Ecosse and Beyond: January 2012

New Year

An impressive collection of mugs

Fancy cakes in Llandeilo

And not just one jigsaw

but two (last piece going in)

So that’s all folks until I’m back from the Falklands in the middle of February….

December part 2 London & Oxford

Christmas Decoration in Oxford

Private Eye front pages at the V&A – everyone had smiles on their faces

Natural History museum:

T Rex

Hatching dinosaurs

And 2 Templar Place – the building is worth a visit and currently it is housing a William Morris exhibition making it even more worth the visit (and free of charge)

December; visits to London and Wales

Red Cross PropertyDepartment get together

I expect the conversation was about football…

And Wales:

After Sidmouth I went on to Lyme Regis on my own and booked myself into an eccentric and ultimately depressing Bed and Breakfast. Message to myself: don’t stay in Bed and Breakfasts in the winter. There is just nothing to do in the evenings and they are long.

I wanted to spend some time in Lyme after having read Tracey Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures.

I timed my visit well as on the Sunday the tides were perfect (as was the weather) for a fossil hunt. There were two hunts, the one organised by the museum had huge numbers and the other organised by the fossil shop had just me so I had a brilliant time. It turns out that Tracey Chevalier had spent some time in Lyme researching Mary Anning (the local fossil hunter, the subject of Remarkable Creatures) and had gone out fossil hunting with Paul (my guide). I was overwhelmed with all the information he gave me about fossils and came back with all my pockets stuffed with fossils. And no photos.

On the Saturday I went to the museum which is well worth the visit.

Dolls’ House food

Fossils

Beautiful fish fossil

Fossil excrement

Paul was an expert at finding this stuff

And the built environment of Lyme is a pleasure to walk around

Mary Anning’s grave

The church. Not photographed but it has an interesting lobby

The Mary Anning window

Birds on a bird

The harbour

Looking towards Lyme

24 & 25 November 2011 - Exe estuary

Helen and Brian invited me to join them in Sidmouth for a few days – the weather was excellent. We went for a walk along the beach at Exmouth – the rock formations east of the beach were amazing:

Stairway to heaven?

And the following day we had an RSPB cruise up the Exe estuary. The boat goes up the estuary just before the rising tide so that you get to see the best selection of birds which includes a great number of avocets.

The boat they used was one of the Dunkirk little ships and this is their flag: