The Other Direction.....

Following our canal path exploration the other day, on Saturday morning we thought we would explore the canal in the other direction...
The plan was to walk along the canal path as far as Devizes wharf.....not a long walk, only about five miles, but on a hot day and with a cafe stop and a picnic lunch planned as well, five miles was going to suit us just fine......

Heron on board the Puddle Duck

 There are lots of different types of narrow boat on the canal and just as many different characters on board....
We walked past a boat called the Puddle Duck but it wasn't a duck on board but a heron.... 

You can see quite a lot of these birds along the canal.... They can remain very still as they search the water for their next meal......

Hire boats being cleaned in preparation for their next occupants

A little further along the canal we saw some narrow boats owned by a hire company being prepared for the next set of holiday makers..... 
A week or two on a narrow boat seems to be a pretty popular holiday choice for a lot of people although it is something that I have never done....

One of the many locks

 Just as we were approaching one of the locks, we saw a water vole swimming across the canal. As we were watching it a large gull swooped down and tried to grab the vole.... I never thought that a gull would attack a water vole like that....maybe it thought that it was a fish swimming near the surface.... 
Anyway we never saw the vole again although it didn't appear that the gull had caught it......

The main flight of Caen Hill Locks

 One of the main attractions of this section of the canal is the Caen Hill Flight. 
This is a flight of locks that take the canal up the hill on the approach to Devizes.

There are 29 locks in all and 16 in the main flight which I have pictured above....
Apparently it takes between 5 & 6 hours to negotiate the entire flight......
Mighty hard work I call it opening and closing all those locks.........

A narrow boat in one of the locks

 I have to say that negotiating locks is one of the reasons I wouldn't want a narrow boat holiday.......!!
At the top of the main flight of locks there is a cafe and Anne and I took advantage of it with coffee & cake.
It was really interesting sitting there and seeing all the boats slowly making their way up the flight...

Canal side pub..

Just on the outskirts of Devizes there was a canal side pub on the opposite bank and judging by the number of people sat outside it was obviously doing brisk business.....

We carried on until we reached the wharf area where we found a seat near the towpath and had our picnic......

We had really enjoyed the walk...... apart from one thing......Cyclists!!

Yes folks I know..... I am a cyclist...but it is a good idea sometimes to see what impact something we do has on other people.....  

Throughout our walk, every minute or two we would hear a 'ding..ding' which was the bell of a cyclist. 
Because the towpath was very narrow in places we had to stop and stand aside to let the cyclist/s go past. 
The first couple of times we thought nothing about it, but as our walk continued it really did become annoying. 
I counted 56 cyclists in just one hour of our walk. Some of these cyclists were solo others were in twos or threes....

Now don't get me wrong, the tow path is a shared space and it must have been just as annoying for the cyclists having walkers 'in the way' as it was for us having to keep on standing aside.

However one observation that Anne (who is not a cyclist) made, was that very few of the cyclists actually slowed down....they just rang their bells and kept on coming. 
From Anne's point of view she found this to be arrogant...  ding ding...  we are coming by so get out of the way!

It is not often that I would ever ride along a towpath (although I have done a few times on my touring bike) preferring road riding, but it is good sometimes to experience things from a different perspective.....

On the road I'm probably an annoyance to motorists, although I must say that when I am driving I have never found cyclists such a pain as they were for me as a walker the other day........

Exploring our latest location.......

Since we have been here at Seend the weather has been gorgeous....very sunny & very warm.

Yesterday we thought that we would go for a wander along the towpath and start to explore our latest location...

This scene is just 100 metres from our pitch

The Kennet & Avon canal passes along the rear of the campsite....in fact we are only about 100 metres from the water of the canal....

The plan was to walk along the towpath to a pub that we had been told about..... have a drink and lunch....then have another drink and walk back to the site.....

Company for our tow path walk...

 Along the way we were joined by a couple of families of ducks and geese who kept pace with us for a fair way.....
They then noticed some good juicy reeds and so they decided to stop paddling along and have lunch instead.....

Our lunchtime pub stop

 It wasn't long before we arrived at our lunchtime pub stop...about an hour in fact...
The pub was on the opposite bank so we had to cross the canal by way of one of the many bridges....

The view up the canal from our lunchtime table.

We both had a very nice lunch and as we were sat right next to the canal there was lots to see...

It's always interesting watching the narrow boats as they prepare to enter the locks.... the same as caravan owners trying to reverse their trailers onto a pitch..... it provided good lunchtime entertainment for us...

Looking back down the canal in the direction we had walked...

Following lunch and a few drinks we then headed back down the towpath....... 
The main objective was the campsite.....the secondary objective was to do it without falling into the canal..!!

Heading back to our campsite

I am happy to report that we achieved both....
After getting back to Eva the Eriba I sat in my awning seat and promptly fell asleep....

Well....It beats working..!!

Yes.....We've Moved Again......

We have now left Hereford and the Cuckoo's Corner Campsite......

A week before we left the site we had another visitor... Bill Williams..another friend from the Backpackers Club arrived one morning...
He caught me out too.... 
I was having a lazy man's lie in when he arrived... I saw the green Subaru enter the site and park opposite Eva...when I saw him get out and start walking towards our awning mild panic set in and I was out of my bed and dressed faster than I have done since we started our travels.... 
Still, it was good to see him and have a natter and a cuppa.....

Before we left the site, we also got back to the Country Park to search out some more of those carvings.
I took some pictures which I have posted below....

Also we found a 'Reading Seat' on which were carved faces of garden spirits....
Again I have posted the images below....

Buzzard

Two Playful Pine Martens

Wise Old Eagle Owl

A Family of  Badgers

The Reading Seat in the Orchard

Female Garden Spirit Carved On The Reading Seat

Male Garden Spirit Carved On The Reading Seat

Where have we moved to ?
Well due to family matters we need to be in easy striking distance of the West Country for a few months and that is obviously having an effect on our current plans....

What we have decided is that we will fully explore this part of the country first.... allowing us to meet our family commitments and at the same time enjoy everything that the West Country has to offer.... So we are currently at the Camping & Caravanning Club site at Seend which is between Melksham & Devizes...We plan on staying here for a month.

The site itself is situated right next to the Kennet & Avon Canal and is well positioned for walking and cycling.....
I'm looking forward to riding some of the local roads which seem to be ideal for a bit of road riding being reasonably quiet of traffic.....

Hopefully over the next few days I will get some images of this current location to share with you....

Over the County Border.....

One of the places that we wanted to pay a visit to whilst we were in the area, was Ludlow just over the county border in Shropshire.....

It was only a twenty mile drive and on arrival we made use of the park and ride service... 
A good thing really, because the one thing we didn't like about the town was the volume of traffic that try's to squeeze itself through the ancient narrow streets....

We visited the castle which can use up a good half day to do the visit justice.......
Like always, we also had a good wander around visiting various shops and looking at the wonderful old buildings......

All in all a good place to visit....just a great pity about the traffic... 
I think that more people should take advantage of the park and ride service.
When we arrived the car park was not even half full and the same when we left...
If I had anything to do with it I would ban all traffic from the centre of the old part of the town, except for essential delivery vehicles etc..... but hey......these days the car appears to be king!

Below are just some of the images that I took in and around the old town, including a couple of the Feathers Hotel, which has been described by the New York Times as "the most handsome inn in the world"......

Ludlow Castle

Another View of the Castle

The Feathers Hotel

Another View of the Feathers Hotel

Row of Black and White Buildings

Bored with Black and White? How About Black and Yellow.

Yet another Row of Old Black and White Buildings.

Just After Taking This Image, All Spaces In Front Of The Building Were Filled With Cars

Waiting to get a clear view of each of these buildings without too many cars in front of them turned out to be a bit of a labour of love......
The moment that I had pressed the shutter release on the last image all the spaces in front of the building just suddenly filled up with cars trying to park.......
With most of the other shots it was a matter of waiting for any gaps in the moving traffic.......

A Scarecrow Festival.....

When we visited the tourist information office the other day we picked up a leaflet declaring that there was to be a Scarecrow Festival at a nearby village.....

I was keen to go along but Anne appeared a bit uncertain about it....
When I asked her why, she told me it was because she was a bit concerned that I might be mistaken for a scarecrow and never get out of the village.....I think that she was joking, but I'm not sure.....

However on Sunday we went along to have a look.....

We hadn't been in the village for long when I got chatting to an old local guy. He told me that he had entered a scarecrow in the festival competition but had taken it down because he didn't think the others were proper traditional scarecrows.... if they had been he would have easily won the competition he reckoned.....

I must admit that he had a point....he said to me " You know what a proper scarecrow looks like don't you...of course you do." 
None of the so called scarecrows we saw looked like a traditional scarecrow but they were all interesting just the same..... A few of them seemed to follow a 'film' theme..........

I have posted images below of a few of those that we saw......

Ghostbusters....

A Burglar With His SWAG...

 This next one was one of Anne's favourites... it shows a farmer with his head down a hole looking for moles while the birds fly free overhead and the moles pop up out of holes all around him.....

The Farmer Trying To Catch Moles...

School Crossing Patrol...

No Idea What This Is...!!!

