PhotocatsEyes

The farmed fishy stuff...

I had no idea they farm trouts. I could not call on an image in my mind of trouts standing neatly in rows on a field. Or maybe swimming in little baskets on a row. How does one farm trouts?
Simple, they have huge concrete bassins, and a lake, and that is where it all happens.

Someone takes the eggs of the furtile momma fishes, the eggs are posted in the beginning bassin, where they hatch (not sure if fish eggs hatch...)
As they grow they are put in bigger and bigger bassins, to end up in the biggest one, where then the eggs will be harvested.

We did see some HUGE fish... I think that some of them could weigh up to four kilo. 8 Pound. Good size...

And if I would have had my polarizer filter, I could have shot the fish with no glare, if you shoot in water, the polarizer acts like a magic wand, taking the glare away and showing you only the content of the water. Not this grey-yellow muddled image you see above.

We were lucky the day we visited the farm, as a guy was just feeding them. Not an ordinary thing to do. Imagine a 50 kilo bag with pink pellets, he takes out a huge scoop and throws it in the water, and life becomes hectic.

Fish almost jump out of the water, splashing and more splashing, Big shadows under water, I would not put my finger in, the biggest ones could easily hold your thumb in their mouth. I know they don’t have teeth, but why take a risk?

They are lovely animals, with red coloured bellies, elegantly moving in a ballet like way in the water. They seem to have fun. I bet they have their own trout conversations.
With a lot of gossip... When huge crowds are around, gossip is what happens. And strong peer pressure. No kidding.

On the lake side, when the fish start to splash out of harmony, the ducks soon arrive, with food pellets in their eyes. They know that food is around and want their part of it.
They don’t mind it is fish food. Ducks have simple reasonings. I heard one say : “If it’s good for the fish, it’s good for us. After all, the fish eat the pellets, we eat the fish, so we can aswell directly go for the pellets, as fish often give us heart burn”.

If I ask the fish feeding man about war zones he answers me that fish and ducks live together, but the biggest trouts dare go for a duckling when it is just out of the duck maternity. I can hear the soundtrack of “Shark” in my mind. Watch it ducks, see the black shadows? They will come after you...

All of a sudden I notice a strange little beaked thingie on the water. Tiny, with a pointy beak, greyish white feathers. Hmm, not a duck for sure. What is it?
The answer swims a couple of seconds on starboard.

I wonder if they are water hens. I have seen those tuccedo wearing birds before, but never before a young one. Very nice.
Dressed to kill... We all know that a sharp dressed man is what we want.

A duck comes up to me and tells me to not pay too much attention to the tux ones... They are vain enough already as it is.
“We, the normal ducks have a far better character, even if we are slightly underdressed...”

We follow the feeding guy to the biggest bassin, with the monster swimmers. HUGE...

It’s not nice when the food hits the water surface. The otherwise calm trouts change in to pellet eating killing fish. It’s for the fast ones.
The food has no time to sink to the bottom. It’s war between ducks and fish again...

The feeding guy is done, he has been feeding for four hours, and that happens twice a day, I do not envy his job.

He tells me en passant that the biggest are almost ready for eggs. They will be taken to the white house on the other side of the lake, get sedated, and their eggs harvested.
When waking up, they have no clue of what happened, an alien process really. Before they get sold to whoever wants trouts. Fishing clubs, nature reserves, they all stock up on trouts in this tiny village.

I wonder how they sedate fish, does each one of them gets a little IV hooked up, laid flat on a table, with surgeons around?

Nope, feeding guy spills the beeeeenzzz: they pump a mild sedative in the water, so the fish are loopy for a short time, they pick them out, harvest the eggs - don’t ask - I did not want to know how the harvesting goes - and by the time the sedation has worked off they are back where they were before. In the big bassin, fighting for food again...

He hastens to add that trout are very very sensitive, they don’t want upset fish, and that is the reason why they treat them with the utter most care.

Sigh, I know so much and at the same time I know nothing... The world still has so many things that I have not seen or heard off, it’s true: travels make you smarter.
Before Mr Wonderful found me I used to travel with books, nicely hampered up under a blanket in my living room. The real travel is appealing though.
I love it. And now I can stripe off “visit trout farm” of my bucket list...

Mr Wonderful ends the visit with a trout salad... I go for a jacket potato. We will be on our way soon to another little corner of the Cotswolds.

Later!

Trouts and an Asian couple...

