Sidmouth

We've been to see our daughters, staying first with Wee One on the south coast and then going on to London to stay with her big sister. We dawdled along the coast during the week while Wee One was at work, staying a couple of nights in Sidmouth

just across the road from the Connaught gardens (A great place for coffee and a great slab of cake!) The gardens are arranged in formal areas with far too much randomly coloured 'civic' bedding for my taste.

So imagine my pleasure to find that beds of wild flowers had arrived in this formal setting.

From the gardens steps lead down to the beach

and a walkway beneath the cliffs that takes you into town.

My photo for Friday Skywatch.

The sandstone is soft and has been eroded by wind and waves so that the names and dates carved into the cliff now look like something from antiquity!

The weather in town was rather English summer (dull and damp)

so we went undercover in the small library with its friendly staff. The information there gave us a good idea what to look out for about town.

First of all we went to the church beside the museum to look at the window given by Queen Victoria in memory of her father.

Then to see the house where the royal family were staying when the king became ill.

The Union Jack was flying.

I've just received the following email from my cousin Ralph.

"Tut tut Cuz, it's the Union Flag unless being flown on the jackstaff of a grey funnel liner,i.e. one of Her majesty's RN ships, when at anchor or tied alongside.

Pickey, pickey. That's family for you!

So, the Union Flag was flying!

There were architectural delights to discover all about the town.

But you can see how grey the sky was, no wonder that the deckchairs were still stacked.

There was quite a display of hanging baskets along the seafront

and stiff competition from small cottage gardens.

We stayed in a fairly new addition to a traditional old hotel. The design, I noted in this magazine, is described as 'New England'!

It was a good place to flop after time spent exploring.

Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside.

Skywatch sunrise

This week's sunrise for Friday Skywatch.

We've had some lovely weather.

Two young deer came into the orchard. There has been an apple drop and the fruit must have tempted them in.

 I photographed them from the bedroom window, keeping my distance so that I wouldn't frighten them away.

They stayed for a while and had a good feed before leaving.

We walked across the fields on our way to the woods. The sun shining on the rows of sweetcorn leaves reminds me of a David Hockney painting.

Everything is growing well,

 in a few weeks these crops will reach up to our waists.

Nature is slowly reclaiming the new paths that were made through the woods in spring to take out timber.

It's a lovely time of year.

Cape Cornwall

We know this area well and it has a fascinating history.

The white house on the slope was once the home of 'Elephant Bill' a St Just man made famous by his actions in the Burma Campaign when he assisted the evacuation of women and children by means of elephants across hostile terrain.

Virginia Woolf stayed at the lower house when it was in use by the artist Duncan Grant. She knew this part of the country very well because she had enjoyed many childhood holidays in a house above Porthminster beach in St Ives that was rented each summer by her father. The Godrevy Lighthouse and those childhood holidays were the inspiration for her book, 'To the Lighthouse'. Everything about Cornwall was transposed to Scotland in the novel.  After publication people wrote in and complained that her research had been poor because the flora and fauna that she described did not exist in Scotland!

Large greenhouses used to occupy the lower slope above the harbour. Camellias were grown there and sent by train to Covent Garden in London. Since our last visit a beautiful new greenhouse has been constructed on part of the land. Private property - I had to peep nosily over the wall. I would have loved to have walked through the space!  The new greenhouse is painted grey, a very sensitive response to it's setting and intrudes on the area not one bit, but continues the history of what went before.

We came home with a drawing of Cape Cornwall that our friend had made years ago when he and Himself were running an annual landscape course for the Bristol Art School.

It captures a lot of memories.