Pre match bike ride to a nearby nature reserve and water sports centre for us, midweek and covid quiet, bar/resto open for take away lovely spot for a beer and a snack.
I haven't been anywhere interesting, but here's my new orchard. It's a mixture of apricot and some heritage apple trees. Got another 6 at the other end of the garden that are also new.
I've got 5 apple varieties including one that gives red juice, so I may well venture into cider making next year. They were bare root trees so I won't let them fruit this year to give the roots a chance to establish as making seeds uses a lot of energy.
Spring has sprung at Blagdon Lake, a whole meadow of cowslips: And the lake was looking rather fine in the sunshine this afternoon:
Wow. Cowslips are pretty rare these days. Used to be able to get bunches of them when I was a kid....and yes, I do get the point that you shouldn't pick wild flowers, but they were everywhere then. Oh, those carefree days. At least we didn't dig the poor buggers up....which I gather happens now.
Just had a pastel pencil drawing done by a mate, of my cat Big Steve. It's currently being professionally framed as I wanted to make sure it was properly mounted etc because pastels are a very fragile medium to handle. I'm still amazed that a drawing could be done with this amount of realism. Am very pleased with it, and as the cat isn't showing many symptoms of his heart condition yet, it's nice to know i'll have a proper reminder of him.
Weirdly enough, I was reading about the Roman camp at Hod Hill last night and how it had utilised the ramparts of the Iron Age fill fort during it's construction. It was built to house 700 legionaries during part of Agricola's campaign towards the SW of England in 43AD.
Covid: Town crier champion retains title in silent contest https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-57113747
Table mountain, after which Crickhowell is named (Crughywel= Table mountain apparently). And this one is the Sugar Loaf
Here’s me this afternoon at Waun Mawn (pronunciation guide: Wine Mown, rhymes with town). This amazingly beautiful place was the subject of a documentary on the Beeb in February, presented by Prof. Alice Roberts. Another archaeologist, Prof. Mike Parker Pearson, wanted to find the exact place where the bluestones, which formed the first stone circle at Stonehenge about 4,000 years ago, actually came from. After much detective work involving chemical analysis, carbon dating, and all the hi-tech Time Team paraphernalia finding filled-in 4,000 year old holes, he and his team found the site of a circle exactly the same size and with the same number of stones as the outer circle on Salisbury Plain, 140 miles away. And here it is, in the Preseli Hills!
Here’s the link to the documentary on the iPlayer, if you have access to it. Well worth a look: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000s5xm/stonehenge-the-lost-circle-revealed Edit: There’s even a YouTube of it!