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".