the North Island’, I asked which town. Until I began blogging I could have named perhaps four places in New Zealand so when she said the name Tauranga I was amazed and said that I knew some one from Katikati just about twenty miles from there! They told me about the Bay, Waihi beach and Omokoroa and I was able to say that I’ve seen photos from there.
Is it just me that thinks it’s incredible that they showed up in that village hall, eleven thousand miles from home just on the day I was there? What do you think Jo B?
Travel Theme: Wild
Ailsa has chosen ‘Wild’ as her travel theme this week and I’ve chosen Scorhill as my wild destination. The drive up the hill is only around three miles from a little town but it’s steep, narrow and the Devon banks are high some of the way. If you’re lucky and get one of the half dozen parking places then you can walk a little higher before dropping into the valley. At the bottom lies the stone circle in my photo – I’ve never managed to find a way of capturing it so that it looks like a circle I’m afraid. The cirlce is believed to be Bronze age, making it up to four thousand years old but artitacts from eight thousand years ago have been found there.
I hope Scorhill is wild enough for you, but there will be wilder here !http://wheresmybackpack.com/2013/08/02/travel-theme-wild/
Show Off Sheep
A lovely bunch of special, prize-winning, sheep at the Mid Devon Show last week! Any idea which is my favourite and why? 🙂
Lazy Poet’s Thursday Poem
I was inspired by a TV program, A Poet’s Guide to Britain, and so think I might do a Dartmoor series. Of course this depends on how lazy I am . . .
On Houndtor
The glistening granite of millennia
clings like the crest of a dragon
on the horizon beneath a thunder cloud sky
scramble a pathway between and look east
to where a habitation of stone once lay
but now sprinkled like so many marbles
on soil trampled and bovine nibbled
leaving only echoes of medieval voices
causing ears to question when mist descends
to infuse ancient hearth where fire burns no longer
and generations that huddled have migrated
to pleasant valleys far from nature’s scorn
replaced by fair weather wanderers
unaware of those who stepped before
Weekly Photo Challenge: Fresh
Otterton in East Devon has it’s own mill, producing flour and powered by the River Otter. This is real flour, not the mass produced stuff we find in the supermarkets, but artisan quality and very tasty. They mill a few times a month and you can buy it FRESH in standard packs or larger sacks. I actually tried it, freshly milled and delicious.
This is my take on the Weekly Photo Challenge, join in at http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/07/19/weekly-photo-challenge-fresh/
Weekly Photo Challenge: The Golden Hour
I’d pretty much given up on posting this week but I wasn’t too happy with that because I’ve only missed one or two in more than two years. I have very few early morning shots, not because I don’t get up, I just don’t go out. It’s either too cold in winter or dawn is much too early in summer!
Then I remembered an evening on Dartmoor a couple of years ago, when I went especially for the sunset in September. These photos are taken at the same place, within twenty minutes and facing different directions. Somehow they are in reverse order below!
The Fastest Way to Slow Down!
Dave was the skipper yesterday when I went for a trip on the Grand Western Canal, on the last horse drawn barge in the South West of England. He delivered the Health and Safety rules with humour and a broad Devonshire accent. Our horse was Dandy, a 15 year old Clydesdale working his last season, Dave said that he loves cuddle and polo mints – Dandy that is not Dave.
The most frequent question people ask is how the horse manages to pull such a heavy load, with 43 people onboard it weighs 17 tons. Well, once the barge gets moving it has its own momentum and Dave said that we work harder pushing a fully loaded supermarket trolley than Dandy does, so he has an easy life. Dandy himself weighs three quarters of a ton.
The barge has a bar for snacks, drinks and ice cream, womanned by the lovely Katie, they need every penny they can make to keep them going. It is painted in the traditional Barge art, seats 75 and runs trips twice daily from late March to the end of October.
Some of the canal bridges have very narrow towpaths and it can get a bit tight for a large shire horse to squeeze under, they can easily bang their heads on the curve. Dandy has even fallen in, while tractor watching one day, he got a bit distracted and in he splashed. Unfazed though, he swam to the other side, had a bit of a mooch around and then headed back upstream! The canal has several horse, one of their others Taffy, is a bit of a Prima Donna, he has his own Facebook page and has been featured in local and even national newspapers. Dandy is my favourite though and I hope he has a long and happy retirement.
Should you find yourself in Devon, pop up to Tiverton, a nice little market town for a canal trip. It’s a mini escape, a tranquil and silent way to explore. I usually walk along the bank, but yesterday was hot and the barge was so tranquil. There is plenty of wildlife if you are very observant, we only saw ducks, moorhens, damsel and dragonflies and even those evaded my camera – I was too relaxed.
Related posts
https://lucidgypsy.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/grand-western-canal-2/
https://lucidgypsy.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/grand-western-canal/
Travel theme: Simplicity
Morris Minor’s were produced in Britain from 1948 to 1974, as an economy vehicle. There were several versions, saloons, convertibles, an estate with wooden trims and functional little trucks. More than a million and a half were built and they still have huge following. There is an owners club with events and rallies all over the country. I captured this one with my phone camera on Exmouth sea front last night, it was lovely, a real treasure from the days when car engines were simplicity, not a gadget to be seen.
This post is for Ailsa’s Travel theme, join in at http://wheresmybackpack.com/2013/07/12/travel-theme-simplicity/
Lucid Gypsy 