Golden Days

September is moving on apace now, and every day I see more signs of early autumn. Summer is slipping ever so gently away and the garden is slowing and winding down. Plants are looking quite tired now, and there are fewer flowers to find. We had a warm, cloudless day on Sunday and I went into the garden to pick fruit and a few flowers. The fennel has gone to seed and is a lovely greenish, mustardy shade of yellow. When I put a seed head on the garden table it made the most wonderfully defined shadow.

On our recent camping trip to North Cornwall I bought a couple of pottery items. I always seem to come home with a little souvenir from our holidays, not usually expensive and often free, like shells, pebbles or flowers for drying. This time, however, some tactile, hand-made ceramics called to me in the softest bird's-egg shades of cream and pale blue. I have quite a few items of pale blue stoneware at home. I just love that colour. Here's a pretty little jug with the acid-yellow fennel complementing that sky blue.

Next to it is a little candle holder which I also bought. Yes, that's in pale blue too - you know me well, don't you? It's an ingenious candle holder because it also has a little section around it which you can fill with water and flowers. 

I put fennel, pale lilac scabious and bright purple verbena bonariensis in it.

Here's how it looks without the flowers. Clever, isn't it? I know I'm going to make good use of this!

Out in the sunshine I picked some more blackberries and raspberries, and started to pick the apples which are beginning to fall from the tree. Our little apple tree has really done itself proud this year and produced masses of apples. It certainly produced a lot of blossom back in April, so it's not surprising. I've taken many of the apples to work for my colleagues, as I can't use them all and hate to see any to go to waste.

The raspberries are having a second flush and are absolutely enormous, and the blackberries are a thornless variety. I love blackberries. For me they epitomise this late summer/early autumn season.

Later that day we met up with my brother and his family at Stonehenge which is less than an hour's drive away. Despite never having lived far away from this world-famous prehistoric site we have never been as a family, although both P and I can remember being taken there as children (back in the days when you could wander around the stones and touch them!). My two little nephews loved running in and out of the reconstructed neolithic huts.

I must admit they looked quite cosy - this one even had a little porch.

This one is very sweet, and quite tiny. Its wizard-hat shape made me smile.

It's a half-hour walk to the stones from the visitor centre, so we walked there and caught the shuttle bus back. On such a warm, sunny day there were lots of visitors, many international, and everyone followed a walk which encircled the stones. 

It's hard to see this iconic place with fresh eyes, but it is an amazing sight.

We've driven past and sat in traffic jams on the A303 many times over the years, and watched the tourists walking around the stones. It always looked as if they were quite a distance from them, but we were pleasantly surprised at how close the path went.

Salisbury Plain is a vast open area of chalk downland, and Stonehenge sits solidly in this timeless landscape, a link to our long-distant past. I love its gentle grassy hills and big skies.

I'm glad we finally made it here. This golden Sunday afternoon was one to treasure.

(Before I go I just want to say thank you for all your lovely comments on my recent blog posts. This month is turning out to be much busier than expected, and my visits to blogland are a bit patchy at the moment. I'm hoping to catch up properly soon!)

September

Hello! Here I am again after a frantic few days back at work. It has been mad, but good to be back, seeing familiar faces and meeting new ones, staff and students alike. Despite the 'back to school' gloom that descends in the last few days of the summer holidays, it's nice to be back in a familiar routine and to be looking forward to the start of a new season. I haven't shown you my calendar for a few months, have I? Here's my September page, with its images of harvest time and fruitfulness.

I love September. I may have mentioned this last year... harvest time, golden light, abundant fruit, misty mornings, cooler days, darker nights. What's not to love? There's a lovely smoky smell in the air in the evenings now. It's the unmistakable smell of autumn, and it brings with a wonderful sense of anticipation. The garden has entered a mellow phase. The wild growth has slowed and the colours are rich and vibrant. I've been picking and freezing our blackberries for a couple of weeks now and have plans for them, along with a second flush of raspberries which have appeared.

The apples are starting to ripen and have begun to fall from the tree. I must start to collect them - I plans for them too.

The calendulas are flowering away in the brightest shades of orange, and I love them for it.

A week and a half ago P and I went for a walk along the river Avon as it flows west out of Bath. It was a hot afternoon beginning with sunshine and ending with rain showers, but we noticed how the landscape was easing gently into harvest time, late summer starting to give way to early autumn.

The river was very graceful, flowing past leafy parkland.

Flowers were sprinkled along the banks, visited by many bees and insects.

Shiny red hawthorn berries reflected the sunlight.

There were teasel seed heads.

And many elegant, shivery grasses and rushes.

We walked past a field of sweetcorn, or maize.

And past some rather hot cows resting in the shade of trees.

We finished where we started, near a beautiful waterside pub, and were glad of a rest on such a warm day.

