Saturday, February 27, 2021

A walk in the woods

With the weather being as damp, cold and thoroughly miserable, (or is that me?) we've rather badly neglected the need to walk. Like, walk for some decent time and distance. The ten minute walk to Budgens doesn't really fit the bill, and walking around any of the several nearby blocks of houses soon becomes very boring. But yesterday, the sun was out, the sky was blue, there was not a cloud to spoil the view, so we drove the couple of miles to Heartwood Forest. (Yes, we could have walked that, too, but we were out of practice, and afraid that we might be too zonked to walk back.)

The forest’s 858-acre site rises from what was once mainly agricultural land. It’s so big that it’s now the largest continuous new native forest in England. It's still young, and, apart from an area of ancient bluebell woods, doesn't fit one's normal understanding of a forest. But it's beautiful, and it was a privilege to be there.





This is the best we could do to get a photo of one of the myriad skylarks that could be heard in the trees and hedges all the way along our walk.





A local wood carver was employed to create features along the way. The rabbit in the first photo is one of many wild animals carved out of a tree trunk. This archway is made of huge pieces of local oak, carved with intricate designs.



There are several routes to follow.


Today, the weather's just like yesterday's. I think we'll be visiting the forest a lot for our lockdown exercise now.

This is to remind us what the boat looks like. The way things are at the moment, we just might be able to return to her in April. Roll on!



Tuesday, February 16, 2021

A picture paints a thousand words

So said playwright Henrik Ibsen, but was he exaggerating? A little bit of superbole (rather less exaggerated than hyperbole) gets your attention though, doesn't it? I should know. I'm always, always, always exaggerating. Always.

I think I know a bit about pictures. I've taken over 20,000 of them since I got my first digital camera nineteen years ago. I think a picture may well easily paint dozens of words, maybe hundreds, depending upon the picture and the viewer's imagination. The very gifted could make a whole story, I guess. What picture painted Ibsen's 'A Doll's House', I wonder. Or 'Peer Gynt'? 'Ghosts'?

Since September 24th last year, I've been posting photos on Twitter and Facebook - my profile, Kantara's page, and three boaters' groups - almost every day. 83 of them to date. They're all photos that I have taken - mostly whilst out cruising, almost all of them related to our waterways - and enhanced with software on my laptop. And I've been delighted by people's responses to them. I'm very pleased to say they've proven very popular. To me, they tell stories of places we've visited, things we've seen. They're not long stories, but they're good ones, available to me every time I look at the picture. I wonder what words they paint for other viewers.

It occurred to me today that if I only have them in FB and Twitter, they're going to get lost as they work their way down my list of posts day by day. It also occurred to me that many readers of this blog don't use Facebook or Twitter, so they won't have seen them. For these reasons, I'm posting them here on the blog, and will update them perhaps weekly. 

Here, then, is a gallery of the pictures so far. I do hope you enjoy them. Please comment at the bottom of the page, even if you don't!