Yarbridge one

The Yarbridge Inn has been there all the time we have been coming to Brading, but for one reason or another we never paid it a visit. We did try on one occasion, without booking, to find it full, but that was as near as we got. Whereas this year we paid it two lunchtime visits, separated by just one day. This being notice of the first visit.

Format of the day, morning up in woods behind Brading, lunch at the Inn, afternoon snoozed away with a book, quite possibly Clarissa.

So up Doctor's Lane, once a minor road, now a farm track, running along one side of a field of maize, not that you could see it at that point, there being substantial banks and hedges to both sides. Turned south onto a path running down the next side of the field, ending up in the woods, on the edge of Nunwell Down. Patches of field where the maize was not doing very well at all. The 'M' on the map, perhaps for maize, marking the corner of the field. Nunwell House used to be the seat of the Oglanders, the founder of which line was a companion of the Conqueror. Having sat there for hundreds of years, they sold out to the rather less illustrious, but still county and/or army family who have it now.

Quite a lot of the stuff on the right, which I guessed to be field maple, Acer campestre. Checking this evening, Wikipedia offers a wide variety of leaves, including the one on the left, which looks near enough. So I think it was a good guess. Not a tree I remember coming across in Surrey, although I dare say it is there.

Quite a lot of hollows and holes, some large, probably mostly places where chalk was dug out to build the cheaper houses and walls in the town below - a town which might be village sized now, but is also an ancient town, once fairly important. One of the hollows contains a memorial to Camilla Peterson, a Danish student, murdered there in 2013.

Having seen a couple of pyramid orchids in the woods, the unmown portions of the recreational field above the Mall seemed to be full of them. Noticed in the very same place, in rather smaller numbers, just about two years ago. See reference 4.

Heard one buzzard in the woods. Saw another over the town, being buzzed by a seagull. Perhaps the seagull had a nest in the vicinity.

Back to the house for a wash and brush up, then back out to the Yarbridge Inn. Noticing on the way this handsome red brick house. Looking to date from the time when you might use chalk and low grade limestone down below, but you had brick where it showed.

At the Inn, we elected for inside. It was not crowded and outside had the potential to be either or both of sunny or windy. Then we both went for the crab salad, which turned out to be really excellent. And not just because of the Chablis from a real vineyard that came with it - for which see reference 5. This wine looks to be their everyday brand, with some much fancier looking wines a bit further down the list. At the end of which we find a very fancy look marc, described as 'hors d'âge', which judging from Linguee (my favourite online dictionary for French) here means very old. Sadly I have never got on with the stuff, despite Maigret being rather fond of it. Simenon too, I dare say.

Extra bread, fresh from the freezer, via the microwave, not so clever. But it served.

A strong line in fake flowers above where we were sitting. But it seems a bit mean to clock them up in the fake series, considering what a good meal we had. So included with less fanfare here.

Note also the contraption in front of the bottle, which we used once or twice to summon the waiter, or perhaps the waitress. The first time we have gadget enhanced dining since the rather different gadget noticed a couple of years ago at Polesden Lacey. Also at reference 6. Not seen since.

Rather smoother presentation of their chocolate brownie than back at the Blenheim, although it was much the same sort of thing inside.  Served with Jameson here as, while they had a very large Bells bottle on the bar for collecting for charity, they didn't actually sell the stuff. Or Teachers, the other big brand of my youth, a time when I barely touched the stuff. Bitter man in those days. The good news was that they charge pub prices for the whisky, unlike plenty of restaurants in London.

Talking of which, we learned at some point in the day that Brading ran to ten public houses at one time. Two and a half now.

Brading being a real village, not all chocolate box. But back in West Street we met a man we had met in 2019, a man who kept a considerable number of Shih Tzu dogs, to be heard on this occasion, but not seen. But we did learn that the doctor's surgery in the Mall was no more, so in the event of my needing a warfarin test on holiday in the future, something that has happened at least a couple of times in the past, we will have the inconvenience of having to go to Ryde or Sandown. And not so clever if you are old, live in Brading and have got used to having the surgery more or less on the spot, as we have here in Epsom.

PS: the Inn is near the bottom right hand corner of the junction of the red and brown roads, just below where it says 'Yarbridge', bottom right on the map above. But it does not say 'PH'. From which we deduce that, while it is quite possibly an old building, it has not always been a public house. Perhaps it had been degraded to some other use when the men from Ordnance Survey came by with their chains.

Reference 1: https://www.theyarbridgeinn.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.nunwellhouse.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/07/fragonard-fail-aka-yaverland-five.html. A previous visit to Nunwell Down. Slightly depressing how much more we managed to pack into a day, just four years ago.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/epsom-to-firestone-copse-to-brading.html.

Reference 5: https://domaine-testut.fr/.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/osberts-day.html.

Back to Yaverland

A week or so ago, we made it back to the beach at Yaverland, stopping at the church at Brading on the way. That is to say the church, the church hall and the church farm, with the piano in the church hall having already been noticed at reference 1. Does caretaker get into her job description?

The church sheep.

The rather fancy church goats, just about visible middle left. A community project in the field next to the church, in the care of an enthusiastic lady parson who also has care of two other churches, besides this one in Brading.

Some of the older parts of the graveyard have been left unmowed, so a good growth of grass and other plants. Maybe they cut it once a year or so to stop brambles and the like taking over, but it looks well enough now. Sensible enough to my mind, with very few if any of these older graves still being attended by relatives.

A large, old cherry tree, complete with a modest number of ripening cherries. An orangey red rather than the deep crimson of the cherries we have been buying from Spain and Greece.

And so onto Yaverland where we parked in the municipal car park, right on the beach. Rather dearer than parking in the car park across the road, mainly intended for the tiger zoo across the road, now rebranded as the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary, as at reference 2. To be fair to them, I think the tigers always were rescue animals, that is to say no longer wanted pets from people with more money than sense.

Hundreds of boats on the horizon, sailing from right to left, that is to say north, some of which can be seen if you click to enlarge the snap above. No trace there of the light sea mist which was coming and going all day. We were told that it was the day of the round the island yacht race with some 1,200 participants and it seems that the fastest boats do the 50 odd (nautical) miles in just over four hours. So fast, but not as fast as the boat at reference 4. While on this day, I saw a catamaran which probably was not fast enough to do the four hours and an old style gaff rigged sloop which certainly wasn't, despite sporting a genoa. Read all about it at reference 3. 

On this occasion the cliffs towards and at Culver Cliff seemed very alive, with the results of lots of action, past and present to be seen.

The red cliff, as tall and stark close to as ever.

There was also a fair breeze, which occasioned a small discovery. There is a common enough phrase about the wind whistling in one's ears. So on this occasion, if I pointed my nose in the right direction, relative to the wind, I did indeed hear a whistling in my ears. I then thought that there was some elementary physics about what happens if you blow across the top of an open tube, that is to say the wind blowing across the aural orifice. Sadly, I cannot now recover this physics. Plenty of stuff about how blowing across the top of a milk bottle can produce a whistle, the pitch of which can be varied by putting various amounts of water in the bottle. Suggestions that the presence of water might be necessary, that it was doing more than vary the amount of air. Not the Venturi effect? Maybe the Bernoulli effect? Maybe something to do with the Helmholtz resonator? Maybe something to be looked into on a dull winter's evening.

One hardy sun worshipper, male. One buzzard like bird. Two thrush-like birds in the rocks at the foot of a chalk part of the cliffs. Thrush-like but dark, with what seemed like longer and narrower beaks. As is usually the case, RSPB identification guide failed me, and it and Bing between them only turned up various rather unlikely exotics. A fieldfare which had got a bit lost?

One dog walker who seemed very knowledgeable about what would be involved in getting around the point, deploying various climbing words as he told us all about it. Including telling us that at one point you had to get past a deep pool at the foot of the cliff, getting out of which would be challenging, should you happen to fall in.

Lunch in the cafe took the form of one of their excellent rock cakes, followed by bacon sandwiches, all taken Covid-style.

Later on we turned out for pizzas (and unwanted football) from the Bugle, only bothering with food on Saturday night, and then not bothering with a menu. So pizza nights, curry nights and so on. But fine.

