Should have known!

Getting old with a great grandson,
it is wise to know your limits.

I had a stick so he had a stick.

















Lesson 1:

do not give big sticks to small boys, especially if they are well trained in unarmed combat.
His great grandmother seems to think it amusing!











I was unaware that he had been out teaching his grandmother yoga!

Lesson 2:  Learn to live with it; after all he is two years old this week.

 

We get on quite well really.

Here is my portrait of us walking into the sunset - or the fog

He's quite kind; holding my hand to make sure I don't get lost"!

He does keep his options open!

From farming to lumberjacking;

now to roadbuilding.

Notice he has acquired a girlfriend! 

Farmer Harrison !

Hello Readers,

Since I wrote to you yesterday, I have heard that Harrison has changed direction with his career;

or is going in for multi-tasking. 

Now seems he is interested in lumberjacking!

Thank you to the kind lady who wrote and said he looks like me.

Leave you to be the judge of that. 

I was a little younger when this picture was taken.

Trips out for seaside dwellers!

We live by the seaside where there are no motorways.
How do we avoid holiday traffic in the summer?



Not very busy round here: quite a peaceful spot to wait for something or someone to turn up.






Even the buildings are almost hidden in the lush countryside.

It's a school; clearly not a 'secondary modern'.
Quiet too, most of the pupils are on holiday.







There is water, but not the salt type.

Placid but picturesque, unless you feel like a bit more activity and wild life.









No sharks nor wales.  A pair of swans and their cygnets casually gliding about doing nothing in particular;
but that's what swans do isn't it.

If you like your water a little livelier, here it is.
I can hear you saying: "we've been here before".

This is the way we came.
Quiet isn't it?

This picture has got nothing to do with this blog.

Just thought you would like to see Harrison my great grandson learning to be a farmer.

Best place in the world to live?

Chris Downer on the wonderful internet programme Geograph, says of his picture shown here:

"One of the most expensive places in the world to live, a feature of Sandbanks is large, luxury houses such as these along Banks Road which have outlooks to the harbour on one side and the beach on the other.

Diane Sambrook, on the same programme,
has close-up view of some of the homes.

This is the ferry terminal taken this morning. The traffic, double banked,  goes back  for a mile on the road in and out of one of the most expensive places in the world to live.









Peter Timming, on Geograph, has an even more colourful view of the ferry.


I live 4 miles away, much preferred by me to the traffic ridden chaos that is the first day of the summer school holidays!

A hot day when you can't walk far

If you have no garden, a small balcony, some flower pots and an enterprising wife, just look at what beauty there is to share.

At an age when walking means going down the road to the shops or the recreation ground, I can still enjoy a summer's day sitting here with a book - bottom left hand corner of picture - enjoying our county as described in 1906 by Sir Frederick Treves in his Highways and Byways of Dorset.

I soon discovered early in his interesting book, there other things to read about apart from the joys of the countryside.  For example, The 'Me Too' movement is not a recent phenomenon by any means, as witness this excerpt from page 5.

  

"... the Archbishop of Canterbury, on his visit to Shaftesbury in 1285, excommunicated Sir Osbert Gifford for stealing two nuns, not unwillingly on their part and assumed to be the two prettiest nuns, out of his nunnery at Wilton". 

The described punishment is better left out of this blog.

Treves started his journey at Shaftesbury. Of the steep-sided solitary ridge of the chalk hill on which it stands he writes:

"On the southermost edge of the ridge is a delightful wooded walk, called Park Walk from which extends a view unsurpassed by few in England".

Here is Park Walk today






and the view he describes, as produced by Jonathan Hutchins on the Geograph website.

Sir Frederick Treves seems to have been quite a nice man to go by some of his writing.
Writing of Sturminster Newton which is not far from Shaftesbury he remarked of the town pump:
"On it is a notice spitefully warning the passer-by that he will be prosecuted if he does it hurt, and adding further that no children must use the exclusive structure. There is a sourness in this, for all children delight to play with pumps".

A bundle of Tarrants

This signpost will give you an idea of how many Tarrants there are - seven on here for a start; although they have saved a bit of cash with not repeating the Tarrant too often.

And they all form part of glorious Dorset and England at its best.

You may need to navigate a ford for some of them, but the River Tarrant is easy on the eye as you can see from the  ford here - unless you are unlucky















You are unlikely to see the second one here unless you go up the wrong country road like us.








When you get round the corner of the first the view is worth the trouble.







The Langton Arms is not entirely your typical village pub but - as you may discover by going to their web site - it's worth a call.

The church up in the top left hand corner is also worth a visit, especially to see the elegant stained glass windows.







But a stroll round the village in June brings the best sites of all.

I thought you might fancy this one on the right Jack:



your name is already on it, as you may see if you click the close-up below!

Blandford Forum

Forum is an old name for Market; nothing Roman about it at all. That's got that out of the way.


Blandford is the name of a town in Dorset: a place of parts which is at one moment a typical old fashioned market town; an army town; a place of unusual beauty mixed in with the two -
if you turn the right corner.


                   I said it was old fashioned!

A bit like the army camp when racing took place there a long time ago.

 Here is the beginning of the beautiful bits - a view of the River Stour





with the old railway bridge in the background




















 certainly not devoid of wildlife right in town!




















If you look to your right another beautiful view -
a brewery, Hall & Woodhouse by name:







and here,     
one of the most terrible sights you will ever see in your life -








the brewery on fire!










But, back to the good bits -
 a heron doing a spot of fishing

Swans and Cygnets being fed,

the ducks lined up on the weir awaiting their turn 











and, of course, the greedy gulls turned up in numbers











but the real beauty is the river itself

how many shades of green can you count?

















and so it goes on, almost in the middle of town.













But if you need refreshing after your stroll along the banks of he Stour

there are other beautiful sights just up the road where you can relax with a sample of the local brewery which, fortunately, was never burnt right down!

Dorset on a dull day

Even on a dull day Dorset still has many an attraction.

This is the River Frome at Wareham, with my 'guide' looking downstream.

Looks fairly empty of traffic until you turn round and face the other way which is looking up towards the back end of Poole Harbour.

On the left is the riverside garden of the Priory Hotel.
Look up its restaurant on the internet and read about the chef alone to gain some idea of the class of establishment it is.



Next, look to your right, and you can see just how rural Dorset is, even when you are on the edge of town.
The Purbeck Hills are in the distance, over the other side of which is the sea.

But, if you like buildings, here they are on the other side of the river near to the bridge;  all restaurants and pubs with except the church.


Good choice of more reasonably priced eating here, unless you pour your soup all down your front which my assistant did.

Can't criticise.  I fell over walking up the bridge. A man ran across the road to pick me up while his wife remarked on the difficulties of life when you've had a sip or two. 
Both accidents even before we'd had a drink.
That's the problem with age. Hate to think what we shall be like when we reach 40.

“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us!

Robert Burns said it all!


Great grandson and Great grandfather.

Harrison and me.

I'm the one on the right.

Hide

The title of this post is not an instruction; but a place where you can stay hidden to watch the birds. You knew that anyway.

This one is at Holton Lee, not all that far from Arne.




If you get lost you need to know that it is on Lytchett Bay, part of which is beyond the blasted oak near to the Hide.









While you are there you may as well look at the stones.

But you really came to look at the birds.



The woodpecker was here last time, but here are a few goldfinches to add a bit more colour.







 As you can see,  they are well fed.







A little more colour from the fine cock pheasant keeping an eye on his relatively drab wife. From the feathers on the ground it seems a fox has been visiting

But here, making our visit worthwhile, a specimen I can't recall seeing before

 - a golden pheasant.