From Bourton we moved on to see more of the Cotswolds. They were in reality totally different of what I had imagined when I used to read about them years before.
In my thoughts I saw one village, with all the roofs thatched, which is not reality. There are a lot of thatched, but not all...
Before getting on the road again I need to share two more pics of the village inside the village. The church... (and yes, it is the miniature version)

As I forgot that I did have one photograph of the inside, modelled too...

Sadly enough the inside is covered with a sheet of bad plastic, so the wipes and stretches you see are the plastic sheet.
It is mind boggling that the person who made this took the time to carve tiny wooden benches, and a little organ, a culpritt, truly a small work of art. Big in its smallness.
On this image I want to leave Bourton. Both Mr Wonderful and myself share the good feelings we had by visiting this town. A must...

Decisions had to be made... Where to go next in this fairy land. We picked Bibury, in the South of the Cotswolds. I wanted to go and see Arlington Row.
The name in itself has a good feel. A cosy something. It must be the Row extension. Row means you have neighbors, you are living in a community.
We did arrive in Bibury and parked the car alongside a river. Clear water, we could see the bottom and the fish and other things floating.

It reminded me a bit of Manet’s Garden in Giverny. It’s probably the similar bridge as in Giverny. With a weeping willow behind it. Just like France.

A teenage swan is cruising, slowly, looking hopeful to get some food. The bad side of having tourists: ducks and swans start to depend on them for food.
I know this is a teenage swam as some of its feathers are turning white, from brown for toddlers and baby swans. This one is thinking about leaving childhood and grow up.
It meant that he left his parents. On its own in life now...

Bibury is a true Cotswold village. Saggy cottages, with heavy slated roofs. The beams inside creaking under the weight of centuries.
If I would win the lottery, and become disgustingly rich, I would build myself a cottage like the ones we encounter on our walk around town.

We walk along further next to the babbling water, and a mother duck is trying to keep her kids together. They are trying to swim upstream, which is no problem for mom, but the little ones only have small paddles, and a bit of current takes them back if they are not careful.
I hear her talking to the bunch...

“come on kids, paddle... Ricky, try to stay straight...
Andy, come on, you can play later...
Mickey, stop teasing your sister...
Leana, quit whining.
Mickey, second warning, on 3 you have time out: stop teasing your sister.”

“but mooo...”

“No buts, stop teasing your sister, why? Because I am the parent and I tell you to stop!”

Sigh, it’s no different, raising duck children or raising human children. This duck mother tugs at my heart. She is guiding her kids, no anti authority games, that do not work in the long run. With her I believe in rules, boundaries and limitations. I am totally on her side.

We walk on, the duck family finally gets to the other side of the bridge. We are heading towards Arlington Row. I see a row of cottages, leaning on each other. The kind of housing that makes my heart melt.

The picturesque Arlington Row cottages were built in 1380 as a monastic wool store who got converted into a row of weavers' cottages in the 17th century. The cloth produced there was sent to Arlington Mill on the other side of Rack Isle. The cloth was then hung on wooden timber frames on Rack Isle after being degreased at Arlington Mill. Arlington Row is probably one of the most photographed Cotswold scenes. Figures... Guess who is in front of us?

Look at the right in the above photograph... Next to Mr Wonderful are the Japanese couple, the lady again posing for a couple of weavers cottages. It’s a small world.

This must be a house that was designed with me in mind. Even if I only got born five centuries later. I could so easily picture me living in one of the cottages.
Sipping a cup of tea and a small fire in the fireplace. Who cares about the windows not being double glazed, and probably freezing in winter. Unless they would have put in central heating. Not evident, as the row is listed Grade two. Which means as much as leave it as it is, don’t alter anything. I am not sure if I could live like a weaver in the seventeenth century. I do need internet and central heating. I am a luxuary gal. And I need a washing machine and linen dryer. Oops, just ran out of space...

But then we have the Laura Ashley fabrics to use for curtains... Laura Ashley against Herr Miele... Hmmm, difficult choice!

If you would enter this tiny door into my living room you would see my big brown cupboard against the facing wall. With books. And china. I love china. My 375 cups and saucers... and 200 specialty coffee mugs... Guess I will never end up in a small cottage unless they make me.

Arlington Row is one of the highlights of our Cotswolds tour. Too bad it is only seven or eight cottages, the row should have been 45 cottages...

