I took this photo on a short walk along Kemsing Down and thought it would make an appropriate share in light of my pending pilgrimage to Santiago, now less than three weeks away from the start. There is a car park in Kemsing near the church which, in great British tradition, is stumbling distance from the local pub too. Do take a moment to visit the Church yard if your visit is in Spring or Summer as the gardens are [...]
I have a long way to go before I can call myself artist, but have you seen Van Gogh’s first painting? No? Nor have I but I bet it wasn’t that much better (though I reckon he had the good sense to burn it rather than distribute it on international mass media). But I believe if a jobs worth doing then its worth doing poorly if that’s all you can do, and you don’t need that much imagination, when compared [...]
Kent, the garden of England, is a place with unlimited interesting walks and places to visit. In search of a Scallop Shell for the pilgrimage I chose to start at Coldrum Long Barrow to be followed by a flying visit to Whitstable, known for it’s Oysters and to collect one from the beach. But a notice on Whitstable beach states all shells are owned by the “Whitstable Oyster Company” and are not to be removed! So I was out of [...]
With 4G operators now up and running it can’t be long before telephone poles and wiring are a thing of the past. Unlike vinyl records there’s a good chance they won’t make a comeback too so I thought it a worthy account of how the countryside was once blighted by these irritating view-spoilers. We can look forward to photoshop-free panorama’s that actually look something like the real thing, at last.
Coldrum Long Barrow is a megalithic monument near the Medway in Kent. Used as a burial chamber in the early Neolithic period 3985 to 3855 BC. It is one of the “Medway Megaliths” which show the Medway Valley was once home to a vibrant and pioneering farming community in the early Neolithic; a pivotal period when the first domestic animals and cereals were being introduced from mainland Europe.
While walking through the Kentish countryside I see this phone-box in a beautifully landscaped garden. It’s a huge garden attached to a gorgeous private country manor house and could so easily have been left out of view, so a big thank you to the owner. Can you think of a caption for this picture? I can think of a few but my favourites so far are: “It didn’t take this long to catch Ronnie Biggs” “Is that the funeral home?” [...]
Ever since seeing Rochester Cathedral from the high walls of the Castle I have wanted to paint it. A bold statement since my first visit was thirty-plus years ago and I took up painting two weeks ago. The colours are wrong, I have attempted too much detail, my trees look like cranes and my cranes look like trees (there’s one in green behind the cathedral) and Rochester river looks like a Mediterranean beach and not the Medway & Hoo flotsam [...]
With a desire to find something different for lunch Adam and I left the office and walked to Docklands eastern shore and The Gun Pub. Combining the best of British pubs atmosphere with olde world and new the Gun provides an excellent setting and a reminder that not every restaurant needs to drug you with MSG to guarantee a return visit. Move from the toasty open wood fire in the warm wooded bars out to the terrace and enjoy a [...]
I picked up a paintbrush on the weekend, the first time since I was about 8 years old (44 years ago!) and this was the result. My eye for colour is askew (I have included the photos used to paint from). On the walk I hope to capture a few photos which I will attempt to turn into paintings. Not worthy of or indeed an attempt to match the wonderful art donations by professionals, however I will auction off the [...]
Work commitments meant I could not start in March, fortuitous as the weather was miserable! Today I booked 14 days to cover the first leg of the Cammino de Santiago beginning 25th May in St Jean Pied-de-Port and ending in, or around, Burgos 6th or 7th June. On the 23rd Julie, Adam and I will go to Paris for a couple of nights then I will go on to St Jean Pied-de-Port by train and the adventure begins! There is [...]
As we get closer to the winter solstice, the time when the sun appears at its lowest altitude on the horizon, more of us can enjoy a sunrise because it happens later in the day. Today, around 7.45am the sky burst with colour aided by a mixture of cloud types and as you can see below an unusual hole pushed down as if a Spaceship dipped under the cloud to see if anything worthwhile was to be found. Clearly our [...]
My training involves a 4 mile walk in the morning and sometimes again in the evening. Daylight continues to shrink so I use a head-torch to help avoid bumping into things. The last few days have been assisted by the light of the moon. This morning at the start of its waning gibbous phase it flooded the forest with enough light to get by without the head-torch. This photo doesn’t really do justice but then its a point-and-shoot camera and [...]
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