To Land’s End… and beyond!

It’s been so busy here with orders and commissions, and as a result I know I’ve been neglectful of my blogging friends – taking an age to reply to comments and not keeping up with my blog reading.  I wish I could say this slovenly state of affairs will improve but in fact they’ll be taking a nosedive as of tomorrow – because I’m going away for three weeks and will have absolutely no internet access in that time. I can’t deny it, I’m thrilled skinny!

First off R and I will be going to Cornwall, camping near St Just on the Land’s End Peninsula. There are many rare wild flowers and insects to be found in the area as well as some great walking and beaches as good as you’ll find anywhere.

After a couple of days exploring this lovely place we’ll be catching the Scillonian III from Penzance to The Isles of Scilly (pronounced “silly”) where we’ll be camping on the beautiful Island of St Agnes, by far and away my favourite of these enchanted islands. A haunt of rare migratory birds (though we’ll be too early for most of those) and carpeted with wildflowers, St Agnes also has the best snorkelling and rockpooling I’ve ever done in the UK – here’s hoping that the sea will be calm and the water clear! And not least because that ferry journey is never anything less than rough… although it’s worth it for the sightings of dolphins, basking sharks and the heart stopping flight of hunting gannets. You can fly across to the islands, but watching dolphins play on the bow wave of the ship and rare birds gliding alongside it is a lot more fun.

So I’m dragging out the field guides, polishing up the binoculars and getting all nerdy at the thought of all that wildlife. I need to take a notebook too, because there will be a lot to remember. And a lot of shells to collect for jewellery making purposes. Oh, and there will be a lot of cream teas to eat, but that’s another story.

Then it’s back home on the ferry and the sleeper train – arriving in London at 7.00 am – and a day in which to unpack, do laundry and make a fancy dress astronaut costume, repack and then catch another train and another ferry to Bestival on the Isle Of Wight! I have to admit I’m a little bit daunted by that bit, but I’ve never failed to have fun at Bestival so it has got to be worth it.

For the Cornish part of my travels I might be able to Twitter, but as we get further from the mainland on the ferry journey to Scilly the phone signal will start to fade out and I probably won’t have any reception at all once we reach the islands. So it will be a genuine break for me – in a place where technology cannot follow. I can hardly wait.

PS:- It’s possible that if you leave comments after Friday morning they will not show up for a very long time, as I will not have a chance to moderate them. I do love geting comments though, so if you leave some for me anyway it will be a lovely thing for me to come home to.

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No colour clashes in nature

I’ve never believed in the concept of clashing colours. In nature colours just pile up one on top of one another, riotous and random. A coral reef displays a screaming disregard for colour theory, and wildflower hedgerows in June throw together the most eye poppingly brilliant colour combinations. An overcast, thundery day can reveal brilliant unearthly greens, roiling clouds coloured in bruised shades  shot through with piercing veins of delicate rose pink, silver and gold.

Nature, of course, isn’t doing this deliberately. Heathen that I am, I know that there isn’t anybody out there selecting these fine colours for me to savour; it is all random, and much the better for it. Whenever I find a person who is timid with colour, I’ll always point them to nature and remind them that all you need is the courage to choose boldly and you will never go wrong.

However, in a hedgerow coming down from Woon Gumpus common last week I saw a colour combination so startling that for a moment it threw my pet theory into doubt. A brilliant crimson fuchsia, gone wild and living riotously in a dry stone wall surrounded by red campion and foxglove provided such a violent combination of colours that it was genuinely hard to look at. In the murky light of an overcast day the foliage glowed a deep and peculiar viridian, all the better to show up the screaming blooms.

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