We walk towards the old mill, and see the Row vanish behind tall grasses on the island. In front of the cottages there is an island, the river splits on two around it, which explains the two bridges in town.

The mill is for sale, now, see, that one would fit me. With all my china, books and speciality coffee mugs. I even could have a studio and an office. Mr Wonderful could have an office on the other side of the hall way.
We would love the sound of the water wheel turning in the river on the side of the house... Yep, I can see it. Except we do not have 1.400.000 pound to buy the thing...

We are ready for a visit to the Trout Farm, next to the mill. I am not fond of fish, and certainly not of river fish with more bones then anything else, but I do not mind go in and take a peek at how they farm trouts.

Never thought that trouts were actually farmed... More later! If you don’t like fish, wait a day to come back to this blog as tomorrow will mostly be about fish...

Later!!!

A village in a village

Truly. A bit of a weird thing. When I snapped the owl in the cranny, I asked the people what they thought I should see. Often the locals know just a tad more, and can point you away from the main tourist streams, which at times extremely nice surprises.
So it was, on our day in Bourton-on-water. They pointed me to the pub around the corner, and told me to go to the back of the pub. All was going to be revealed at my arrival there.

First, I dropped Mr Wonderful off in the Motor Museum, and then went on my way. Perfect harmonie, he could see and do what he likes: watching cars and machinery...
He is an ingeneer after all, and I could go to my puppet plan...

Look at the above photographs. The first one is the real life version, the bottom one is the scaled representation.
This is the village in the village. Behind the pub, a big garden is hidden, and in that garden lies the tiny Bourton-on-water, mirrored.
The mini town is an exact copy of Bourton, and a more then accurate copy of buildings can be seen.

In the model village, we can also see a model of the model village... If you get my drift. Mind boggling, I wonder how many times you could scale to go deeper and deeper.
Because the model garden also lies in the model garden, we could go on for hours, getting smaller and smaller.

I love the concept. I feel like a giant in a Lillyputter world. I try to imagine how much work went into this. The models are built in the same stone as the originals,
and are pretty accurate. Some of them have the inside made up aswell, A wonderful idea...

The first replica house was built in the years thirty, and since then the building has gone on, houses added, churches... the river going from one side of town to the other.
Even the trees are scaled. Bonsai... Not only buildings, but plants and green is made to fit. The bonsai look healthy, and it’s one of the nicest projects I have seen with mini-trees. Often they are kept inside a house, where they almost stop being tree, but here, outside, they show themselves at their best.

It takes me back to my teenage years, when I spent afternoons with my grandmother. She had a box of lego’s. And time after time I tried to build the perfect house, with limited resources, and pretended that I was the Master in Legoland and legostreet, and how to divide up the house for imaginary people.
So this model is very attractive to me. I have no trouble at all imagining little people living here. At night. When the tourists are gone. Then the lights go on in the little houses, and mini life happens.

And yes, even the tiny owl can be seen. In its cranny. With the church opposite the street.

I marvel over it all. I wished I could go down and in, to explore the mini world. What would I find?

Later, after my visit I will have tea in the house next to Small Talk. It’s simply wonderful. I point some more people to the model village while I have my tea, I think more people should see this.

A grand house that looks a bit on the edge, it looks on the edge in the model too. Every detail has been detained, no matter how much tiny windows need to be put in, they did it. It is a towns project, different people build on different plans, it’s not a one man’s thing. The whole town helps...

The pub too is shrunk. Smaller then the big signpost around the corner.

They did not scale the sign post though, I take it that this would be too much of a fiddle. Not a normal signpost either, it’s a relief one, also representing the big 100 percent building on smaller level.

I feel like I discovered an old treasure. It’s just after opening time, pretty soon this model village will be crowded as I am sure that the japanese group will know about it.
They just do, they do find all the hidden treasures. And speed through it, snap-happy. Click-click-click.

All visitors are Gullivers for a while. It’s almost sad to leave the place and having to go back to the big world outside.

Where I do meet up again with the japanese couple, she poses for every big world house in town, her hubby is happy to oblige and snap. A bit funny.
In a good way. I snigger and chuckle.

The Big World clockhouse tells me it is time to go and meet up with Mr Wonderful again, I do put myself in a strategic point of town, where he is bound to pass to come and find me. Sipping tea in a small Cotswolds town, life is good... Truly good...

The Cotswolds Chronicles Part 3: village in village...

