Holiday time (part 2)

It seems like such a long time ago now that I was on my holiday so it's well over time that I shared some more of it.  Maybe it'll take us back to the days of sunshine rather than these horrible wet and cold days that are fast closing in.

After my few days in Stratford-upon-Avon, I went to Dorset for a week, staying in a little cottage on a dairy farm in a tiny place called Pilsdon in western Dorset.  So here are a few photos of the cottage and the farm:

That last photo doesn't look like much, but the calf is just minutes old and is being licked clean by its mother.  I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, having a wander around the farm yard.  Most of the cows are, of course, out in the fields, but as you see there are plenty in stalls in the farm's immediate surroundings.  All of these ones are very pregnant and being kept a close eye on to make sure that nothing goes wrong with the birth.

Now, you'll have to forgive a lot of my photos as I haven't edited them at all so on some there may be a slightly (or very) wonky horizon, or dust on the camera lens :o( Some would be better cropped etc, but I haven't got around to it.  I hope you enjoy them all the same.

Back to the point of the post.  As I said before, I was staying in Pilsdon, which is a tiny weeny place about eight miles north of Bridport.  Attached to Bridport, though also a little place in its own right, is the lovely West Bay, which you will have seen on telly if you saw the crime drama 'Broadchurch' (starring the delicious David Tennant).  I slightly fell in love with West Bay with its long piers with great views back to the cliffs, the quaint harbour, lengthy promenade, wonderful-looking sandy beach (I couldn't get on to the beach in my wheelchair, but I enjoyed the fact that it was there), it's small collection of independent shops and gorgeous little pottery.  So here are a few photos of West Bay that won't do it justice, but will give you a little flavour of the place:

I ventured along the coast to Lyme Regis, although I quickly discovered that it's not very wheelchair friendly as the pavements are narrow, most of the town is built on a hillside which is quite steep in places, and the majority of the shops have at least one step in to them.  I did manage a little wander around some of it, and very much liked what I saw, but I ended up spending most of my time there trundling along the seafront and daring to challenge myself with the cobbles on the cobb (the harbour wall).

(I had a couple more photos of Lyme Regis, but something appears to be wrong with them and they won't load).

Charmouth is along the coast towards Lyme Regis and is the place to go on a fossil hunt on the Jurassic Coast.  I went there one morning just as the tide was going out.  The car park at the beach is attached and in some places sort of turns in to the beach, though the beach is pebbly, as are many of the beaches down there.  I parked as close to the beach as possible and walked the very short way to the tide-line.  I didn't really expect to find a fossil as the best time to find them is after stormy weather and fractious seas, but quite amazingly, I'd only been there a few minutes when I looked down and saw a small ammonite staring back at me in one of the pebbles.  I don't actually have a photo of it, but I do have the fossil itself.  It's only about a centimetre across, but it's mine and I found it :o)  Charmouth itself is little more than a beach, a visitors centre, some houses, a library, and a long street with a few shops on it.  The main attraction is the beach with the small cafe, visitors centre, and tiny shop packed with fossils.  I liked it there though, and here are a few photos.

 (I want to clean up that last one on Photoshop, clearing away the dust that was on the lens)

The one immediately above is of a big fossil probably around 15 cms across, but I couldn't bring it home with me because it was in an enormous boulder that was part of the wave break next to the promenade.  Perhaps if I'd had a chisel and hammer it would've been possible to chip it out of the rock, but I didn't.

Further along the coast, and just over the county boarder in to Devon, is the lovely little town of Beer.  The fantastic thing I discovered about Beer is that they have long rubber mats laid over the pebble beach in all directions so I was allowed full access on to the beach in my wheelchair.  I had a little mooch about the rest of the town, but most of my time there was spent on the beach, taking in the sun and the atmosphere because it's very much a working beach with fisherman tending to their boats and their catches.

I have more photos to share with you of some of the other places I visited, but I think that's probably enough for now.  Besides which, I need my dinner :o)  I'll get back to you soon with another post.

Thankful

There are a various things going on for me at the moment, most of which I can't discuss in this public arena.  I'm afraid I'll have to be vague and just say that it continues to be a difficult time, so to counteract this, and to lighten the mood of my blog from recent months, I'm going to spend a bit of time thinking about things for which I'm thankful.


