Search Engines For Good

You know how much I love trees. There is, I have discovered, a search engine which promotes the planting of trees. Please do take a look if it's your type of thing. https://www.ecosia.org/ Thank you.

Arilx

Nimby

Ok confession time....I'm a bit of a Nimby when it comes to certain issues. Nothing of any great national importance I should stress on this occasion [I keep my opinions by and large to myself or express elsewhere on the major stuff], but these...gnomes. For a dame who loves to spend her time actively seeking out all the weird and wonderful grotesques etc this might seem like an odd thing to say. There's just something about them which I find vaguely unsettling. No one was more surprised than moi then when Mr GBT revealed that there is a Gnome Reserve down in Devon and I had an overwhelming urge to visit contrary creature that I am😊

What a laugh....a slightly surreal experience, but with a madcap dose of fun thrown in. To get into the whole thing you have the opportunity to choose and then wear your own gnome hat. Needless to say we did and then Mr GBT took his first ever selfie to prove it. We are not the tallest folks on the planet, but that was one giant gnome looming over our shoulders. Naturally we felt it imperative that we shared this image of great beauty with our offspring...he replied with an equally droll comment.

So now I have had the pleasure of viewing lots of gnomes of all shapes and sizes am I a convert?

Nope I remain firmly in the Not In My Back Yard camp I'm afraid.

Arilx

Walk

"Walk" the street art said in Exeter . So always being one to follow an instruction [depending on which way the wind is blowing] walk we did.....across a stretch of Dartmoor.

Dartmoor on a sunny day is a joy to behold .....standing stones from Scorhill stone circle. Unrestored there are 23 still upright. I simply enjoy the process of trying to get into our ancestors' minds and trying to fathom why they selected certain ones over others...was it the shape, size or were they simply hauling over what was nearest to hand. Questions with no answers.

One of the famous Clapper bridges. Believed by some to be Neolithic, it seems more likely that they were Medieval apparently. The river bed was a palette of colourful plants.

Baby swallows. Had the parent bird not swooped in on the wing just as I was there I would have missed this. They had been silent until then but created a massive hullabaloo once they realised food was in the offing.

And this which has been added to my very short list of Most Magical Places. Wistman's Wood. A fragment of ancient woodland with stunted oak trees and an SSI for mosses and lichens. It has been another place I have wanted to see for a very long time and once there, I was able to just perch on a boulder and drink it all in.

Any walk requires tea and cake to revive flagging spirits I find. We retired to the Two Bridges Hotel only to encounter Tony Robinson....I am guessing that maybe he was in the area recording a show, but certainly not the person I expected to see on a quiet mid week afternoon!

Arilx

Tales from the Minster

Wimborne Minster...bursting at the seams with tales from yesteryear and rare artefacts spanning the centuries of its existence.

A roughly hewn Saxon relic box. It must have earnt the church a pretty scillingas. Blimey I'd have paid to see some of Thomas A Becket's blood or the hair shirt of St Francis. They also had a bit of the cross, part of the manger and even apparently hairs from the beard of Jesus himself amongst their treasures.

This corbel is a tiny little thing from the early 1100s. It depicts Moses and as for that natty facial hair I think the competitors in the World Beard Championships could do no better than to look to this for inspiration!

If it's bursts of colour you're after this building has it in spades. From medieval wall paintings [not shown] through to modern day stained glass, many styles from many different periods are represented. The astronomical clock dates from at least 1409 when it first appears in the written records and the quarter hours are chimed by the Quarter Jack on the outside of one of the towers. Originally the figure was a monk, but he assumed his Grenadier Guard persona during the Napoleonic wars.

The man in the wall. Anthony Ettricke was the somewhat eccentric Recorder of Poole and the magistrate who sent the Duke of Monmouth to trial. The good people of Wimborne had offended him and thus he declared he would neither be buried in their ground nor above it. Instead he gained permission to have his tomb placed in a niche in the church wall within his lifetime. He was a chap who knew his own mind and if the scriptures said he would live only for three score years and ten then he was confidently able to have his date of departure of 1693 carved upon his coffin in advance. Unfortunately the powers that be didn't play ball and he lasted another decade. The date had to be amended!

One of the joys Wimborne Minster is known for is its chained library. With only four in the country, it's open a few hours a day for viewing. Holding over 400 tomes and pieces of music many are in excess of 300 years old. The chains are so that the books can be taken off the shelves without damaging the spines and were replaced by the Victorians.

Now you know it had to happen....a post without a spot of carved madness would not make it on to this blog now would it. I've done the sensible stuff so I shall end on a note of silliness and then frankly a bit of downright rudery with the last photo. This one is hidden away in a dark corner high away from prying eyes. Euphemistically apparently it comes under the umbrella of "Male Exhibitionist". Nowt more one can add to that is there really! He is registered as part of the Sheela-na-gig project.

Romanesque bear/dog with rabbit and cat with a rat. 

Acrobat

Arilx

Coffee

I like my coffee medium with milk and no sugar. Expresso is not to my taste, but this witty expresso expression is. Seen in a cafe where once again you might have found me feeding my face with cake!

I am wading through a backlog of photos still.....

Arilx

Exhausted

It's tiring work being a cygnet and winding your parents up all day. This little lot of lovelies were in Wimborne and we'd seen them earlier involved in an altercation with a mallard and her ducklings as to who should pass first on the narrow channel of the river when they met head to head. It will come as no surprise that the swans bullied their way through.

Arilx

It's just not cricket!

When you are invited to perform at a folk festival you are given your slots in advance. Etiquette dictates that you turn up on time, share fairly with any other performers [it's a fantastic chance to see others in action] and don't overrun. Above all else you need to be mindful of the others around you.

Wimborne Folk Festival and this is Hunter's Moon. They are friends of Mythago and the other side which inspired me to get involved in all of this Morris madness in the first place. I should add that they are fabulous to watch.

Part way through one of their dances a very large, very loud marching band decided to strike up at one of the busking spots nearby. Such was their volume that they drowned everything else in the vicinity out. It's imperative that you can hear the beat if you're a dancer. Confuddled we stood there scratching our heads trying to fathom out how we were going to work round this one. It's not for nothing that we are known as The Dark Morris.....

"Please can you help us out in any way you can?" asked the stricken musicians.....why of course we can for Mythago has a secret weapon......the amplifier. Without hesitation we ramped up the amps, banged the drums and shook the tambourines like things possessed.

It had the desired effect though....we made ourselves heard. I really felt for the teams coming on after us as they didn't stand a chance. Appropriate feedback has been given to the organisers to stop the situation from arising again.

As I'm talking about all things Dark Morris related it seems like the perfect excuse to put up Steel Eye Span's song of the same name and another film with sides from our Border tradition [we aren't in it, but it's a jolly little ditty!

Arilx