Writing is a bit of a drag lately, so much is happening, the days seem to have only five hours from dawn to dusk, I need to start kicking some ass again... Our trip to the Cotswolds was so lovely, can’t believe that I am still writing up about it 2 months later!

We had a good time, and part of it is that we can travel while normal people are working. As Mr Wonderful works on shift, we often have no idea of week or weekend.
When we drove into the little town of Bourton-on-water, the mail man was doing his rounds. I wonder if our Mail man will be working today, as they have called off strikes over the last 3 weeks. To keep jobs and pay.. Can’t blame them.

Bourton is a very small town, almost more traffic signs then actual people. Smallness has nothing to do though with things to see.
We park the car, and the first thing I notice is a house with an owl peeping out from under the roof.

From the street I don’t see it clearly, but lucky for me, the people are leaving and I can enter the court yard to snap the owl closer. They tell me he was there when they bought the house, and they left him. It’s a fake one, I think plaster. But a nice effect.

This promises to be a good shooting day. Cotswolds is synonym for quaint, small and cute to a degree of 150 percent. It is for tourists...
I often wonder since I live in UK, if there are any Japanese left in Japan. Whenever or wherever we travel, and the more touristic the place is, the bigger the crowds of Japanese folk running around.

They never walk or stroll, they are always at the edge of running. My guess is that they want to cram as many sights into their trip as possible.
Say Japanese and you say camera in the same breath. I could take an example to them. If I come home with 1500 pics after four days, their count must go up to 3000.
You hear the snapping of their camera’s before they come around the corner. Funny...

I decide to walk around, in the opposite direction, as to not have japanese people in all my shots. Not that I mind, but at times one only wants buildings... No people!

I walk towards the centre of town, since we have a duck sign here it must mean there are ducks.

There are! Ducks I mean. And water. The charming part of Bourton-on-water is that a small river floats from the entrance of the village to the exit.
The whole town is divided in two, small pedestrian bridges connect one bank to the other.

Amazing seen in the light of Englands Health and Safety rules. I can imagine being drunk, have to walk over the bridge, and falling into the river.
How come nobody thought of that one before?
Both Mr wonderful and myself enjoy the views and the feel of the village. It’s a lovely spot, as England has so many of. You turn a corner and huplakee, another post card view...

Oops, one japanese couple follows us on heels, the guy comes back in a couple of my shots. His wife has to be photographed from all angles, this one might have 6000 photographs to take home to Japan. If they of course live in Japan. They might be Londoners for all we know...

Along the water, fab houses can be seen. In the typical yellow stone of the region. No group of non related buildings, nope, every house is built in the same style, same stone, which gives the whole a feel of togetherness and beauty.

Some keen cottage gardens to be noticed too. Brits do know how to make their living spot attractive.

It must be wonderful to browse Bourton in the Christmas days, when the lights come on. I marvel at the blinds that the big house has.
A person has been creative... Love it!

We will need some tea later on, while on our break from being the tourist. We will come back here in a couple of minutes. We have more things to explore first.

A little pudgy Ceasar comes over and says hello to me. Cutie pie, cuddle factor 99. Two smart black eyes looking at the world around. Funny dog. If my memory serves me right I believe he was called Whiskey. Don’t ask... I do not know the reason of that name. ;o)))

And like every decent town in England, they to have a WWI memorial. The brits live with the lives lost in WWI. The glorious deads as they are called.
I wonder if a mother who lost a son would call him a glorious death, or a wife of a killed soldier. Some things are hard to get to grips with overhere, on the Island cut off from the continent.

Aaaaggrrr, there they come again, I have to run...

I will avoid the bistro, as the whole group decended on it, and go for a tearoom on the other side of the river.
I know where they come from, I will go there after tea myself. Mr Wonderful will visit the auto museum, I will visit something else.
Be curious...

I will tell about it in a next installment... Promised!

The Cotswolds Chronicles Part 2

We had one more thing to do before leaving Warwick Castle. Go see the guy with his predator birds giving a demonstration.

A couple of hawks, an eagle and some other species, masters of hovering over prey before going in a dive attack with deadly intentions.
They strike and kill. Quick and easy. Almost a hundred procent victory rate.

I do find it amazing that they can train the birds to perform on demand, but part of me finds it a pity that those majestic flyers are spending a life in captivity.
Some of them are born in captivity, and have no knowledge of roaming the high skies without limits.