 This next one was the winner of the competition.... one with a film theme... 
This is Harry Potter with his owl in a cage sat on the bench on platform 9 3/4.....

Harry Potter

Unfortunately it was entered by the next door neighbour of the old gentleman I had been speaking to earlier, so that was a win that didn't go down very well with him.......

I can see a feud going on for weeks between them now....

This next one was my favourite....
Just in case you are unsure, the scarecrow is the one on the right.....
Anne and I are sat on the left.....I think.....or maybe not.....

Could Be Anne and I And A Scarecrow.....Or Maybe Not!!

A Surprise Visit....A Long Journey....A Piece of Cake.

The other day saw Anne and I waiting at the rail station here in Hereford....

The night before I'd had a text from Jason Boynton-Lee (who had paid us a visit when we were at Sixpenny Handley) informing me that he had got a day off work....fancied a day out...and was thinking of coming up to Hereford as he had not been here before......

The Rail Station at Hereford

Now the fact is that Jason works on the railway, so in a way it would be a bit like a 'Busman's Holiday' or in this case a Railman's Holiday....
Not so silly when you take into account the fact that he has free travel passes that need to be used or lost.....

Anyway, we met him off the train and had a good time just wandering around parts of the town taking a few pictures here and there and generally catching up on gossip etc.....

There is a nice statue of Sir Edward Elgar leaning against his bicycle and we both took a picture of that........

Statue of Sir Edward Elgar

Whilst leaning against his bicycle Sir Edward was taking in the view...... What of..?

The View Sir Edward Was Looking At......

 Yes that's right... The Cathedral of course......

Anne went off to look at various shops as women like to do and Jason and I found a nice little independent coffee shop (no tax avoiding multi national chains for us) and indulged in another of our favourite pastimes........

Coffee and cake........ The eating and drinking of.......

Coffee and Cake...Notice I Finished My Cake First!

Anne caught up with us again and had some cake of her own with a pot of tea, so Jason and I had to have another coffee / tea ourselves,
but we were both good and did not indulge in any further cake consumption.........

View Of The Town Centre From Our Cafe......

It was really good to see Jason and nice of him to take the time out to visit us....

Mind you a journey of about four hours in each direction is a long way to go to sample a piece of cake............

Temperature Up - Energy Low

Over the past few days the temperature has gone up.... but I have to say our energy levels have gone down......
The hotter it has got the less moving around we have felt like indulging in....
Sitting around enjoying the good weather has been more the order of the day.

However, prior to this sudden burst of hotter weather we managed to explore the area on various walks..
The other day we visited the Queenswood Country Park and Arboretum....
I would say that it was worth the visit.

Trying to identify the many and varied trees occupied a lot of our time as we walked one of the marked trails 
The view from the view point was quite spectacular.... it gave us fantastic panoramic views of the county from the Malvern Hills in the east to the Black Mountains in the west. There was also a toposcope depicting the various hills and ridges in the view.....

While we were wandering along the trail we came across this (see below)  sculpture/carving of a dormouse...it wasn't until we got back to Eva the Eriba and started reading a leaflet about the Country Park that we found out that there are a further six sculptures of forest animals.

Now I know that as we get older our eyesight is likely to deteriorate, but I didn't think it had got that bad...we hadn't seen any of the other sculptures....
According to the information we were reading the sculptures have been created by local chainsaw carvers Steve Elsby and Harry Thomas from a variety of locally-sourced wood.

So, we will now be going back at some time over the next week to seek out the elusive carvings...

The Dormouse Sculpture

Close-Up View of the Dormouse

Good Weather.....Getting Out......

Since we have been here the weather has been pretty good, so we have been getting out and about on various day trips and walks......

Hereford Cathedral

 Earlier in the week we went to Hereford for a spot of exploration tourist style...
We found the cathedral really interesting and we spent a lot of time looking around it......

After our visit we had our picnic in the cathedral grounds and we weren't the only ones choosing to have lunch there as you can see below.....
The town itself was also worth wandering around with an interesting museum and other points of interest........

Lunch in the Cathedral Grounds

 We have had a number of walks exploring the local countryside this week as well....
Lots of large fields to walk through on various footpaths in the area.....

Field View On One Of Our Walks..

 One of the walks that we completed brought us back to the campsite via the overgrown section that I told you about in my last post.....
After all our nettle bashing the other day, this time the stinging nettles seemed to be determined to have their revenge.....

Anne got stung on the arm and I have never seen a reaction to nettles quite so extreme.....
I have a history of reacting badly to insect stings and bites but I have never had a bad reaction to nettles...
Anne's arm reacted very badly to her brush with the nettles, but luckily within a few hours the worst of the reaction had disappeared......