1.  Poisonous ivy

Specifically, I'm thankful for the poisonous ivy that's growing up the side of the house opposite mine at the back.  The ivy has been there for years, and other than cheering up a drab wall has been of little note, but this year it has provided a safe place for a pair of blackbirds to nest.  I live in a built up area only a couple of miles outside of the city centre, and very few houses in my immediate neighbourhood have gardens that encourage small birds, but there has been a noticeable difference in recent years.  Maybe it's the conservation work done by 'Friends' of the park down the road, or perhaps folk have been putting bird seed/food out, but over the past few years there has been a rise in the number of small birds in the area (as opposed to pigeons and sea gulls).  We've had a lone blackbird for the past two or three summers that has sat on the chimney stacks and filled the air with beautiful song.  I love blackbird song, and this year the air is rich with it because the lone male has found a young lady blackbird and the pair have nested high in the poisonous ivy opposite.  Apparently blackbirds have two or three broods a year, and my neighbourhood pair are already on to their second.  It's wonderful.  It's not often very noisy at the back, so if you're very quiet and listen carefully, you can hear the tiny chirruping of the chicks in the nest.  As the chicks have grown, the adults - particularly the male - try to entice the youngsters from the nest with a morsel of food and a short whistle of song.  With a lot of encouragement, the fledglings dare to take their first tentative flutters from the safety of their nest and soon learn to fly with confidence.  I love watching this circle of life unfold almost in front of me, and listening to the variety of beautiful blackbird song, and every so often one or other of the adults will venture in to my yard in their hunt for food.  I'm not quite sure what it is they find on the concrete or amongst the flower pots, but they always seem to go away with something in their beak.  Yes, I'm thankful for the blackbirds, and for the poisonous ivy for giving them a safe place to nest.

2.  Friends

I have some wonderful friends who have stuck by me in both difficult times and good.  They text me, phone me, come round to my flat, take me out for an afternoon, send me cards in the post and private messages on Facebook, make me cups of tea, invite me round to their homes, make me laugh, share my tears, sit with me, go with me to the coast or the park, swap a little part of themselves for a little part of myself.  At times my trust in friendship has been challenged by folk who have presented themselves as friends, but have turned out to be far from that.  Those around me now are genuine, safe, trustworthy, and true, and to know that for certain after betrayals that have been is very precious and definitely something for which I am thankful.

3.  Sunshine

It feels like a long time since we had any prolonged sunshine up here in the north-east of the country - perhaps a couple of years - but the last week or so has been beautiful.  Today has been a fair bit cooler with temperatures back down to 16-17C, but I don't mind because the forecast is for it to warm up again tomorrow and Friday.  Sunshine lightens me.  Of course it doesn't take the stresses away, it doesn't make them smaller, it doesn't make them any easier to deal with, but it does force in a smidgen of light.  The warmth of the sun entices me outside, even if it's just to the back yard, and wraps itself around me, like a hug from God.

4.  The cat and the vet

Zach is so precious to me.  He is a wonderful cat with enormous character who seems to know when I'm upset, when I'm ill, and when I need cuddles.  He also loves to come for cuddles when I'm lying on the sofa with the computer perched on my legs and tummy; he leaps up, on to my feet, clambers around the side of the laptop, sits on my chest in front of the computer screen, and purrs in my face.  Not particularly helpful for typing or seeing any of what I'm trying to do on the laptop, but his purrs are irresistible so he more often than not gets the cuddles he's demanding.  He's got his summer coat at the moment (obviously), which seems to be a great deal thinner than his winter one, and as he's aged he's lost a fair bit of muscle mass.  He's still very fit and healthy, but he'll be sixteen later this month so he's getting to be an old man and I can feel the bones of his spine when I stroke down his back.  He spends a lot more time sleeping now than he used to, although he still has a lot of crazy running around times, and he is still fantastic company.  I love Zach so very much and I'm thankful for the love and joy that I get from him.  He hasn't often needed a vet for anything very severe (only twice in his life), but even the little things they do for him make me thankful that they are there.  I had to take him last Friday because his claws needed clipping.  They'd needed to be done for a couple of weeks, but with stresses of recent times I'm afraid that they'd been somewhat forgotten about, and then on Friday he got the two innermost claws on his front paws entwined in each other when he was clawing at his scratching post.  He couldn't get them unhooked so I had to help, which wasn't easy and he was obviously distressed about the situation.  I explained to the veterinary nurse what had happened when I took him for his claw-clipping an hour later and she had the vet take a look at him.  The poor little lad has sprained one of the toes on each of his front paws, but he's okay, and after keeping a close eye on him for the past 5 days I think he's probably healed now.  So yes, I am thankful for the vet for keeping my precious little lad healthy and checking him over for free last week.

5.  My wheelchair

When I think what I used to be able to do it almost seems unreal ... it certainly feels unfair at times.  One of my brothers and his family are going camping this summer, which is something I used to love.  The last time I went camping was in 2006 when I had an amazing holiday on my own, camping my way around the country for four and a half weeks.  It was meant to be three and half weeks, but I extended it after spending a week in hospital (including ITU) in Cornwall, not letting a little thing like the inability to breathe stop me from having the holiday I'd planned.  It was fantastic, but I suspect that I'm not very likely to camp again as there's a significant lack of electric plug sockets in a tent from which to charge a powered wheelchair.  All the same, I'm thankful for my wheelchair - Noah - because it gives me other freedoms - the freedom of independence in the outside world.  Of course, there are limitations as many buildings still aren't fully accessible, and much of the countryside isn't at all wheelchair friendly, for example, but I can go out, on my own, on the bus, in to town, to the park, along many public footpaths further afield if I go out in the car. I don't have to rely on family, friends or carers to push me in an attendant-assisted wheelchair, or on my lungs for breathing to use a manual wheelchair, or on my balance (POTS) and lungs for walking.  My independence is important to me, and I'm thankful that I have access to a means to maintain that independence as much as is possible.

