Five years on

It was a cold, grey day in February (no surprise there) and I was alone at home, high in the Welsh hills, DH being away on a visit to his mother. Being therefore without transport for two or three days, lots of lovely, empty time stretched out ahead of me and I wondered how best to use it. Spring-cleaning, while I had the house to myself, was a must, but no-one can spring-clean all the time.

Knitting, of course, and reading my pile of library books, and a bit of TV watching, but what else? One of my favourite ways of online interaction back then, a small private forum, was temporarily offline, but of course there were always blogs to read and read them I did. But somehow I felt I should be doing more.

I had been reading blogs with huge enjoyment for some time and one or two bloggers had been gently encouraging when I wondered out loud whether I might one day do more than just read and comment. The absence of my forum friends spurred me on to a snap decision and within an amazingly short time one Sunday afternoon I’d set up an account with Blogger, registered a blog name, created a basic template and by the evening had written and published my first exploratory post. 

The five years since then have flown by, as my life has become ever richer and fuller with the growth of wonderful links and friendships with bloggers all over the world. We share ideas and interests, experiences and insights, joys and sorrows. The rate of posting waxes and wanes, as other aspects of life take over at times, but after five years and close to 300 posts, the sheer pleasure of blogging is still there and continues to bring me back to this most satisfying of activities. It looks like you’re all stuck with me for some time to come…

Image via Google

P.S. This post will be published while I’m on my way back from my Big Birthday trip, so there will be no replies until I’m home again. 

Christmas wishes

The presents are wrapped, the decorations have been hung and I’m about to start packing for our journey tomorrow to spend Christmas with DD and her family. Outside, on this shortest day, the sky is leaden and the ground sodden, and from the forecast we are likely to arrive in Yorkshire with a very clean car.

Before I go, I would like to wish you all the happiest of Christmases and a peaceful and healthy New Year. When I come to look back over 2015 on New Year’s Eve, I will have to admit to having become a somewhat erratic blogger this year, but I am still extraordinarily grateful for this wonderful activity and all the lovely people it has brought me into contact with. I wish you all everything you could wish for yourselves and look forward to continuing our friendship in 2016.

Image:  Nativity, an illuminated capital from a Book of Hours in Dutch. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, USA.
Carol:    O Holy Child (Cantique de Noël)

                 Words by Placide Cappeau (1808–1877), translated  by John Sullivan Dwight (1812-1893).

                 Music by Adolphe Charles Adams (1803-1856, arranged by John Rutter.

Season's greetings

The presents are wrapped, the car is packed and DH and I are about to leave for our family Christmas and New Year festivities. We’re looking forward to enjoying time with DH’s mother and our children and their growing sons, to good food and good company, carols and games and plenty of unhurried conversation.

But I can’t leave without wishing you and your loved ones peace and joy this Christmas and good health and happiness in the coming year. As always your blogs and your friendship have hugely enriched the past year for me and for that I thank you all so much.

Image:  Adoration of the Infant Jesus by Matthias Stom (c. 1600 – 1650)

Carol:    In The Bleak Midwinter

               Words by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

               Music by Gustav Holst (1874-1934) arranged by Harold Darke (1888-1976)

Christmas greetings

With a Christmas cake to ice and games to play with an excited grandson, I only have time to wish you and your loved ones a happy and peaceful Christmas and all the very best in the coming year. Your blogs and your friendship enrich my life immeasurably.

Image: Adoration of the Child by Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch 16^th century) via Wikipedia

Journey through an ancient landscape

After the lovely sunset and afterglow of the previous evening, it was disappointing to wake up on my second day in Orkney to the sight of grey skies and rain-spattered windows. Nevertheless, trusting implicitly in the BBC weather forecast which had promised that conditions would improve, we had breakfast and set off to catch the mid-morning ferry across to Orkney Mainland. Thankfully the wind had dropped somewhat and the sea was much calmer than the day before, though it was still bitterly cold.

At the bus stop

Sian on her small island

Very soon we were in Stromness and setting off in Sian’s off-island car for our day’s exploration of a little of Orkney’s long history. As we drove the clouds started to disperse, the sun came out and before we knew it the sky was a glorious blue and the landscape breath-taking. Orkney is almost treeless and lacks the mountain grandeur of Sutherland, but the wide green sweep of its gentle hills and broad valleys, and the constant glimpses of water in loch and sea, give the soul room to breathe and I loved it.