The game master tells me a bit more about the birds and how his life is focussed on them, he never has a day off, and only travels to take the birds to another demonstration.
Often they go to gatherings abroad, where only the best of the best birds compete.

The bird group has a nice view though from their logies, they are watching out over the boat house at Warwick.
We left Warwick Castle and went on our way to see a bit more of the Cotswolds.

And to jump back to the Game Master, my brain has to make a jump too, as game stands for wild that has been captured in hunts, like venison and phaesants.
They are not talking toys at the butchers.

Say Cotswolds and everybody thinks thached roofs. An art it is, to cover houses with several layers of hay, in a special order, and pin it down with chicken wire, so the hay can’t move. I say art as it is not as simple as it seems. A roof has to be weather resistent, leak proofed and the builder has to make sure that small animals don’t make nests in it or eat it. That is the main part for the chicken wire frame that spans the whole roof. A squirl can not get in for sure...

Not all buildings are thatched. We do see stone roofs, although the general style in the Cotswolds is usually low buildings, with very few high rises.

You can see which thatcher worked on the roof on their signature top. The little part on top of the roof is cut in a special pattern, and each thatcher has its own.
Some are more elaborate then others, the saddest part of the thatched roofs is that they only go so long. An average of 30 years seems to be the time frame, so as cute as they look, the houses with those roofs are expensive to keep up. It’s not cheap to redo a roof, and hand labor must be paid in full. If the roof is put on in the correct way, they might last to 50 years.

Not only roofs are worth a second look, tiny details give a charming view, the whole area has something magical. It’s like driving around in a sort of fairy tale land.

Even fields can have entry gates. We have planned some more fairy tale villages on our trip, be prepared for more thatch!
And a touch of Japan in the middle of England... More later!

Seals and wardens: bad combination!!!!

Especially for photographers. England is called the Nanny state more often... And I know why. It becomes very hard to do something, anything in England - without health and safety having a say in it.
Stepping stones in a river get taken away, even if nobody ever fell on them, solely because someone “might” fall on them.
I get very crabby with reasonings like this. They don’t touch reality.
On the nice sunday yesterday my friend Cornflake and I decided to go visit Donna Nook. A nature reservation where seals come to pup. Nothing wrong with that.

People visiting the Nature Reserve usually know what they are in for, as the place is not easy to find. You have to be determined to get there. To watch seals. One would think that people who want to go watch seals and their pups have some knowledge of animal life, and therefore know that any animal with young can be dangerous.

It is the end of October, the seals have come in to pup, but it is really a bit too early. We see lots of bulls and some females. Heavy pregnant. Basking in the sun coming and going as the weather is really blustery. We are talking grey seals, a more or less big colony of them at the Lincolnshire coast. Only on land in November and December, other parts of the year they go out to sea, or shelter on sand banks in front of the English coast.

I am one of the people having read up about them, I know that they can bite, and that females are pregnant, and that the bulls are not territorial in this period.
Which makes the bulls for a short while less wild then the females. If you want to go and photograph them, you need to know that you go in slow and calm. Going low, and in little bits at the time. Basking seals will now and then pop an eye open to look at you, but as long as you go in slow and low, they will accept you.

It also helps to put on your best fish perfume... to make yourself attractive... (NOT)

So I am shooting seals, they can’t be too bothered, now and then one eye open to look at me, and since I am not moving anymore, they respect me as I respect them.
That is where the wardens come in.
Give a person a yellow jacket with a title and they become little dictators... They start considering the beach and the seals as their own, and they think it is their job to yell at people who genuinely want to photograph...

The seals are more bothered by his shouting then my presence. The seal warden has no clue about how near or far you have to be to take good sellable photographs of seals.
Stock libraries will not listen if you tell them that you could not get closer because the wardens think they have the right to tell you off.
Photographers in war situations and extreme wild life quests know that they run in danger, they don’t need a warden to tell them that.
Maybe they should put up some wardens in Iraq... to tell people to not put up car bombs and such...
I can’t help it, whenever I see yellow or signs Health and Safety I know that stupid things are going on, it’s England.
Imagine photographers for National Geographic kept away from volcano’s and wild life area’s by wardens. They could book up their magazine, as no pictures would be taken, as wardens would mingle in with loud voices.

Cornflake has more patience then I do with yellow warden material, she gets to talk to him, and peel his tongue. It seems that there is a stretch across the shore line, where the water breaks on the coast, and a big group stays there. We can go there and the yellow one assures her that there is no yellow in sight at that spot.

