photography
A Sea Full Of Sky
What a blessed scene. We could scarcely believe our eyes – a sea so still, so blue, and sky to match; the Great Orme slumbering on the horizon, and all this happening just last week on the Menai Strait, North Wales.
I love winter beaches whatever the weather, but this vista seemed to awaken a whole new plane of perception. I could see why the Celtic Druids made Ynys Mon their stronghold. You never do know what the light will do next. It is transporting.
The little boy and his dad seem caught up in the magic too. So it’s a good thing that the Great Orme is slumbering; for this Viking name for the limestone headland means sea serpent, and we don’t need him abroad disturbing the tranquillity.
It’s an odd thing, though, about that particular promontory. The weather along the Strait may be foul, but more often than not, there’s a beam of sunlight slanting down on the Great Orme. Perhaps it is all part of an enchantment that keeps the mighty serpent dormant. Sleep on, Great Worm. Dream and dream between sky and sea.
Thursday’s Special This week Paula has given us five words to fire up our New Year imaginations. I’m using two of them here – the sea permeated with sky colours, and the limpid waters of Menai Strait. Follow the link to find out more and to see Paula’s fine photos.
Llanddwyn Bound ~ Crossing To The Isle Of Lovers
It was blowing a gale, wind like ice on our faces. But that did not stop us – nor a hundred like-minded souls, all intent on the secular pilgrimage of walking off Christmas Day excesses, giving the family dogs a much needed airing, and heading to Llanddwyn Island while the tide was on the ebb. Anyway the sun was out, the light crystal bright, and the mountains of mainland Wales across Menai Strait looking their dreamy best. So why wouldn’t you head for the sea shore.
Newborough Beach was positively crowded. Not only that, the sands were coming to meet us as we set off to the island. It was the strangest experience, which along with eyes full of wind-tears played havoc with one’s perceptions. It was rather like going backwards on a forward moving pavement.
And so at this point, seeing a chap on a bicycle seemed most surreal. But then why not ride your bike on the beach? So much space. No grouchy motorists on your tail. All that sand for a soft (well soft-ish) landing.
I’ve written about Llanddwyn (roughly pronounced ‘hlanthwin’) Island before. We were here two years ago, on Christmas Day, but then the tide was too high for us to reach the island.
In fact it is not an island at all, but a long, slender peninsula, poking out into the Irish Sea like some dragon’s tongue. And it was here that St Dwynwen, daughter of a Welsh king, withdrew from the world to form a convent. This was in the fifth century, around the time that Roman rule in Britain was coming to an end. You can read her story at the link above, although there are many versions, and they mostly have to do with spurned or thwarted love, and so are used to explain how she came to be the Welsh patron saint of lovers. Her day is celebrated each year on 25th January.
During the Middle Ages, as poets and pilgrims were drawn to Llanddwyn Island, so the accounts of their visits helped grow Dwynwen’s reputation for mystical powers of healing and divination. Even her well was said to be inhabited by sacred eels, and through the cunning reading of their movements, you might predict the future. On the other hand, if the waters boiled up during your visit you could be assured of love and good fortune.
We, however, were not enticed from the path to see this for ourselves. A very pungent odour wafting our way suggested something had died there. Perhaps the sacred eels? Instead we took the cliff path and enjoyed the thrill of stepping out above a stormy sea.
There is anyway much to explore on this small promontory. At every point, as the sea recedes, there are enticing coves – some rocky, some sandy. There are many man-made features too: a Celtic cross of nineteenth century vintage, another marking Dwynwen’s death in 465 C.E. There are the ruins of a Tudor church built on the site of Dwynwen’s own church which she apparently built herself from beach stones, and so doubtless did not stand the test of time and wild Welsh weather. There is also a beacon, a lighthouse and three cottages built for the lighthouse keepers and their families. In the nineteenth century the export of Welsh slate was a thriving industry, and the lighthouse served the slate ships in particular, keeping them off the dangerous Menai Strait sand bars.
On the long walk back up the beach, the wind was behind us. Now we were walking with the moving sand. But it was still a very odd experience.