Wheatsheaf still there, despite never seeming to be busy. Kynges Well, formerly the Dark Horse (for ten year old notice of which see reference 6), shut up and boarded up. Heima of reference 5, now long gone, replaced by the Hungry Bear, the proprietors of which have graduated from residencies (if you please) at farm shops. They looked to be doing pretty well. Perhaps as well as residencies at farm shops they do curation of menus.

The next day, the broad beans and tomatoes turned out very well. Not least because, for the first time, we went in for cooking the big hard beans a few minutes longer than the little soft beans. Perhaps the most expensive broad beans we have ever eaten, being bought by the 100g as if they were sweets, but no complaints as they were the first broad beans we have had for a while.

We also learned that while the water on the Isle of Wight is presumably hard, there being plenty of chalk about, some of it very close to the surface, even inland, it is nothing like as hard as at Epsom. No scum or slick on the tea, no tough stains to the sides of white mugs.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/piano-45.html.

Reference 2: https://wildheartanimalsanctuary.org/.

Reference 3: http://www.roundtheisland.org.uk/web/code/php/main_c.php?section=home.

Reference 4: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/boss-boat.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/heima.html.

Reference 6: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/07/round-up-on-holiday-grub.html.

Tweeting

A few tweets from Holne, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. Most of the action being from the kitchen window of our cottage, probably once a small barn, which we had rented for the week. Supplemented by walks on the road over the moor to the west.

When we arrived, there were some half filled bird feeders out on the back lawn of the big house, probably the original farm house. Filled up half way through our week. Not much action for the first couple of days, but on Monday we had some action for about half an hour, not long fully light, say 0700 to 0730. Just the one clear tweet of a great tit.

Later that day, getting on for dusk, took a walk on the road over the moor, that is to say towards Venn Reservoir, a mile or so to the northwest of where we were staying. Plenty of crows and magpies. Plenty of twittering from the bushes, but no small birds to be seen. No tweets.

Tuesday rather better, with some action from our kitchen window around 0845. Great tits, a robin and a nuthatch. This last counting as a proper tweet.

On Wednesday, took another walk on the road over the moor. Plenty of twittering to be heard. Some birds to be seen. No full tweets. But I did put up a probable buzzard from the bracken. There were also some probable skylarks. And a green woodpecker sized bird sat in a small, bare tree. But too far away to see clearly. So no score.

Could also see what looked like a small chunk of sunlit sea between the hills to the east. Perhaps Babbacombe Bay, north of Torquay. If so, more than ten miles away.

Thursday around 0815, some modest bird action from the kitchen window. Great tits on the feeders, one chaffinch on the ground, taking the food knocked down from the feeders.

Much better late that afternoon. Great tits, coal tits, robins and a couple of scoring nuthatches. Plenty of scoring chaffinches of various sizes on the ground. A crow comes down to wander about, very nonchalantly: not clear whether it was after fallen peanuts or chaffinches. In the end it wandered off having done neither and a magpie turned up to hoover up the fallen peanuts.

More of same on Friday morning. But later, drew a blank out on the moor.

In sum, the only confirmed sightings of note were the chaffinches and the nuthatches. We don't get to see chaffinches here in Epsom, but we do get the occasional nuthatch, most recently in May. See reference 1.

PS: the snap of a chaffinch above was lifted from the net. My telephone pretty useless at this sort of thing.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/hook-road.html.

Faits divers

An ancestor of our current mother in-law's tongue flowered back in 2012, an event noticed at reference 1. A plant properly known as sansevieria trifasciata but also as mother in-law's nose. In French they pluralise to langues de belle-mère  or couteaux, with this last being knives. The point being that our current mother in-law's tongue is coming into flower and that the flower shoot had to be nearly a foot long before we noticed it, yesterday evening. This despite passing it many times every day.

While according to Wikipedia, the plant was renamed dracaena trifasciata in 2017 and is native to West Africa. Another plant with lots of common names. A member of the asparagus family, although one would not think so to look at it. But West Africa makes a change from Mexico.

