10/23/09--Lee cont'd

One of the advantages of being in Devon in March is getting to see these little guys. This one looks like it's still trying to get used to its legs.



Lee is also on the coast, a bit west of Ilfracombe. It also has a little river that rushes out to the sea, so it's possible to sit near this place pictured and hear the river in your right ear and the sea in your left. I loved having that experience--a Pisces' dream.



The water in this stream is so clear you can barely see it in the photo.



The local sheep may be owned by the folks in this rather grand home.



Lee also has sea-level and hillside residences.

I've put in all the photos I'd like to for Devon, but later I'll add a blog telling more about my experiences staying in Ilfracombe and also tell about my trip to Glastonbury, a genuinely magical place.

10/23/09--Lee

Near the end of my stay in Ilfracombe, I took the bus to a little town called Lee, only about three miles from Ilfracombe if you walk the tors to get there, but the tors are sloppy in late March so I took the local buses. This old roof shows all the mossy stuff that grows everywhere in a place as wet as England.



I'm not sure how old this building in Lee is, but people must have been shorter when it was built.



I loved the purple growing out of this wall.



Spring narcissus with thatched buildings in background.



Nifty recently-done thatch on this building. Thatching is another thing that went out of favor in past decades but has also been making a comeback for aesthetic, practical and, I think, ecological reasons. It's more cost-heavy to install initially, but may last longer, albeit with repairs, than other roofing materials. It also provides jobs for the thatchers, thatch cutters, and thatch raisers. I saw a news item about a guy in Yorkshire who has gone back to the thatch -cutting job his ancestors did. The stuff grows like mad in certain areas near the sea, so the industry has just had to find markets and re-train people in the applicable trades. Enough upper-middle class folks have thought is cool to have thatching again, so it's another traditional practice moderns have found can make sense today for more than one reason.

10/23/09--More Lynton

Although many of my pictures show the green fields of Devon--green throughout the entire winter--this one shows the craggy outcrops that also show up in the landscape. This one has that odd thing up at the right, which looks like it could be a man-made sculpture but is not.



This craggy hill and its valley are home to feral goats--a couple of kids visible here.



Here's a shaggy adult.



On the side of Lynton away from the goat hill is this little park area next to the cemetery, next to a COE church. The hill in the background is the headland on the other side of the Lyn river. So the dropoff near the seated folk goes down to the river and to the little town of Lynmouth.

10/23/09--Lynmouth

The Lyn rushes quite strongly in some places, meanders in others.


If one follows the river back inland, one comes to a park with a little restaurant. I didn't make it quite that far in.



The Victorians called the Lynton/Lynmouth area Little Switzerland because of the little hill and valley geography here. In fact, there is a funicular which runs up and down the hill to take people back and forth between the two towns.

10/23/09--Lynton

A few miles further along the North Devon coast are Lynton and Lynmouth. Lynton is the town up the hill, from which I took this photo. Lynmouth is at sea level, on the banks of the Lyn river, which empties into the sea here.




View of a typical European hill town, this time in England. Lynton is small but atmospheric.



Another part of Lynton, with the Devon hills in the background, complete with hedgerows.

During the 60's, the Brits began cutting down their hedgerows but, by the 90's, had discovered how important the hedgerow habitats were for little mammals, insects, and birds, so they began bringing them back. Also, I think the vegetation helps prevent soil erosion--the thick plants make windbreaks.

10/22/09--Art reference added

Note that at the top left of the blog is a new link to my art webpage. I clicked on it, and it does indeed work. Hope you'll enjoy seeing some of my art. You must click on the attachments to see the individual works of art, which is rather a pain, but the images are fairly large.

10/22/09--Exeter cont'd

Half-timbered buildings in the older part of Exeter.

I stopped in Exeter on my way to St. Ives in Cornwall. Unfortunately, I seemed to have shot over my pictures of St. Ives, so I have no photos from there.

I enjoyed the bus and train rides through the rolling hills of Devon and Cornwall. St. Ives is known as an artists' town, so I wanted to go there. Sure enough, there are many galleries and a couple of good little museums. The color of the sea there is remarkable; artists say it's more like the Mediterranean than the Atlantic. That effect is more noticeable in summer, but the winter sea was beautiful, too, often more greenish than blue--a clear teal. I called it "mermaid green."
There are postcards which capture the color pretty well, so if you're ever in St. Ives, you might want to pick up a card or two.