Early Morning On Menai Strait
Happy New Year Everyone
There may be dark days ahead, so I’m sending out some magic light in advance.
Keep it somewhere safe.
It’s A Beautiful Small World ~ In My Garden In 2016
My antidote to some ugly human happenings around the world this year.
From Much Wenlock with love.
Sometimes In Life It’s Hard To Know Which Way Is Up
Last Thursday Paula at Lost in Translation gave us two weeks to come up with a conceptual photo. I’m afraid my brain is a bit sluggish at this time of year, so this is the best I could conjure. However, I did enjoy playing on our spiral staircase. Our cottage being an 1830’s square extended into a 2001 rectangle, has two sets of stairs – one either end of the house, and both of them hopeless when it comes to moving items of furniture from one floor to the next. Also Graham and I go round and round the house missing one another. And then, just sometimes, I move so fast, he thinks there are two of me, simultaneously upstairs and downstairs. In fact recently he spotted me in triplicate. I’m not sure which of us should be the most worried by this phenomenon.
The stairs in the photo are in the corner of our kitchen. You might just be able to spot the oven gloves. An unintended inclusion, if matching.
All Things Must Change ~ Frosted Lily
Only on December 11th did I cut down the last of these lovely shell-pink lilies. They have been putting on a good show since September, the flowers opening day after day, and new buds forming. This is pretty impressive for a plant that is native to southern Africa where its red version goes by the name of Crimson River Lily.
Schizostylis coccinea was its botanical name, but it has now been reclassified as Hesperantha coccinea. Go to this link if you want more information on how to grow it. I have found it a most obliging plant, requiring little attention, though I gather it likes to be moved around the garden every few years. It comes in a range of coral and pink shades, and makes very pleasing clumps that can be easily divided in spring.
Here’s how it will look next September. Doesn’t it make you smile?
Cee’s Flower of the Day Please visit Cee for more blooming marvels. Or go there to post a floral link to your own.
December Apples And Other News From The Allotment
These days it is usually dusk as I leave the allotment. I go there late afternoon to pick kale, carrots and parsnips. It has been too wet underfoot to do much work (our soil turns to glue in winter rain) but I have been making paths between the raised beds and behind the polytunnel. For the permanent paths I have laid membrane, for others whose location I may change, I’ve put down recycled cardboard. Then I’ve been covering both with wood chippings.
These last I am currently scavenging from a big heap left by the council beside the footpath not far from the allotment. It means a longer walk from the house. Instead of going south along the field path, I strike out west up the Sytche, where I fill two bags from the heap and then slither my way along a hedgerow track and into the wood before I can turn east and drop down on to the allotment. All a bit daft I know, but you get a fine view of the town along the way.
Back in the summer I was gathering chippings from the Linden Field and using them in a no-dig experiment. When I took over the polytunnel a couple of years ago, I also acquired half a plot that had been neglected for several seasons. Some of it I cleared by digging until I saw the error of my ways. The rest I divided into terraces using old planks, and then instead of hacking at the pernicious weeds (dandelion, buttercup, couch grass), I buried them in cardboard and several inches of chippings.
This is not fool-proof. You can’t keep a good weed down. And I’ve had to pull up a few young dandelions since, but they are easier to get a grip on through the chippings.
Eventually, when the worms and fungi have done their work, I should be able to plant into this mulch. Thereafter, it will be a matter of adding more layers of compost. AND NO DIGGING.
Now is also the season of leaf gathering. They do take a good year to eighteen months to rot down, though someone told me you could speed up the process by stirring in some grass mowings. The leaves I gathered last year are already breaking down into lovely crumbly loam which I’ll use for seed sowing in the spring. Leaf mould is low in nutrients, but it can be enriched with the addition of shredded comfrey leaves that rot down very quickly.
I make simple silos out of a rolls of chicken wire, but you can use black bin bags or leaf sacks.
And now I’ve lingered here long enough. The light is going, and it’s time to walk home across the field, the dusk lit by apples like lanterns along the allotment fence.