Great, now the yellow one is talking sense. Off we go, taking in account that it is low tide, and the water still retreating. We are in for a two mile walk to the sea edge.
A long walk over mud flats and wet parts of the beach.
As said, a blustery day, winds up to twenty miles, straight off shore. It means that we walk wind in back towards the water. We will have to come back wind in face.
But OK, anything for a good picture, so we march happily in a group to where the seals are.

Beautiful water patterns made by the wind.

Sea and land, a living environment. We go further and further away from the dunes. This is an RAF base, the Nature Reserve is managed with permission from the Ministry of Defense.

We do pass some weird constructions, that probably will have to do with practice and MOD stuff...

A line of wooden stalks with a plastic barrel on the horizontal bar. MOD related too.

Looking back, I can see that the Dunes have become really small, we are going long, really long...
I am starting to get tired. The others have marched on, with light pasing, my footsteps have a bit of a drag to them by now...

My long passed away grandmother would tell me to lift my foot off the ground when walking. Don’t drag your heals. Walk straight!!!
Sadly enough I am on my own now, and walking becomes really hard. I know that if I don’t turn back I might have serious problems getting back to the Dunes.

I try to tell myself about pups and 200 seals on the edge of the water, that normally should do to get me walking again, anything for a good picture. But it’s no use, I am exhausted. I need to turn around and try to reach the civilized world again.

The wind is beating me in the face, I walk straight in it to get back to where more people are. And good for the white topped constructions, they show me where to walk back.
We have gone so far out on the mud flats that the dunes have become way small, and the sun shines from behind them, hard to orientate oneself.
I focus on the square beach huts, and count down. 1400 steps to go. 1000 steps to go.

A flight of geese pass me high above, beautiful birds, elegant yellow heads, flying in tight formation. They have worked it out.
They follow a leading goose, and when this one gets tired, one of the back rows takes over and follow that one, while the leader sacks to second in place, resting while following.

I am on my own and am starting to wonder what I was thinking... Why on earth did I think I would make it on a two mile walk on wet mud flats, with wellies that slow me down too.

After a death marsh of an hour I reach the dunes again, the group is still gone, probably shooting wonderful pics of pups and moms. Darn it. I am utterly frustrated.
Sabotaged by my own body. I want to go back to times when I did not know I had one, a body... Where I could do anything I wanted, I walked on mountains and reached mountain huts with youth groups... I drove bicycles from one part of Belgium to the other. And now a two mile walk is out of the question...

I am bound to snap a meeting of snails, they gather in between the wooden poles. And are still, I can catch my breath.
Back to the seals close to the Dunes, no warden in sight, so I start a new conversation with the mom I met before my death marsh.

She tells me about her hopes and dreams for her pup. It will be born soon, will have a cream colored pelt, she will take it on trips around the coast... Maybe to the Farne Islands.
She will feed it and teach it how to swim close to her. Even seal moms have expectations...

I tell her that I have to get back to my car, waiting on Cornflake and the group to come back, and she nods. She tells me to come back in two weeks, she will show her pup to me then. Done deal... We wave at each other as I get up to go to the car park.

In the distance, I see Cornflake coming back. She has seen two or 3 pups already... I am so crossed at my self for not having pushed myself a bit further...
Next time, we will study the tide tables, and see when it is high tide, so the seals are much closer to the Dunes.
That will be my chance to snap some pups... And see my seal mom back...
We will come back in fourteen days. On a week day, with less people and no wardens...
Hoping for nice pictures...

The Cotswolds Chronicles Part 1

With life zooming by at this amazing pace, I would almost forget what I did in the last year. In September, Mr Wonderful et moi took a trip to the Cotswolds. A well known area for tourist brochures and such... It’s one of those must see places on our earth ball. We drove south for a couple of hours, from Ripon - North Yorkshire where we live.

The nice thing about England is that all places are pretty easy reachable if you don’t mind driving for a while. The Cotswolds is about 3 hours driving from our frontdoor to their back door, and we started off in Warwick. With the Castle.

We broke the natural order of things. Normally, you end up in a small town, dipped in history, looking around on the premises, not Warwick. We went straight to the Castle and kept the town for the way out. Of course, by that time we had been on our feet for 4 hours and too tired to really look around further in town.

