Travel Theme: Architecture

Ailsa has chosen architecture as her theme this week so I’m showing you the mosque at Larabanga, Northern Ghana. It’s said to be 500 years old and the oldest mosque in Africa. I’ve always wanted to see the mosque at Djenne in Mali, supposedly the biggest mud and stick mosque but that will probably never happen, so even on a rainy day I was thrilled to see this one. Of course non-Muslims were not permitted to go inside.

There is a legend about an Islamic trader who discovered the nearby mystic stone

Hoping for a mystical experience - like the rain stopping!
Hoping for a mystical experience – like the rain stopping!

and decided to sleep wherever his spear landed. He dreamt of building a mosque on that very spot and in the morning woke to find the foundations had mysteriously been laid during the night. He saw this as a sign, completed the building and now lies buried under the baobab tree beside the mosque.

What do you think? was the trader the architect?

Join in at http://wheresmybackpack.com/2013/08/09/travel-theme-architecture/

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?

Sonels Black and White Challenge: Upward

I first noticed this new structure on Exeter quay one day in the winter. It had the sun gleaming on it but I didn’t have my camera! I’ve been back a few times since but sadly the light has never been as good. I didn’t know what it was at first but its an abseil tower and part of a new £5million outdoor education and training centre.

Abseil 1

From a distance.

Abseil 2

and a bit closer. Would you jump?

There’s still time to join in with this weeks challenge at http://sonelcorner.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/black-and-white-weekly-photo-challenge-upward/

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.

Scorhill

I hope Scorhill is wild enough for you, but there will be wilder here !http://wheresmybackpack.com/2013/08/02/travel-theme-wild/

 

Teatro Antico Taormina . . .

. . . and some of the views from it!

The theatre was built by the Greeks and then re-built by the Romans, on the side of a hill overlooking Giardini-Naxos and Mount Etna. Originally it could seat 5000 and the Romans used it for gladiator battles, today it is still in use. We had just missed a film festival and the throne in the photo was for the next production, Verdi’s Rigoletto.  I can imagine that it would be mind blowing in this setting. Apparently Plato conceived his theory of forms in the amphitheatre, and it does have a feel about it that somehow grabs at the belly.

Sicily is full of antiquities, but if you go, visit Taormina and the theatre that is part of its ancient heart.