Of Rivers Running Backwards And Looping The Loop
Last week I took you on a walk along Wenlock Edge behind our house, and talked about the melting ice fields of the last Ice Age (around 15,000 years ago), and how the River Severn that once flowed north, started to back up against the limestone ridge of Wenlock Edge and so formed Lake Lapworth. And then I said how the expanding melt waters worked their way through the rock wall, and so formed the Severn Gorge, and at the same time created a whole new southerly course for Britain’s longest river. Well, this is where it all happened – at the northerly end of Wenlock Edge.
Off to the left of the photo, and out of shot, is the old Ironbridge Power Station. It’s coming up next in a ‘zoomed in’ shot.
The power station stands on the riverbank at the entrance of the Gorge, and below Benthall Edge, and thus marks the spot where the Severn first headed south. And just to orientate you further, dead ahead to the left of the power station is Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale, and to the right, and below the power station is the road to Much Wenlock. You can just see the house roofs along it. Benthall Edge is thus a southerly spur striking off from Wenlock Edge.
Like Wenlock Edge, Benthall Edge is also composed of limestone strata formed around 400 million years ago when both Edges were part of the Silurian Sea. From the early 1200s the monks of nearby Buildwas Abbey had the rights from Lord Benthall to quarry the limestone, which they burned in kilns to make fertilizer for their farm fields, and lime mortar for building. They also cropped the woodland along Benthall Edge to make charcoal.
In later centuries the Benthall limestone was used in local blast furnaces, tipped in with ironstone, and when fired, acted as a flux which drew impurities from the metal. This was tapped off as slag, and the resulting molten iron cast into ‘pigs’ on the furnace floor. The pig iron was then shipped on to the forge to be worked further into wrought iron, a more durable product than cast iron, which has a tendency to fracture. So now, if you can picture it, see that little stretch of the Gorge by the power station thick with sulphurous smoke, and hear the whole place banging and clanging with forge hammers.
These days Benthall Edge is a tranquil place of hanging woodland and winding paths, although you can still spot the remains of old quarries among the trees. The ‘Lime Trail’ information leaflet of the Severn Gorge Countryside Trust provides an extraordinary statistic about the quarrying. It says that over a period of 750 years an estimated 1.2 million cubic metres of limestone was removed from the Edge. So there we have it: landscape formed both by human and natural agencies – though I’m wondering how that piece of man-made intervention was calculated.
But now to get back to the other feature of note at this spot – the River Severn’s meanders between the villages of Buildwas and Leighton.
I’ve not really done it justice, this looping riverscape formed by silting on the one hand, and erosion on the other; an oxbow lake in the making. I think I probably needed to climb a tree to achieve a better panorama:
It is of course a favourite viewpoint for geography fieldtrippers, and a very fine place to linger, although not for too long on a winter’s afternoon, however bright and beautiful.
As we headed home, the December sun was lighting up cascades of Old Man’s Beard along the roadside; the trailing seed heads of wild clematis making their own festive streamers. Caught here through the car windscreen. (I wasn’t driving).
November Sky With Crab Apples
Crab apples as caught in yesterday’s afternoon sun. There’s a bit of story here too. This year the fruit on our Evereste crab apple tree is absolutely tiny, nothing like the giant size suggested by the photo. But this is good, because it makes us think that the tree has survived being moved back in the early summer. Hurrah! It has produced fruit, albeit apples of elfin proportions.
All through last winter we had ummed and ah-ed about doing something so rash and ruthless as digging up this lovely little tree. I had planted it not long after we moved to Much Wenlock ten years ago. It was the star of an ugly and awkwardly large, raised bed at the back of the house. (You’ve probably seen the crab apple/blossom photos in earlier posts).
In the end we decided to risk it. Graham pruned back much of the top growth, and then effectively dismantled the flower bed around the roots while I dug a big hole at the top of the garden. The transplanting all had to be done double-quick. Then we firmed it in, stamped on the soil to get rid of any air pockets, and gave it lots of water. The final proof of success will be next spring. Will it ever flower again? I think it will.