Sitting at an outside table (with an umbrella) in the rain and enjoying its coolness, we ordered cold drinks. Lime and soda for me. In my backpack was a little harvest of my own, gathered from the tracks we'd walked along, a taste of early autumn.

( I intend to catch up with what you've all been up to over the weekend, as I've barely dipped into blogland this week - see you soon x)

Camping in Cornwall

Hello all! With just a couple of days before work and school were to start the lovely P had an idea - a last-minute camping get-away to Cornwall. How could I refuse? We haven't camped as a family for a few years: as the children had got older camping had not worked so well at a time when the teenagers needed their space. A family of five for a week in a tent was not very conducive to this, so as the years have passed our holidays have evolved into staying in cottages with differing combinations of whoever is available/wants to go at the time, and this works well. B has graduated now and is enjoying a new job and spending time with her boyfriend, and J is getting ready for his second year at University, while D is in her final year of GCSEs and has a busy social life. As a result we have to be very flexible about planning our holidays.



Most summers we go to Cornwall at some point, and usually to our favourite holiday destination of St Ives, but as this year we were camping for just one night and the weather forecast for the weekend wasn't great, we decided to go a bit closer to home. We decided on the North Cornish coast and J found us a lovely campsite in the pretty coastal village of Tintagel. Most of my photos look rather gloomy as it was overcast for most of the weekend with the odd burst of sunshine, but it was very warm, despite this. Here's one of the many dry stone walls which I love. They're always full of wild flowers and covered in lichen.



The campsite was a good one and we woke to a shimmering silvery sky the next morning.

 I love all the little rituals of camping: the unzipping of the tent in the morning to see what the weather's doing, that first good lungful of fresh air, walking across the dewy field in wellies to the shower block, lighting our little stove (we travel lighter than we used to), boiling the kettle to make our first cup of coffee, saying 'good morning' to other campers. It's a holiday experience which runs right through my childhood, our pre-children years and our time with a young family and we hope to have many more.

After breakfast we packed up and headed for the village, and this beautiful NT property, The Old Post Office. Over 600 years old, it was originally a medieval farmhouse and has the most amazing undulating roof. A sweet building, it made a refreshing change from the usual stately homes owned by the NT.

The inside was fascinating, with very low ceilings and a calm, whitewashed simplicity.

The beams on the ceiling were very low, and the rooms quite small.

These slate ladder steps led to a platform where the unmarried women of the house would sleep, hence the old expression 'left on the shelf'. They look a bit dangerous to me!

The hearth and oven downstairs exuded homeliness. 

I was impressed by the intricate stitches made by the young lady who sewed this.

At the back of the house the garden was a lovely retreat.

We left the Old Post Office and decided to head to the beach down a steep path which wound through a valley, a little rushing stream to our left.

Wonderful orange crocosmia grows wild throughout Cornwall and here was no exception.

When we reached the Beach Cafe we stopped for lunch, and very yummy it was too.

And then began to climb down the steps to the beach below us.

As we looked up we could see the bridge taken by everyone visiting the castle (myth has it King Arthur's castle) on the cliffs high above.

Down on the beach the stream cascades over the cliff in the form of a lovely waterfall - it was very cooling to paddle in the icy water at the bottom.

The tide was just beginning to come in and the water whooshed and rushed around the rocks with great force.  

Red and pink seaweed lay scattered along the strand-line, and was thrown by owners for their dogs to chase and catch.

There are a couple of caves in the cliffs and one, Merlin's Cave, is easy to walk into at low tide.

A different view of the beach presented itself from inside.

At shoulder height on the rocks there were limpets, showing how deep the water gets when the tide's in.

The sun came out for a while, making the cliffs greener and the sea bluer.

I got out my seaside journal and sat jotting my thoughts, as is my custom at the coast.

Soon it was time to leave, and we headed back up the steps to the top of the cliffs.

We decided to take advantage of the Land Rover rides back up the steep valley and piled into the back of one along with lots of other hill-weary tourists. It was a bit of a squash!

We also went to Trebarwith Strand. J and P wanted to swim, and were hoping for a beach. Instead we found a very dramatic place. This area of coastline is made up of slate and it's very evident here. Great shelves of slate make up a pavement here down to the sea, layers and layers of rock with natural steps at their edges.

The beach was submerged, but there were plenty of surfers here. It seemed a wild place and was evidently very popular.

I was fascinated by this little cottage cut into the cliff. I'm not sure I could relax in it with all that rock hanging over it!

We finished up at Polzeath, a place we've never been before. It was a lovely beach, very sandy and with huge rolling waves crashing onto it. It was also a very busy place, full of families body-boarding and masses of surfers too. As a result photography was difficult so I only managed one photo. 

As we drove home after a day and a half away we were really glad that we'd squeezed in this little camping trip. We were so lucky with the weather and the camping was great. We saw some bits of Cornwall that were new to us and loved being by the sea again. There was a wonderful sunset as we drove, the perfect end to our mini-holiday.