10/22/09--Exeter

West front of Exeter Cathedral.



Side of Exeter Cathedral.



Jesus loves you, but watch out for our lawyers. I thought this was a distinctly unfriendly sign for a church. The Cathedral has a variety of fascinating designs in the side windows; I'd love to know what the symbolism of all the different designs is.

Exeter is the largest city in Devon, an old medieval cathedral city. There are also many small parish churches, which are remarkably close together. A guide said that, because of the plague and other diseases, as well as local crime, people tended to stay within a very few blocks of their own homes and businesses in the Middle Ages; it seemed pretty stifling. I wonder if anyone back then had claustrophobia.

10/22/09--Other Devon places

I'll need to rearrange my photos a bit, but will soon add posts about Lynton, Lynmouth, and Lee, all little towns near Ilfracombe, easily accessible by local bus. I spent eight months in Europe without a car and, although it restricted my access to some rural parts of Italy, I did not miss driving at all. I walked all over, used trains, undergrounds, and the occasional taxi. One of the things I noticed about not driving is that I swore a whole lot less! Maybe it just made me more grounded and more patient.

10/22/09--Ilfracombe apartment and sea

The building at bottom center is where I stayed. The window on the second floor to the right, with the blue shutters, was my window looking toward the sea. It was great when there were gales because the sea foam would crash on the rocks on the side of the hill right across from me.
I stayed from early December, '06 to the end of March, '07. The first three months or so, I didn't go out of town much because it was cold and I was resting from having walked all over Geneva and Rome for about five weeks. So I stayed inside, painted, and watched the BBC.



An eddy around the rocks nearby.


Late winter sun and shadows on rocky shoreline. The Devon (Devonian) rocks tend to have a bluish cast.



The land visible on the horizon is Wales--here with a bit of snow on the land. North Devon is only a few miles (8 or 10, I think) from the south coast of Wales.



Again, Wales is visible across this little bit of the North Sea.

10/22/09--High Street, Ilfracombe

Here you can see the Victorian row houses; they look tiny and rather dreary, I think.


The High Street, with the Devon hills in the background. High Street is Brit English for Main Street but, in this case, the high street is high, up a hill from the harbor.


This corner building was the first thing I'd see when I went up the hill to get to the High Street.
Ah, Victorian faux French architecture.



Another view of the High Street.

10/22/09--Ilfracombe, continued

OK, this will work. These are photos of the part of town nearest the harbor, the lowest part of the town, and the part where my apartment was. In this last one, you can see the sea in the background.

10/22/09--Ilfracombe

This is the third time I've tried to do an entry the way I want it here, but when I upload the photos, I end up having a post that is backward, instead of going forward, like a prose post, so I'm going to write first and then see what I can do with the photos afterward. I adored North Devon and loved staying in Ilfracombe. My apartment was on the second floor(1st, the European way), and the window looked out on the little inlet of the sea. I could hear the sea even with the windows closed but opened them sometimes to hear it better when the weather permitted.
Ilfracombe is mostly a Victorian seaside resort, but the building I was in went back to the 1700's, and there are a few places in town even a little older than that. However, you will see in the photos of the town, both in the harbor part and the High Street part, the overall Victorian character, which tends to be kept in the modern building construction, too. The town has 20,000 to 30,000 residents but doubles, at least, in size during the summer tourist season.
Now I'll try to put in the photos, a series on the harbor part first, then ones of the part of town nearest the harbor, then the High Street area, then sea shots.
OK, these are the harbor shots. I guess I'll just do the others in a separate blog. Apparently, it's difficult when you have a whole bunch of images you want all in one blog, so I'll split it.

10/21/09--Forgotten Skills

Well, y'all, I couldn't combine all those photos into one blog from the way I uploaded from Picasa, so I left them separate. Will try a different tactic next time. See the earlier prose entry for my comments about Geneva.

Next, I'll move onto Ilfracombe, North Devon, England, where I stayed from Dec. '06 to end of March '07--my beloved North Devon, I call it. Will have plenty of pictures.

10/21/09

Swans everywhere know they're beautiful, and they must keep up appearances.

10/21/09

French-style building with English pub name.