Quick holiday update

Choughs, the West Country, folk magic

Hello! A belated and probably quite short missive from me today, as I am still amidst the holidays and find it incredibly hard to get anything done- mostly because I have been busy walking around the ridgeway spotting hares, a favourite spring activity before the wheat grows too long. The fields around my part of the ridgeway can be enormous- vast monocultures of wheat and rapeseed; yesterday I saw a truely huge herd of fallow deer eating the new shoots, which I found satisfying because I do not like vast monocultures, so take joy from things eating them. My brain did a double take because I’ve never seen that many deer outside of a deer park- my husband counted 120 before another group joined them and they all stood too close to count. There must’ve been going on 200 deer, but still dwarfed by the size of the field.

I spent a week on the Devon/Cornwall border, where I got to do some of my very favourite things, including the Kurt Jackson gallery, and went on a very long and wet walk around Dartmoor. Word to the wise- if someone  says you can ‘head east’ always check that heading east involves a pathway, so you don’t find yourself stumbling through a bog in heavy rain (which is still better than going to a museum IMHO). I thoroughly tested my new waterproof boots; sadly, most of the water was inside them and unable to escape due to their extreme waterproofness;  the flaw of all boots is there’s a hole at the top to get your feet in which also lets water in if you are wading through miles of unending wetland in the rain. Luckily I was prepared for West Country weather and had a spare pair of boots for some coastal walks.

By the time I returned home, the plum tree was green instead of white, the blossom completely blown away by April winds, but there are still no swallows, which bothers me. We have a lot of swallows, because Doris carefully nurtured  the pair that nested in the stables, and every year more of the children return to have babies of their own. I anxiously await their arrival.

The apple trees are in full bloom, and the lilac buds remind me that there will be warmer nights soon, filled with delightful scents and bats. Already it seems warm enough to inspire a wardrobe change, a shedding of coats and layers; as the holidays close I have managed my first sunburn (neck only, thanks to the power of factor 30 face cream) though I’m not brave enough to be lured into putting tender plants into the greenhouse. I’ve been tricked by that before.

Sketchbooking

West Country landscape is rugged compared to Oxfordshire, and I like the windsculped trees, some almost horizontal.

I added choughs because they are my favourite crow, but I did not see any this holiday. There is a fair bit of chough memorabilia in Cornwall as they are on the coat of arms as a county symbol, which seems unfortunate given their decline (by the mid 70s there were none left in Cornwall). While I have seen the reintroduced choughs  in Cornwall, most of my sightings have been in Wales. They are a wonderful corvid.

Chough on Skomer

Findings

We also visited Boscastle, and my favourite museum, some might say the only museum I am prepared to tolerate- the excellent museum of witchcraft and magic. There are many things I enjoy about this museum, particularly trip advisor reviews of angry tourists that were expecting a visit to Harry Potter world or something; apparently actual magic is not ‘family friendly’, which honestly shouldn’t be a surprise if you think about it long enough. They have a fine collection of mandrakes there which gives me an excellent excuse to plug this guy.. and this one if you like gold.