Not such good news from the FT, with a long article about a botched project to deliver software to the nation's sub-post-offices, more than 10,000 of them. A saga which has been running since the mid 1990's when the government of the day awarded a software contract to ICL-Fujitsu - a team which I came across in the Home Office about ten years later. In my very limited experience, a company which had a lot of good people, but which was rather good at bolting all kinds of extras onto what had been intended as a fixed price contract. Extras for which they were the only possible supplier. Anyway, it seems that around ten years later a cut down version of the original vision had been installed, a cut down version which was turning up lots of false positives for fraud. False positives which made a lot of heart ache and trouble for a lot of people - with the bonus of jail for some and expensive settlements for others. Eventually the Post Office admitted that something was wrong and settled. Although from what I can make of it, more than four fifths of what looked like a substantial settlement was eaten up by the lawyers. Hopefully the Post Office has learned some lessons from all this. While we should perhaps ponder about the merits of private prosecution, still available in this country, a left over from the days when more or less all prosecutions were private, with the relatively rare crimes against the state accounting for most of the exceptions. Things like burning down a Royal Dockyard or blowing up the Houses of Parliament. But a tool which can be abused by big companies when fighting small companies - or private individuals.

In their defence, I dare say it is true that there is plenty of fraud in the sub-post-office business, fraud which the Post Office has to work hard to keep on top of it. Indeed, I believe that one of BH's forebears was a travelling investigator for the Post Office. And I dare say that in those days, Post Office investigators had lots of powers more normally associated with police forces.

And dog vomit fungus has appeared in the brick compost bin at the bottom of the garden, the one I need to empty and refurbish over the next couple of weeks. Last noticed, a little more than a year ago, at reference 3, although not, in that occasion, in our own garden. Pretty stuff, despite the name, which I now know to be wrong, the proper name being dog vomit slime mold. With slime molds being, as a I recall, a very ancient form of life. See references 4 and 5.

The last item was a sighting of what looked like a buzzard circling low, a little  to the west of the petrol station a little to the south of the Malden Rushett crossroads. This on the way to the purchase of a Bosch vacuum cleaner intended to reduce the labour involved in sweeping up this year's fine crop of acorns. And if that fails, there will always be the leaves to come.

PS 1: I am reminded that Wikipedia haven't tapped me for a donation for a while, a tapping I usually respond to, believing Wikipedia to be a very valuable public service. What's going on?

PS 2: later: going through the online palaver to register the vacuum cleaner was as bad as trying to assemble flat pack furniture. But at least it seems to be done - even if I have had to disclose my address and to use an unnecessarily complicated password.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2012/10/tongue.html. 

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malden_Rushett. A protuberance of the London Borough of Kingston, sticking some miles into Surrey. No idea why Kingston hung onto it, unless it was part of what I believe was a plan to grab Epsom too.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/vomit-mould-again.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuligo_septica.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold.

Alien tweet

That is to say a second hand tweet from a correspondent in Stoneleigh. Some kind of raptor being seen off by some crows. Raptor left, most intrepid of the crows right.

Augmented snap

With the original snap zoomed in Photos and augmented in Powerpoint with snaps turned up by Bing. A Microsoft flavoured effort. No checking with RSPB or anyone like that.

My vote is for sparrow hawk. Wings not the right shape for a kestrel. Too small for a buzzard. No forked tail so not a kite.

I shall consult a proper tweeter for his verdict.

Our first outing - with tweet

Prompted by a neighbour, we had our first outing by car since March this morning, driving up to Epsom Downs. Tea hut open. Ice cream van present.

Plenty of these little capsules about, so one supposes that this hilltop car park is the scene of youth action after dark. The same sort of capsules as those noticed in town centre, at reference 1, before it all kicked off. Not being quite sure what might be in them, I asked Bing about nitrous oxide and he turned up the snap following on ebay.

So at more the £10 each, dearer than I thought enough marijuana for a smoke would be - but perhaps these capsules have the advantage of being more or less legal. Perhaps they were completely legal in the days of ether parties, for which see reference 2. Perhaps furloughed hospitality staff have gone into the whipped cream business, something most of the places which used to sell food would have used.

Then over onto the downs, where it was sunny and warm, with a light warm breeze - and where there were a few people, but nowhere near enough to be a problem. So a good destination, at least for weekday mornings.

My shoes and a corner of my sunglasses bottom left, BH right. Looking north west, vaguely towards Heathrow. No aeroplanes on this occasion, which must be a first. One can see them landing from some points.