Four hours were not a minute short, we traded on well traden paths, Warwick Castle is Brittain’s Number One tourist attraction, with millions of visitors each year, I can therefore advize you all to not visit in summer. Wait till most of the kids are back in school, and then go for it. In high summer, the place is heeving with people, too much is too much.
Mr Wonderful et moi started off the tour of the living quarters, where we did meet up with Betty...

She was in state dress and looked somewhat distressed if I may say so, I can imagine that all those formal dinners and banquets are the pitts if you have to do them on a regular base.

Personally, I would not like to be Queen, I only can handle one fork and one knife, and have no clue of the general fork and knife order at state banquets.
I would make a hopeless fool out of myself, give me a pub meal any day.
After studying the whole banquet set up for a while, it dawned on me that Betty was made of wax. As in Madame Tussaud. As the Tussaud Museum is now the official owner of the Estate that holds Warwick Castle.

It scared me to death when one of the wax statues started laughing... This one was for real! Hah... Why do they try to fool us????

The next room had fake ladies again, and I must admit, I would have felt stuffed if they would have made me live in a golden cage like this castle is.
Smelling like moth balls all over, the air filled with particles of history and famous people who walked in the hall ways before I did today.
I don’t see me washing and ironing those fancy dresses, ankle length, and spending the day talking sweet nothings to a visiting friend.

And how much time does it take to dust all those harnasses and armory collections... I would have to had the dust brush attached to my hip.
I would not have time for my computer stuff...

Not to forget polishing the wooden cupboards, with carved out bits and bobs, that one takes two days in itself to make it shiny as we see it

The books in the library need dusting too of course, and I think that all the dust is getting into my brain, as the longer I walk around in there, the more I feel stuffed myself.
It must have been a good life if you belonged to high society, but to be a kitchen maiden or cleaning woman in a place like the above must have been hell.
Warm water did not come out of taps in the late 1800’s as far as I know, and how many kettles of water does it take for her lady to soak? Carrying it up four floors along a winkly stone stair case. The servant one, no way can buckets of water be carried up on the main stair case...

The walls of the building are easily two feet thick, and thousands of windows let in a scairse light. Someone anonymous goes round to take care of flower arrangements.
It is a very interesting visit, but to be honest, I am glad to be back in the outside, and get the smell of mothballs out of my nose. Fresh air...

I can watch a more or less perfect dying scene, two knights and a princess with a magic wand are frolicking in the court yard, life needs children.
We need them to think back to our own childhood, when visits to fancy castles were not in the picture. I am having thoughts about the price of the entry ticket for the whole castle. I am sure that single moms in present times have a hard time taking their kids to such places, even if I see how much they learn about medieval times and have fun with it means.
Another regret I have towards my own beanstalks: I should probably have taken them out more, to musea and castles... But it gets kind of hard when you realise that the only 25 dollars you have left has to stretch for another week and food.

In the grounds of the castle, some bird things are going on too, but that is another entry!
Nothing beats visiting a castle a day in England... They have enough of them.

Venturing...

In a new field. I designed a binder. And you can get it here... Lets see how it goes... Maybe I can do one with a sheep... Ways to keep oneself busy. In between I am also working on my slideshow for the Masham Photography club about New Mexico. Yep... busy times.

Feedback on the binder is welcome, and let me know if you would like to see another design... (Christmas is lurking in the distance...)

And I know, it is a shameless plug...

Belgian Rolls for breakfast...

Life is running. Ripon is usually a quiet town, hidden in the Semi- North of England, but in the last month I have been channel hopping to Belgium on several occasions.
To meet up with family and take care of things, walking around in my previous life, where i do not fit totally anymore...

I stay at my sisters, and for breakfast we have Belgian rolls. Nothing can beat those. Not even Betty’s in Harrogate. I eat them with just a bit of salted butter, and yum... Life is in a zen state for half an hour.

My sister has a portrait of our dad, a fresh 18 years old, a young face. We all miss him. How did his life go so fast. We did not have enough time with him.
He would have loved to be a great granddad... Life in general has decided otherwise. He did not live to see the first baby of his oldest grandson.

It’s what we do, my siblings and me. We keep photographs of our dearest persons and things around us. Next to the china and in between some pitchers.
We love to expose our photographs. They form little snippets of what is important to us. Maybe that is why I always snap daily life thingies... No big photographic essays, with a social message... Our needs are simple. We want pictures of our loved ones or things we like around the house. Simple needs indeed.

Whenever I am in Kortrijk, it’s time to pay a visit to my growing godchild. She is 8 now, no longer the tiny just born baby that she was when I swapped Belgium for my semi-permanent stay in England.
And I usually try to take a little something to please her. All kids like gifts now and then. Since I only go to Belgium twice a year, it is rather easy to find a small thing to take with me. This time it was a magical puzzle with a special pen. Done deal...

They are kids of our times, so the computer is a part of their life too. It’s nice to see how computer savvy small kids are nowadays, fun to hear them chat with english-flemified words.
On a shelf above the computer I can notice how creative my godchild is. She goes to art school, and they do make the loveliest projects.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE her mushroom houses. Amazing. Two little hands that churn out the prettiest art work. I would want to be a gnome and live in one of the mushrooms.
Maybe the one with the round window... Looks kind of cosy!

In artschool she also made the frog prince. Very green, with a nice golden hat. Or crown in a better word. Paper mache.
Next to paper mache they also work with clay.

The funniest creatures are presented. Green must be one of her favorite colors. Lots of green...

And a blue rabbit with a giant carrot. Extremely pretty dare I say. It’s a gift my godchild and her siblings have. All 3 of them are creative beyond words.
It’s a good way of keeping themselves busy. Food for thought and cure for boredom. Works in two directions.

It’s always nice to visit and see what she did while I was far away in England... I could not have had a better godchild then I have. I got lucky!!!
I am sure that by the next time we visit, her collection of clay figurines will have grown again! I am curious already...

It's about goose...

Strange thing, I hope I have it right. In english some of the plural forms are difficult for people who were not born with this language. I am flemish speaking, so learning english happened later in life, and some words continue to spook me.
Geese Goose is one of them. I keep forgetting if geese is single or plural...

Masham sheep fair has it share of goose and dogs, next to the sheep. Goose are weird birds. They are excellent guardians, they will protect your land and your home, and start a concert the minute they see a stranger appear. If you don’t like noise, don’t get goose.
At the fair, we were treated to some goose agility. A 14 year old boy and his dog showed us what a good working dog can do, and how goose listen to the dog.
Or should I say translate his movements into things to do for them.

The boy is armed with a stick, and whistles his commands to the dog. It was a rare warm september day, with the sun in full shine, the dog got hot from running around.
No biggie, he took the route accross the bath tub at the end of the slide. The slide where the goose would later on in the excercise come down.

It’s all in the game. The tub was a bit small for Brecken, but he seemed happy with the cooling possibility.

After a lot of whistling, Brecken finally got the goose in the fences, and over the bridge, sliding down to their element: water.

At this point Brecken decided that he might as well have another go at it and jumped in the tub once more. Funny dog...
His job was not finished as the goose needed to be guided towards the Market place. A very popular sight with all the visitors of Masham Sheep Fair.

It’s not an every day sight to see a group of goose walking down in tight squadron along the cemetary. The excercise meadow lies behind Masham Church, and in order to go to the Market spot we all have to walk along the little path. Following the shepherd and staying out of the way of the squadron and the dog.

A bit of an uproar happens, and the goose are taking the wrong direction. The dog has to jump all over the place to get them back on track.

The shepherd lady whistles her magic tones, and soon enough, the goose are back on the path, facing forward, straight on their way to the Market Place.
I am enjoying the spectacle. Don’t know if the goose do...

It does not take too long before they bunch heads out through the gates bordering the cemetary. Nice animals, orange beaks, and not force fed.
They do end up as christmas lunches, but at least they are well taken care off. I hate the whole force feeding thing they perform to get the goose liver pate.
I refuse to buy it if I know it does come from a company that force feeds its geese.

On the same ranting train, I was disgusted when we heard last week that Ikea gets its goose down from geese that are plucked alive... That knowledge makes me go to artificial bed covers, as we should all do. No animal should suffer for us being warm at night. It’s cruelty of the highest level.

The lot ends up in the ring, surrounded by visitors of the fair.

One of the one watchers is pairing fun with more fun, he is blowing bubbles while watching the goose. Two fun things in one go. Well done lad...

At this point, the dog gets a bit of frolicking in his head and tries to snap at one of the geese. The animal squacks and takes to the air. We see him vanish over the roofs, bye bye birdie... The shepherd tells us that she will come back to the flock, we are not too worried.
It will be clear by now that Masham Sheep Fair is packed with fun stuff. On to next year...