Month: November 2022

Coming Home From The Edge

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It’s interesting but when you are walking about in Much Wenlock, you are very rarely aware of how steeply the land rises towards Wenlock Edge, or of the fact that the town sits in a distinct hollow with other not-so-steep hills rising to the east and south.

In this photo I am walking down from the Edge, following the path that ends up on Sytche Lane, a short hop from our garden gate. We’re lucky to have so many good walks on our doorstep, and mostly field paths, too.

Walking Squares #5 Today Becky is taking a walk close to home.

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Wildegoose Garden’s Sculpture Show

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Real-life rabbits are the last thing this gardener wishes to encounter in her garden, but these terracotta ones by artist Sharon Griffin would be more than welcome. They were spotted back in September when our favourite plant place Wildegoose Nursery (set inside a historic walled garden) hosted a sculpture show by our favourite gallery, Twenty Twenty. It was a perfect match all round: art among the late summer perennials on a dreamy afternoon. And blissful to meander the garden paths and come upon some extraordinary creations. Here is a selection of works that caught my eye.

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Self in stoneware with sgrafitto by Sharon Griffin

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Mitosis: a storm fallen field maple by Glen Farrelly

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Flaunt 2022 powder coated steel by Anya Beaumont

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Starlight Tower in terracotta stoneware by Emma Fenelon

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Insight: stone and bronze resin by Sue Jones

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Walking Squares #4 

Join Becky on her November walks.

Windfall Quinces At The Allotment

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For one reason or another, but mostly due to some serious rainstorms, I had not been to the allotment for several days. When it wasn’t raining, slithering across the field in the mud did not appeal. And then the wind got up. And then just when I thought I’d go, another downpour began. And so it seems that after our too arid  summer, we’re in for a very wet autumn.

But yesterday came the window of opportunity. The morning was almost sunny. We anyway needed some veggies. So wellies on, off I trudged along Townsend Meadow, which is now a green haze of sprouting wheat. The rain is suiting it. It has also been suiting all the field beans spilled during the summer harvesting. They have been pushing up through the wheat, and I noticed yesterday that the farmer has clearly been over the field with his big herbicide sprayer. I find it astonishing that plant-killing chemicals can be so attuned as to know a broad bean seedling from a wheat stem. Anyway, the application is clearly doing its stuff, and the wheat looks fine.

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Up on the plot all is soggy and much blown about, and certainly not at all photogenic. There was lots to gather though – leeks, beetroot, chicory, carrots, and still some tomatoes, lettuce and rocket in the polytunnel. I didn’t stay long. The wind was gusting up into a small gale. You can see what it did to quince crop. The tree this year was laden. It seems a waste not to use the fruit, but apart from quince jelly, which needs loads of sugar, it’s not really a favourite in the Farrell household.

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Townsend Meadow: wheat and field beans (before the spraying)

#WalkingSquares This November join Becky in her daily walks, or whenever you can, the only rule, the header photo must be SQUARE. 

Castle in the Air?

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Does this look real to you?

It doesn’t to me, and I was there, a coupld of days ago on All Hallows Eve, taking this photograph. It’s a view I’ve captured before, but somehow these ruins of Ludlow Castle set high above the River Teme, always manage to look like some idealised Victorian watercolour; or a film set; even dream-like. Yet there was nothing dreamy about the conception of this massive fortification. Its construction began in the 11th century with the sole intention of keeping the Welsh princes in their place behind the nearby England-Wales border.

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It’s other significance, in my mind at least, is that in the winter of 1501 Prince Arthur Tudor, heir to the English throne and Henry VIII’s older brother, spent his honeymoon here. He had married the Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, both of them still in their teens.   You can read more this story here: Honeymoon Destination Anyone?

But in any event, even with the walls intact, and some well tapestried royal chambers somewhere within, it takes a great leap of imagination to consider this an ideal honeymoon venue. Presumably Arthur’s presence  was a political gesture to impress the Welsh neighbours. In any event, it did not end well. It seems that both Arthur and Catherine fell ill with the ‘sweating sickness’, a strange and passing disease of Tudor times. Catherine recovered but by April 1502 Arthur was dead. And the rest, as they say, is history.

My own experience within the castle walls dates back to the late 1960s. It was a summer’s evening and the time of the Ludlow Arts Festival which every year staged a Shakespeare play inside the castle’s massive inner bailey. Open air of course and on very hard wooden seats. My mother had tickets for Shakespeare’s Richard III. It had poured with rain all day, and I (in grumpy teen mode) didn’t want to go. But by early evening the sky cleared and so we set off for Ludlow, armed with cushions and blankets and a flask of coffee.

There was no set to speak of. Only a platform with a throne against the looming backdrop of the bailey walls. Swifts and swallows whisked by overhead, but as it grew dark it was the turn of the bats to swoop and dive around the battlements. And then came Act 5 scene 3 – the night before the battle of Bosworth Field when Richard is visited by the ghosts of all those he has murdered. And out of the shadows, from different spots around the castle walls, echoed the eerie voices. It was thrilling. Unforgettable. And to think I hadn’t wanted to come.

#Lens-Artists: Flights of Fancy  Johnbo has set this week’s challenge. Go see his different approaches for this theme.