When we arrived at our first destination, Scara Brae, Sian, who must know the introductory exhibition backwards after taking so many visitors there, left me to it and relaxed with a nice cup of tea. Meanwhile I was immediately fascinated by the informative and interactive way this marvellously preserved Neolithic village, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was set in context for visitors before we actually saw it.

There is a walk of several hundred yards from the Visitors’ Centre to the village itself, and along its length markers commemorating important historical events have been placed in a kind of timeline to illustrate just how ancient this site is. Constructed and inhabited millennia before the birth of Christ, old and about to be abandoned when the first pyramids of Egypt were being built, the houses of Skara Brae, with their stone furniture and central hearths, give us a vivid and unforgettable glimpse into the lives of our distant ancestors.

The village by the sea

House and hearth

Stone furniture - dresser and beds by the walls

I said it was cold

When Neolithic farmers decided to settle at Skara Brae, the climate in Orkney was warmer and drier than it is today and the site they chose may have been on the shore of an inland loch. By the time the village was abandoned some six hundred years later, the climate had changed, becoming become colder and wetter and making cereal farming more difficult. This factor, combined with the gradual encroachment of the sea, may have contributed to the decision to leave, but no-one really knows why the inhabitants of this well-constructed village finally moved elsewhere.

Once abandoned the village gradually became covered by sand dunes until a great storm in 185o uncovered part of the remains, but it was many decades before they were properly excavated and conserved.

The land on which Skara Brae was discovered belonged to a local landowner who lived in the nearby Skaill House, acknowledged as Orkney’s finest large mansion. Very sensibly, Historic Scotland, which looks after Skara Brae and Skaill House, includes both on the same admission ticket, so after our visit to the remote past, we made our way back into relatively recent history by going round this interesting and appealing building, for so long an imposing but also intimate family home.

From Skaill House  Sian drove me to the other site I really wanted to see on my first visit: the great circle of standing stones known as the Ring of Brodgar. I have been familiar with the sight of the Ring since one of my sisters gave me a print of her pastel drawing of the monument some years ago, but to see it in all its remote and mysterious grandeur was still deeply impressive. 

The path up to it was slippery after the night’s rain and my balance is not of the best, but we made it up to the stones and walked much of the way round the huge circle in its wide and beautiful setting. The Ring of Brodgar is one of a number of ancient monuments which together make up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. It was probably constructed between 2500 and 2000 BC (after Skara Brae had been abandoned) and was the last of the great monuments to be built in this archaeologically rich area.

The intrepid duo - it was STILL cold

We only had time to visit two of these remarkable sites that day, but that leaves us plenty to see on a future visit. J After a late and leisurely lunch in Stromness I watched Sian catch the little ferry back to her small island before boarding my much bigger one for a calm and sunlit crossing back to Scrabster and DH at the end of my fascinating and memorable birthday trip. Here's to the next time....

An island idyll

...though perhaps not when the gales make the windows flex!

It's more than a year now since I first discovered Sian’s blog and began to read about her life on the Orkney island of Graemsay. I was immediately entranced by the setting and her lovely photographs and descriptions of life in this beautiful, remote and windswept place. It certainly never occurred to me, even in my wildest dreams, that I would one day visit her on her tiny island, with its 27 inhabitants, set in the treacherous waters between the much bigger islands of Mainland and Hoy.

Yet that is just what happened last week as my birthday treat, when on Thursday DH deposited me at the harbour in Scrabster and stayed safely on shore to film my departure on the MV Hamnavoe for my rather lively crossing to the picturesque little port of Stromness.

A bit rough....

View to Stromness with ferry just leaving again

The main street of Stromness!

On arrival at the ferry terminal I was met by Sian and, just as I had come to expect after my meeting with The Broad, the talking began and hardly stopped for the next 24 hours. J Yet again we leapt straight over the usual preliminaries and had the most wonderfully enjoyable conversations, as Sian showed me the area she had chosen to move to over 10 years ago.

After a welcome cup of tea we caught the much smaller ferry across to Graemsay, and it being 4pm, found ourselves on the school bus crossing, surrounded by the handful of youngsters who call this tiny island home. Fifteen minutes later we were helped ashore from the tossing ferry and Sian drove me the short distance to her house, wonderfully situated on the shore near the Hoy High lighthouse.

Sian's house by the sea (copyright Sian Thomas)

Later, as Sian was making our evening meal, I took my camera and went outside to wander round her domain, with its walled garden and glorious views out to sea and across to the hills of Hoy and the huddled buildings of Stromness.

The house from the walled garden

The view beyond the wall

Oh, those nosy neighbours....