6.  My mind

Okay, so depression is awful, but depression isn't all that my mind has given me.  I'm thankful that I have the mind I do, because with it I can think things through, I can reason, I can consider, I can be logical, and I can be illogical.  My mind gives me choices and the capacity to make decisions;  it allows me to challenge situations and concepts; it contributes to my creativity; it helps me to recognise emotions and identify why I feel what I do when I do.  Without my mind I would not know that there are things for which to be thankful, and I wouldn't know that I am thankful for those things.

7.  God

The ultimate 'thing' for which I am thankful is God.  Without Him I would not have my mind, my thankfulness, my being, or anything else which deserves thanks.  I thank God for God.

Norfolk (part two)

It seems a long time ago now that W and I were in Norfolk, but I do owe you all another post about the things we got up to.  We crammed a lot in to our time away, whilst still managing to have a few days around the cottage and the local village.  However, we couldn't go that close to the regional capital without spending a day in Norwich, so we took the Park and Ride in to the city centre one day and went visiting the cathedrals.  There are two in Norwich (as there are in many cities) - the Catholic and the Anglican - and we went to the Catholic one first, passing through a lovely park on the way:

Bandstand in the park

Gargoyle on the outside of the Catholic Cathedral

The Nave of the Catholic Cathedral

The south aisle of the Catholic Cathedral

It looks old, doesn't it?  I have to say that I felt a little cheated to find out that it was only built in 1910.  It's still lovely, though, so I don't mind too much.

We had a very pleasant walk then to the Anglican Cathedral, which is simply called Norwich Cathedral.  One of the streets we went along had lots of plaques laid in to the pavement representing different professions.  Here's one of them:

And then we arrived at Norwich Cathedral:

The East end of the Cathedral

Seen from the cloisters

The cloisters

The font is unusually placed along the side of one of the aisles, but it was one that I particularly liked.  There's a sign next to it that explains that it used to be a vat in a chocolate factory, and was donated to the Cathedral by the factory.  I'm not sure if this is when the factory closed, or at some other time.  I love the idea of being baptised in a chocolate vat:

Chocolate pot font

Isn't it fabulous?

Sadly we weren't able to stay for evensong that was just about to start as we left, because we'd have missed the last bus back to the Park and Ride car park.  That was a bit disappointing, but we did have a pleasant walk/trundle back through the city to the bus station.

Where we were staying in Stratton St Michael was only about a half hour drive from a small zoo - Banham Zoo.  W and I both love animals and wildlife so it was a natural thing for us to visit the zoo, especially as we were so close.  There were mixed reviews of it in the cottage's visitors' book, but we really enjoyed it, despite it being the one day when we had torrential rain, although the rest of the country had it much worse.  In fact it was so bad in other parts of the country later in the week that the A1 got flooded and was closed.  We were keeping an eye on this as the A1 was, of course, our route back up North, and it was looking as though we wouldn't be able to get back home.  The week progressed, and although we had pretty good weather, the rain in other parts of England was awful, so much so that the diversion route off the A1 then became flooded.  Although we had a couple of days left before the planned end to our holiday, we had to make a decision - were we going to try getting home on the Saturday with no guarantee of making it, or were we going to see if a couple of extra days would give the road chaos a chance to settle.  In the end we settled for the latter, and after talking with the cottage proprietors (and W clearing it with work), we   arranged to stay until the Monday.  Although we might have managed to get back on the Saturday, I suspect that the goods vehicles that couldn't get through earlier in the week might well have clogged up the A1, and certainly when we were driving back on Monday there was still a lot of evidence of the floods.  By this time the water on the road had been cleared - pumped off by the fire brigade - but there were many, many fields along the way that were still like lakes.  As it was, it still took us eight hours to get back!

So anyway, with our extra time in Norfolk we decided to make the most of it, and on the Saturday when we should have been coming home, instead we went to another zoo - Africa Alive - just outside Lowestoft in Suffolk.  Africa Alive is much bigger than Banham Zoo, but it's owned by the same people.  I have to say that at both places I thought that some of the cages were a little small, but the animals were obviously well cared for, and none of them seemed distressed.  I will leave you this evening with a selection of photos from Banham Zoo and Africa Alive.  I have rather a lot of these photos so I'll try to limit those I put up, but it's going to be hard, and I predict a bit of an animal overload for you ;oP

Enjoy!

Ringtailed Lemurs - Mother and baby.

Baby Lemur sitting on my knee trying to work out how to control the wheelchair.

Meerkats relaxing in the sunshine.

Spiny mice.

Foxes, but I've forgotten what kind.

Cheetah.

Elephants ;oP

'Allo.  You looking for me?

Fighting cattle/bison.

'Zero', the alpha male lion at Africa Alive.

Fighting lions with Zero looking on.

Llama

Larakeet

Spider Monkey

W hand feeding a larakeet

Parakeet

A yawny leopard

Oh, 'ello.  Can I 'elp you?

Snow Leopard

Jackass Penguins

Short-clawed Otter

Snack time for the tiger

Longing for freedom?

Red Panda