The grass had been mown fairly recently and it all looked a bit parched - despite the recent rain. Except the race course itself, which was looking very lush and green. The work of what turned out to be a specialised boom sprinkler, mounted on the back of a small lorry and connected to the mains supply by means of what looked very much like a fire hose on a large reel. From which we deduced that there must be water hydrants at intervals all along the two miles course.

The first tweet was what we eventually decided was a buzzard, which started off quite close, maybe 25 yards away, and which then headed north, gradually gaining height.

The second tweet was a handful of what we eventually decided were swifts.

The third partial tweet was the sound of what might well have been skylarks, but we failed to make visual contact.

A very pleasant outing. And no harm done to anyone, ourselves or others.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/trolley-413.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-staff-of-life.html.

More tweet

Following yesterday's buzzard, this morning a kite over the back of Christchurch Mount - a kite which a correspondent had seen not many minutes before over the Horton Lane allotments, that is to say the allotments most recently noticed at reference 2. Nothing like as high as yesterday's buzzard, maybe twice roof height.

The express pre-fab was on the move, with eastern European accents, rather than the German of the pre-fab's supplier. Several other builders out on my circuit around the block, of which I did six this morning, so about 6km. Plus one set of gardeners, one set of dustmen and sundry neighbours, some with dogs, all at least three metres away. One postman (female) and a small number of children, all under careful control.

Very few cars, even fewer bicycles and no delivery vans. Which last I thought odd.

Wind dropped since yesterday and I was on the warm side inside my duffel coat - never mind the snow jacket of yesterday.

And the back patio was hot after lunch - to the point where I needed to cover my hands to stop them burning - all this despite the slight frost this morning, snapped above. Plus quite a lot of twittering and small bird action in the hedge left, that is to say south, but no tweets.

Reference 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eXT60rbBVk. A rather splendid musical offering from another correspondent.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/horton-clockwise.html.

Malden Rushett and one tweet

I thought that walking along the road to Malden Rushett and back (B.280) would be reasonably socially distancing, and so it proved, with my being able to make substantial detours around the few people that I met. I walked on the cycle track provided, while all the cyclists used the road - for which I don't really blame them: the cycle track is not that great and I am not a great fan of mixed use paths.

The junction

Including part of the power supply for south London, heading into town from the sub-station behind the trees, a little beyond the junction.

The pill-box

I came across this abandoned pill-box in the corner of a field a little to the east of the junction, on the northern side of the B.280. Presumably built against the possibility that the Wehrmacht had come through the Mole Gap - although I have no idea if the sub-station - critical national infrastructure now - existed in those days. I would guess not.

Green belt

Looking away from the pill-box, a bit of the green belt which is inside the M25 ring. With continuation of the power supply the other side of the field.

Quite a lot of handsome looking white dead nettles.

Down a track

Quite a lot of bushes in white flower in the hedges, all very bright and cheerful and the snap above does not do them justice. Nor did I get close enough to get identification detail. Maybe blackthorn?

Down the same track, we also had, in a bush, what looked like a very large coal tit. So it may have been something else and has not been scored as a tweet. Plus, under a bush, some sort of thrush, not a sort of bird I see very often - and not enough of this one to know what sort of thrush. So again, not scored as a tweet.

One cockerel out with his wives, about half a dozen of them, but they cleared out before I could get close enough to take their picture.

One field, with half a dozen or so small horses or ponies, the grass in even worse condition than that noticed at reference 2. A lot more brown than green. But they did have a pile of hay instead.

Honeysuckle box - with the mobile struggling a bit with the focus

Past the handsome honeysuckle box, noticed on various occasions in the past. See, for example, reference 3.

Back home, after the luncheon haggis, I thought to doze in the sun for a while, behind the garage, which provided good shelter from the cool north breeze. After a while I tweeted a buzzard circling to the south,  quite high up and quite some way away, probably over the edge of the common. At least, had I seen such a bird out in the country, I would have assumed it was a buzzard without thinking much about it.  The last notice of such a thing here at Epsom is to be found at reference 1. There was also the occasion when we tweeted what we thought was a sparrow hawk on the sheltered drive of a house near us, just about managing to take off with a wood pigeon in its mouth - with Wikipedia including a picture of a juvenile with one, so they are clearly up for it. Can't trace any mention of this tweet, so perhaps a long time ago.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/12/big-tweet.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/horton-country-park.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/05/honeysuckle-box.html.

Seeing red

‘Seeing red’ is a phrase often used to refer to, to encapsulate the difficulty of explaining why we have any kind of subjective experience at all, be it ever so simple, like seeing a patch of red somewhere, or be it ever so complicated, like seeing a buzzard stoop on a rabbit on the edge of a field. A phrase perhaps derived from, certainly encouraged by the short book at reference 1.

So in this post I report on a seeing red experience, early this Friday morning.

When lying in the bed in our hotel room here in Bognor Regis my head is perhaps 12 feet from the wall mounted television, mounted across the room from me, above me and to the left. Bottom right on the television is a small red light, perhaps two or three millimetres in diameter. A light which seems to be on all the time, probably indicating that the power supply is connected.

It is more or less dark, although it is starting to get light. I am short sighted, with the right eye better than the left eye, but I have not put my spectacles on, short range or long range. Then after some preliminaries, I cover the left eye and look at the red light with my right eye.

Given that I cannot bring the light to a sharp focus without spectacles, one might think that one would see a small red disc where the light was, brightest in the middle and fading towards the perimeter. However, this is not the case.

What I see is a very clear pattern of bright red lines and dots, sometimes stable for some seconds, sometimes flickering, jumping about. The nearest thing I can think of is what you get from satellite photographs of the outskirts of big cities at night. Next  nearest, the images you get of stained tissue down a microscope, images of networks of blood vessels, nerves or whatever.

The image is clear enough that one thinks that one could draw it – the only catch being, that in order to do this, one would need keep flipping between the red light in the dark and the drawing in the light. Flipping which might well disturb that which one was attempting to capture. Not attempted.

Sometimes the image is dominated by two or three more or less horizontal lines, a little ragged, quite close together.

Sometimes there are pale, geometric patches of red colour, supplementing the bright red lines and dots. Patches which only seem to last for a second or so.

The image, generally roughly circular, is a bit smaller than the tip of the little finger, held at arm’s length.

The image can be reduced to two or three more or less horizontal lines by nearly shutting the eye. Open the eye wide and the pattern gets bigger and more circular, although the two or thee lines usually remain in the middle, sometimes elaborating as the eye opens. Move the eyebrows around and the pattern, while more or less stable, does move around a bit.

The image rotates with the head. Tip the head to the left and the image rotates anti-clockwise. to the right and the image rotates clockwise. So more an artefact of the eye than the television.

The image can be occluded, eclipsed by moving a finger across it. With the image itself not changing while this is going on. Occasionally something in the eye itself does the occluding, floating across the image, unasked.

Doing the same thing with the left eye, I get the same sort of pattern, rather larger and rather less sharply defined.

One certainly needs to be conscious, in the everyday sense of the word to do this. But the activity might also be so absorbing that one is not self-conscious. That said, most of the interest lies in the eye part of all this and I imagine that what I have been seeing could be explained in a reasonably straight forward way by someone who knew how our eyes work, that is to say both the eyes and the pathways from them up into and across the brain – although perhaps most of what is happening here is in the eyes, on the retinas, rather than in the brain.

I associate to the way particles of smoke move around when suitably illuminated under a microscope, as was done when I did physics at school. One is looking at things at a scale at which the randomness of it all can be seen; it has not all been smoothed out.

Reference 1: Seeing red - a study in consciousness – Humphrey – 2006.

Arreton

Our last outing to an attraction of the holiday was a visit to a craft village called Arreton Barns (reference 1). A curious place which has been there for quite a while, so it must get by. Despite banning coaches, a move which we learned was caused by the tendency of coach loads of pensioners to take advantage of the restrooms and to take coffee in the pub, but otherwise clutter the place up without spending very much money - entrance being free. Coaches that care enough to park around the corner and get their pensioners to walk the last couple of hundred yards tolerated on the grounds that it is quite likely that they really want to come.

The map

The farm shop

The smoking den attached to the public house

In the middle of the island, maybe five kilometres west by south of the sea mark on Ashey Down, with an early visit to this last being noticed at reference 2. Complete with spelling mistake. Never was a strong point.

