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.

Not tame at all

I’ve loved old fashioned fairground carousels since I was three years old and got taken to see the steam fair that pitched up on the fields near our home.  The looming, gaudily painted creatures mounted on their shining poles were magnificent and other worldly and totally alive. Choosing one to ride was not to be taken lightly; the gorgeous colours were not enough to go by. Staring up at the faces of each fabulous beast I felt almost as if I was being chosen by the horse, and the sense of recognition when we found each other is surely something every child would understand. These horses are elemental beings; it really wouldn’t do to get the wrong one.

I still love carousel rides, but as an adult it feels different – tamer, and more nostalgic. There is still a sense of recognition when I find the horse I want to ride but they don’t feel quite so alive as they once did.  Their ornate beauty (as marvellous and fine as any Hindu temple carving) is wooden and oddly stilted; they are the product of a master artisan, nothing more.

And if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. I took my ride and then took some photographs, expecting to capture nothing more than the lurid, glossy creatures that most of us grown-ups see. But when I checked the pictures I found in some of them the carousel horses of my childhood galloping across the screen, wild and exhilarating and most certainly not tame at all.

Brighton Birthday

It was R’s birthday this week and we set off for Brighton beach with a bottle of pink Champagne to celebrate. It was bright and cold and the shingle beach was dry enough to recline on, which we did while picnicking and quaffing our heady pink drink. Brighton fascinates me – known affectionately as “London on sea” for it’s urbane sensitivities, you would think that beyond the occasional gang of feral kids there is little wild about the place. However anywhere coastal cannot ever be completely tame, and there are some wildlife marvels to be had there by anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. I’m saving my favourite wonder for a later post, and for now I hope you like my picture diary of what we got up to.

We stayed on the beach till dusk, watching the seagulls and surfers (not much surf, they were using paddles to get around!) and dogs and little kids. It had been an empty blue sky till the sun started to go down, when obligingly lots of dramatic clouds appeared. It was beautiful, especially as living in such a built up area I rarely get to see such an open sky.

Two fabulous things happen at dusk, and you want to be actually standing on the pier to get the most out of them. One is that the lights on the funfair come on, and in the half light once the sun’s gone down it looks its garish and trashy best.

The other is actually far more beautiful and exciting, and that is when the resident, many thousands strong flocks of starlings arrive to roost. I’ve tried several times to capture this in photographs and on film but it is impossible to do it justice. I’ve seen people run out of buildings in astonishment to watch as the screeching wheeling flocks descend like a tornado. Have no doubt that when I have enough material to even try and capture this I will be covering it properly.

I love Brighton Pier because it seems to have the best and worst of humanity written in big bright gaudy lights but the natural world has just as big a slice of the action, and the movements of those tiny birds upstages anything we mere humans could ever dream up.

Once the birds have installed themselves chattering and whistling beneath our feet on the structure below, what could be better than a ride on the carousel.  Those brightly painted horses might be made of wood but with the lights twinkling and the swirling movements of the ride they seem just as alive as any of us.

As I say I’ll be writing more about the starlings soon, so keep reading!

Bucket ‘n’ spade weekend

It’s been a wildly busy week with the launch of the shop, but in a couple of hours time I’ll be jumping on a train to the south coast to visit some friends who live there. I can’t wait to get onto the beach even though the weather will probably be decidedly autumnal. I need the rest, the exercise, the fresh air; I need to be outside. My friends live in Swanage, and every time I’ve walked along the cliff tops there I’ve seen peregrine falcons, so there’ll hopefully even be a bit of nature watching in store. Bliss! Plus, I get to beachcomb. I’m hoping to find some beautiful driftwood to craft with. I never switch off when it comes to finding new materials – never.