The hills of Hoy, but alas, no seals....

After supper we went out to explore the island, which is about 2 miles long by 1.5 miles wide, with 12 inhabited houses and not much more than 2 miles of properly surfaced road. After driving across to the Hoy-facing shore to see the old church, now a farmer’s barn, and then past the former school and school-house, Sian took me to meet another blogger - yes, two bloggers on the same small island!

The 'auld kirk' on the shore of Burra Sound

The old school and school-house (copyright Sian Thomas)

Irene was the very last head-teacher of the tiny school on Graemsay. When she took up the post in the early 1980s, the school had 3 pupils. Over the years the number fluctuated, but when it eventually fell to just one, the school was closed in 1996 and Irene and her husband stayed on in retirement on the island they had come to love.

We eventually tore ourselves away from her fascinating reminiscences and went home, where  - guess what - we stayed up talking until almost midnight, before heading off to bed, because tomorrow would be another day…

Hoy High lighthouse in the setting sun

The end of a wonderful day

Islands ahoy!

The Orkney islands, that is…. Tomorrow will be my birthday treat, when DH will drop me at the ferry at Scrabster and head off in our little campervan to do his own thing for the next day and a half. Meanwhile I will let myself be carried across the probably choppy waters of the Pentland Firth to my long-awaited and eagerly-anticipated visit to Sian on her small island of Graemsay.

As usual in this most disappointing of Aprils, the weather forecast isn’t wonderful, but we won’t let that deter us. One can talk and talk in the worst of weather and take advantage of any lulls to get out and walk on the lovely shoreline I’ve seen so often in Sian’s photos.

On Friday, thanks to the vagaries of the ferry timetable, we will spend much of the day on Orkney Mainland before I catch my ferry back to Scrabster and DH. It’s my first visit to Orkney and Sian has kindly offered to show me some of the historic sites (and sights) for which the island is famous. My camera batteries are fully charged and I just can’t wait. J

Image via Google

When bloggers meet….

Image via Wylio

…they talk…and talk…and talk…Or at least The Broad and I and our respective spouses did, when we met up at her home in Southport a week ago today. The way the talk and the tea were flowing, if DH and I hadn't had to leave for supper with family, I reckon we’d still have been talking at midnight. J

That morning, at an unusually early hour for one of our departures, DH and I had crammed the last items into the campervan and set off north in blazing sunshine. In fact we set off so early that we arrived well ahead of our appointed time and had time to say hello to the family members who were gathering at my brother-in-law’s house for the following day’s celebration of my mother-in-law’s birthday.

Ten minutes before we were due, we set off to drive the mile or so to The Broad’s house, only to find that the last little bit of the route had been pedestrianised without anyone having told our satnav. Poor Gladys got very upset at our refusal to go down the road she was indicating and went into a sulk, so that we had to force her to work out how best to circumvent the obstacle and arrive at our destination. 

The next obstacle manifested itself when we arrived in the right street, only to find that neither of us had remembered to write down the house and phone numbers so carefully provided by The Broad. Doh! Thankfully, before we left home, we had found her address on Google Street View and DH’s visual memory rose to the challenge of identifying the right house without the number.

Only ten minutes late despite everything, we finally walked up to the front door to be greeted by The Broad with a huge grin and a hug, as though we were simply seeing each other again after a gap, rather than meeting for the very first time. There were absolutely none of those awkward preliminaries, as people send out conversational feelers to start to get to know each other. Indeed, within minutes we were sitting round the kitchen table with big mugs of tea and delicious homemade blueberry muffins, nattering away nineteen to the dozen.

The Broad and her husband are so interested and interesting, so easy and amusing to talk to, that it was as though we were the oldest of friends, catching up with each other’s news and activities since we had last met. Our conversation ranged widely and randomly, like all the best meetings of friends, yet we parted knowing there were so many subjects we hadn’t even touched on, but which we could save for next time. For there will be a next time, hopefully lots of next times, as a virtual friendship is transformed by a single meeting into an actual friendship.

Before DH and I left, we all went into The Broad’s beautifully reappointed office, where our respective husbands tried their best to take some photos of two laughing women, (one of whom has a very bad habit of closing her eyes when being photographed) which weren't blurred or unrecognisable and which captured something of the spirit of our meeting. I think they succeeded.

Broad, meeting you and The Man was great and I’m so glad you suggested it. Here’s to friendship.

Why can't this woman keep her eyes open?

Now calm down and stop giggling, you two!

That's better...

Isn't friendship great?