Remarks about coffee notwithstanding, after buying a loaf of bread at the farm shop, we headed to the pub, to take coffee and fizzy water. An establishment called 'The Dairyman's Daughter', with this daughter having been made famous by having had her edifying death at an early age documented by a local parson. A document subsequently published by the Religious Tract Society.

Tract Society's New York HQ

I have not been able to track them down and acquire any titbits about the lady's life and death, but Wikipedia does offer a fine drawing of the New York affiliates' HQ in New York, to whom the lady's chair was presented at some point. The pub offered some compensation in the form of a fine collection of bric-à-brac, including the largest collection of squeeze boxes that I have ever seen. It would have been interesting to know how it had been built up, but as a non-diner I did not like to ask. Nor did I think to ask whether they sold the Old Holborn advertised outside the smoking den, a brand I once used to roll, having moved on from the rather stronger Boar's Head. Nor was it clear whether the place really did start life as a country pub, or whether it had been knocked up as the central attraction of the craft village. Maybe reference 3 explains all.

Carex pendula

There was also a traditional village pond, complete with a good number of carex pendula. Plus some giant rhubarb which must have escaped from somewhere. I managed to get ticked off for stepping across an unchallenging barrier to take the snap.

Buttresses

On to the rather old and rather unusual church. Heavily restored at some point, but there were still some old bits visible. And whoever built it was clearly a bit uneasy about the foundation of the tower, our never having seen such massive buttresses for such a modest tower, with the slit window left probably the twin of that just visible in the next snap. And including the piano already noticed at reference 6.

Change of plan?

Roof light

An unusual roof light, of a kind which one sometimes comes across in Surrey. Note also the rain water hopper, with the date of 1885 clearly visible on this laptop.

1699 bell

A bell which was replaced getting on for 20 years ago, but which they were not allowed to melt down and recycle as it was a listed bell. No idea why it had to be replaced. One supposes that the new timber left echoes something which was something to do with ringing the thing, rather than the wheel which I thought was usual. See next snap, lifted by Google from somewhere or other.

Bell wheel

Old door?

Unusual roof trusses to aisle

A church which was clearly far too big for today's custom and it is not clear to me who ought to take (financial) responsibility for its upkeep. It would be a pity to see these churches go - it is even a pity to see them lose their proper function as a church which has been converted into an arts centre (or whatever) does not seem quite the same somehow - even for someone like me, born and bred atheist. Perhaps the sort of café stroke drop in centre which they manage in the old church at Kingston (upon Thames), while maintaining the church as a church, is the way forward in an urban area where there is demand for that sort of thing, but out in a village?

A large private garden, possibly the source of the giant rhubarb

A derelict wine barrel, made in France

Glass museum - cases

Glass museum - detail

Quite a lot of the craft seemed to involve glass and there was also a surprisingly sophisticated museum of the stuff. Where I found that while one might admire the craft, the overall effect was rather dead. Perhaps this sort of glass does not work well in large quantities. Or perhaps glass as a medium is rather dead? None of the grain of, for example, wood or stone.

The White Lion

We elected to lunch in the village, at the White Lion, rather than in the barns. A place with a large and pleasant dining room, which rather fancied itself. Seats offering little support in the middle, so one was essentially sitting on the frame. Lasagne quite eatable, but rather dry - a dish which I usually find that our public houses can microwave OK. Wine satisfactory.

And so back to Ryde for a bit of terminal shopping, before returning the Brading to pack. Tweeted a low flying buzzard at Arreton and a kestrel at Ashey, this last seeming to be seeing off a number of crows. Missing out on the big church at the top of town, despite discovering that it was both open and boasted a small car park. With our only success with this establishment being noticed at reference 5.

PS: Saturday past, BH turned up an article in the DT about a chap who is trying to photograph all the parish churches in the country, including the suggestion that there are plenty of people of our sort of age who liven up their holidays and days out by visiting the churches they come across. So we are not the only people to take an interest in this part of our heritage - a heritage which is rather different from that of the peoples of the mainland, a lot of whom have the excuse that their countries got worked over by soldiers a lot more often than ours has been. See reference 4.

Reference 1: https://arretonbarns.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=irregularly+triangular%2C+tapering+masonry+piller.

Reference 3: https://dairymansdaughter.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.parishchurches.org/.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/07/ryde.html.

Reference 6: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/piano-19.html.