Anne's Reaction to the Nettles....

 If there is a lesson to be learned here it must be that nettles don't like being hit by a large stick!
Ignore this at your peril..... They can and do bite back.

No problems like that in the various apple orchards that our walks have taken us....
Herefordshire is famous for it's apples and of course the cider that it produces....
Somerset is often thought of as the main cider apple growing area in the UK but Herefordshire is in fact responsible for the production of over half of the annual 63 million gallons of cider produced in the UK.
It is also known for it's Perry, which is a cider-like drink that is actually made from pears.... it tends to be a lot smoother to the taste than the flavour of cider.....

One of the Cider Apple Orchards

 All our walks so far have started and finished at our campsite pitch....
However starting tomorrow we will be going a bit further afield.

When we were in Hereford we picked up some leaflets from the tourist information office on walks in the slightly wider area, so we are going to give them a go.....
Judging from the number of walks we have lined up to do , every day over the next couple of weeks should be taken care of......

Our Cuckoos Corner Pitch..

Our Latest Location.....

Our latest location is........
Moreton on Lugg three miles north of Hereford......
We are staying at Cuckoos Corner touring park which is just off the A49 between Hereford and Leominster.

Back in 2008 while riding Lands End to John O Groats I remember passing the site after we had spent our fourth overnight stop at the Premier Inn in Hereford.
I remember thinking to myself as I cycled past that "there is a campsite we could have stayed and saved some money"
Mind you we needed a good hotel stop at that point as we had suffered some awful weather.....nothing like a good shower..a decent meal and a comfortable bed to help you on your way.

Anyway, that was then and this is now.....
We had a pretty good journey up here from Sixpenny Handley... The only problem we had was not being allowed to exit the motorway where we needed to as the exit was closed... However the in car GPS redirected us and we only ended up increasing our journey by about seven miles.
When we arrived the weather was not good...very gusty and windy with lots of rain. It wasn't good yesterday either, it was dry but still very windy so we  didn't put up the awning until today......

When we were setting up I made the mistake of popping up the poptop incorrectly... 
There is a very strict order of releasing the interior clips and pushing the correct end of the roof up first.... 

For some reason...without thinking....I pushed up the rear before I had un-clipped the front....
This had the effect of jamming the rear so I couldn't push it up or down and also making it impossible to un-clip the front.
Yes it was totally jammed  with the rear up and the front down.....

The only way that I could get out of this 'jam' was to borrow some spanners from the very helpful campsite owner and remove the front interior clips.... 
This released the front section of the roof and allowed me to pop it up... I then had to re-attach the clips.
I WILL NOT MAKE THAT STUPID ERROR AGAIN !!

Although it was very..very ..windy yesterday Anne and I did go out for a good walk....
We followed a footpath that runs past the campsite....
Part of it was completely grown over with nettles and other plants, so we found a couple of large sticks to 'bash' our way through and we finally managed to re-open the footpath....
At least any walkers that follow in our footsteps will now be able to get though with less difficulty......

On previous trips along the English/Welsh border area I have found that footpaths are often allowed to fall into disrepair..... it is such a pity as a lot of people would be forced to turn back and cut their walk short.....
Perhaps they don't have a very active ramblers group or footpath officer in this part of the world....

We were both glad that we had forced our way though, as one of the things we saw on finally emerging out on to the next road was a garden that had been turned into a Railway Station...
No trains.... just a station complete with signs...signals and signal box and a platform.
Obviously the house owner was a pretty enthusiastic railway fan.
An image of this can be seen below.......

Station but no trains..

It's That Time Again!

Our two week stay at Sixpenny Handley has now come to an end.

During our stay here we have had a constant stream of visitors to the door of Eva the Eriba.....

First to visit was Peter Calcutt from the Backpackers club.....
Peter also made a further three visits..... on one occasion even bringing his wife.

Then Jon Joynes one of the 10in10 cycling team dropped by for coffee and munchies...

Over the bank holiday my Daughter, husband Scott and my grandsons spent a day with us.....

The next  visitor was Jason Boynton-Lee. He was one of the riders on the Atlantic Coast Challenge Ride (ACCR) He arrived bearing a large bag of custard slices.

One evening Howard Kelly, another Backpackers Club member arrived. He said that as he was passing he had to drop by.. He had never met Anne and wanted to be sure that she actually existed.

This past weekend Mike and Chris McEnnerney, more Backpackers Club members, came up and camped at the site with us.......

All in all our stay here has been a really social one.
Our next location will be.........?
You will have to keep an eye on the blog to find out where......

Oh ! One last thing.....
I haven't come across any more rural art but I did see this sculpture (below)  at Salisbury that I found interesting........