Looking for a little shade

Most of the UK is experiencing a heatwave at the moment, I hope you’ve somewhere cool and comfortable to be. An old house with thick stone walls, small windows and perched on a hill, is a very fortunate place to be.

This is Chee Dale, a cool deep limestone dale in the White Pak area of the Peak district National Park.

A lovely walk

Stepping stones, to the left, tucked under the overhanging rock, keep your feet dry when water is more plentiful and look at those lovely limestone bedding planes to the right. We like a limestone landscape.

The path can be a bit of a scramble in parts, stout footwear is required, especially when wet, the limestone can be fiendishly slippery.

Run for home

It’s been nice to go out and about today, the weather broke over night and the temperature dropped to a more comfortable level than it has been for the last few days, it’s been necessary to dodge some heavy showers though. 

The last week has been a good weather window for the farmers, they’ve been able to cut their grass crop for winter fodder in without too much weather angst, today’s weather forecasting must make the task so much easier than it was for their forebears .

So there I was, admiring the colours and patterns of the freshly cut fields

and having a very nice time, until the wind suddenly picked up and I realised it had ‘gone a bit dark over Bill’s mothers’. 

Time to run for home, at least it was downhill!

A throning, or a party by any other name

I’ve a string of posts to deliver,  I’m behind schedule, I’ve been distracted; they are going to tumble out randomly, it seems to match the mood of the nation!

You’d be hard pressed to call where I live a street, but it didn’t stop us having a street party to celebrate the Queens 90th Birthday a few weeks ago.

There were a lot of planning meetings (Mr Uphilldowndale will tell you  what I mean by this, is that there was a lot of drinking of prosecco  on Sunday afternoons for the previous month) I’ll tell you the planning was just as sociable as the party.  We then went on holiday and left the neighbours to all the hard work, arriving back in time for the sound of popping corks.  They did a fab job, we had  music,  flowers, porta-loos, road closed signs, bollards and bunting, a proper party.

We even had very official notices to close the road, who could resist a throning of neighbours?

 

We didn’t divert any carts as far as we know, a few cyclists and a couple of walkers meandered through the tables, most took  the diversion in good  heart.

We brought out the finest vintage food (the ‘food miles’ of some of it could be measured in inches rather than miles)

Ate proper pie (Yorkshire pie, brought over the county boundary under special licence).

I may have mentioned the prosecco before

So many cakes

and a few gate crashers.

We raised money for charity too, we are very lucky to have such lovely neighbours…

Precipitation

The Met Office said the precipitation  probability was around 10% this morning, for our part of the world. The 10% found us, it poured down, at least it refilled the water butt.

It took a wee while for everything to dry off.

But it’s been a lovely afternoon, I spent most of it in the garden, I’ve always enjoyed that.

Goodness knows how my parents found time to raise flower beds like this

Not only was there livestock to look after, he worked full time in construction, It must have broken their hearts when we had to leave the farm.

Thirty days wild. June 21st

The best thing that you can do for nature is too make it part of your life. That’s why we’re asking thousands of people to make room for nature in their everyday lives this June. Please spread the word amongst friends, colleagues and family and get them to sign up, too! After all, all our lives are better if they’re a bit wild… ‘

I’ve signed up to 30 Days Wild with the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust,  with the aim of blogging each day, a little bit of the nature of my world.

 

I’d quite like the weather to buck up a bit.

Summers Past

And the making of memories.

Forgiving me for returning to the beach and family holidays. But a couple of   posts I’ve read this week have catapulted me back to Devon.  First there was Nancy’s post reflecting on just how many summers her family had enjoyed their favourite beach  just like the Uphilldowndale family’s love of a certain Devon beach,

then there was Sarah’s post that made me smile and recall our coastal meeting with a grasshopper.  So I nipped back to the post I’d written at the time, back in 2009, about our encounter with the artist David Measures, about his glorious art and his generosity with both his time and knowledge: sadly, when I followed the links, I discovered that David died last year.  Looking at the website of Southwell Artists I saw that Christine Measures, David’s wife, is also an artist.

When I met David he told me he was working on a book that would capture, not just the markings of a butterfly, for identification but how it moved, its mannerisms, what a bird watcher might call it’s jizz.  The slide show of Christine’s art captures both David and Devon summer holidays perfectly. Beautiful.

 

Technorati Tags: Art,Photography,Family Holiday,Beach,Seaside,Summer,David Measures,Butterfly,Paddling,Sea,South Devon

Seaside Rock

How quickly our seaside holiday is becoming a distant memory. How quickly the real world piles in to the vacated mind.

How heavy it has rained today! Just as well I have some holiday snaps to look back at.

On the coast path there were some fine lumps of rock (you know I’m fond of them) ancient gate posts, long since disused girded with hand forged iron.

The remnants of old walls

The bizarre weather we’ve had in UK this summer seems at least to have pleased the costal flowers, or just made them flower later than usual. I can’t ever recall  ever seeing quite so many as this year.

The insect world seemed appreciative

Just delightful really, *sigh*

Sunset Cliché

Can you have too many photos of sunsets in your holiday snaps? Mrs Ogg and I discussed this matter at length (over a glass of  wine, as you do). In truth we decided that we didn’t much care, we’ll just keep snapping away.

It is as traditional as a Christmas dinner.

Mrs Ogg snapping

Spud on Sunday part LXVI

Spud the dog, a portrait by our friend Mrs Ogg

 

Spud got very excited watching the Olympic games last night, what a golden night it was. Mr Uphilldowndale and Tom are down on the beach in Weymouth watching all the sailing action on big screens and are having a very pleasant time by all accounts.

Timeless Elegance

I think regular readers will have gathered that most things about boats and yachts don’t  really ‘float my boat’ but every now and then one catches my eye and to be frank you’d have to be blindfolded to miss the elegance and beauty of this yacht, that was sailing out of Salcombe harbour this morning.

 

I don’t know what she is called, but we do know she shared a mooring in the harbour with  ‘Sceptre’ who raced in the Americas Cup 1958

Over the years various bits of boats and even a whole pram dinghy* have cruised into our kitchen at home, seeking warmth, ‘so the varnish will dry better’  during one of  Mr Uphilldowndale’s  boat repair and restoration projects (of which there are many) but I doubt any of the bits from this boat would fit in our kitchen, even if they came in through the window(true story).

*Pram dinghy? Here is one we sold earlier

 

(Joe still has a passion for tartan trousers, ten years on, but not for boats).