Postcards from England
I had a great visit with my mum in England.
The day of my arrival saw the tail end of Hurricane Ophelia,
Which created a lovely background for sheep silhouettes.
The next day was warm and misty.
On our walk, we saw a strange, n-ewe species:
The two-headed sheep!
(Sorry about the baa-d pun.)
Our destination was this old, Saxon church
Dating back to the late 11th century.
My father is buried in this beautiful (and slightly isolated) location.
I’m busy this week with work so will only be posting once.
For more postcards, please go to: Our World.
And check out: Skywatch.
Golden moments
I’m away all week – off to England
To visit my mum.
Time to enjoy family, old houses
And my mum’s garden —
And, of course, my favourite walk
Up on the Sussex Downs.
(I wont’ be around to visit you this week.)
For more beautiful views, please visit: Our World.
Say it with flowers
Small villages around England compete
In the ‘Best Flowers’ competition every summer.
And Bramber is no exception.
The facades of pubs and inns
Are decked out in glorious technicoloured blooms.
Watering the flowers is quite a challenge —
You start from the top and let the water run down.
Even the windows of the building housing
The public toilets are decked out in petalled finery.
(And yes – Bramber has won the competition several times.)
For more flowery goodness, please visit: Our World.
Magical horses
Up on the Downs in Sussex, England,
On a magical sunset evening —
Layers of golden hills
Glow like jewels
While horses graze
And rainbows sparkle.
For more golden dust magic, please visit: Skywatch.
Emerald and sapphire
I was in Sussex, England, over Easter —
And one of my favourite activities is walking on the Downs.
There’s nothing like emerald fields
Glowing beneath a sky of sapphire,
With animals enjoying
The background of big, rolling clouds.
For more big skies, please visit: Skywatch.
Rolling hill skies
I’m off to visit my parents in England.
They live in a small village
Nestled at the foot of the rolling hills of the Downs.
For me, the golden fields
And wide open skies
Embody the beauty of the English countryside.
And finding two horses nuzzling each other
Is just the cherry on top of the cake.
(I’ll be back in a week, but the Our World link will be up and running as usual on Monday evening.)
For more beauty, please visit: Skywatch.
Leafy stars
One of my favourite houses in West Sussex, England,
Is St. Mary’s: a timbered house from around 1470.
The house is still lived in today,
(And open to the public on certain afternoons)
And boasts many beautiful gardens.
Here is a peek at the back!
I love this summer reflection
In the leaded window of the house.
Next door, is a secret garden
Where children play music
And leafy stars abound.
For more star stories, please visit: Our World.
Fields of gold
I love the rolling hills
Of the Sussex countryside,
With its endless blue
And fields of gold
Rising to meet the welcoming sky.
For more endless blue, please visit: Skywatch.
Wonky or leafy?
I’m off to England at the end of the week and this has inspired me to show you some of the adorable houses in West Sussex, where my sister lives.
What do you prefer?
Shakespearian with wonky beams…
… Or a cottage
With a thatched roof;
A leafy green window
Making art in the summer sun;
Or perhaps a house with iron railings
And bejewelled cobwebs.
The most popular house in England is probably the pub —
Now with gourmet food and a great sense of humour!
For more stories, please visit: Our World Tuesday.
Heritage chalk
One of the treats we experienced while back home in the UK was a lovely visit to the Amberley Working Museum.
It’s a large open air museum on the site of the chalk pits that were in use from about 1830 – 1963. Nowadays, it houses a lot of items from the early Victorian era.
There is a printing workshop and a resident blacksmith at the forge.
There is a wheelwright, a stained glass maker, a potter and a walking-stick maker.
I also came across a Victorian version of a shoe shop: it was fascinating to see shoes and boots in the making.
There are vintage buses and beautiful glossy fire engines, looking like works of art on wheels.
Other beautifully crafted vehicles included these carts, made of weathered wood.
It was a relaxing break to go back in time to a slower era, to a time when great technological changes were about to make a breakthrough.
Or as the Victorian writer, Charles Dickens wrote:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us….”
For more inspiration, visit: My World.
Who says what?