Grass Collection

Oh no, another collection started this morning. I always used to wonder about these grass triangles, usually at T-junctions out in the country. My suspicions were confirmed some time ago when I read about grassy triangles in the essential England in Particular by Sue Clifford and Angela King. It's really very simple. There's an area that gets missed by turning traffic, and they've been with us for centuries.So the grass continues to grow and when roads were first metalled they were quite substantial and so got left to their own devices, Which usually means a haven of wildflowers until council contractors mow them down like here.
    Often they will have a signpost on them, this one between Medbourne and Hallaton in Leicestershire has one obscured in the hedge on the left. This is on my school run, and last week we had to divert because the lane down into the village of Blaston was being re-surfaced, but it did mean that this morning I could get a shot of the junction with its pristine new road markings. One T-junction near us in the opposite direction at Othorpe is busier, so the first gravelly signs of a triangle here are not allowed to grow because the whole thing gets re-surfaced regularly. Maybe I should go and chuck some soil and seeds down there and see what happens, but the size of tractor tyres round here would soon send my effort to oblivion.

Strange Beds

Having deposited offspring at a Kettering cinema in order for them to engorge themselves on family size buckets of popcorn whilst watching Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2, and having endured blank stares when I said that I didn't understand why a chocolate bar needed defending once, let alone twice, I disappeared with a few hours to kill. After stocking up with the enormous amount of groceries needed when both are in residence I decided to lose myself in an unexplored tract of country to the east of Higham Ferrers where Northamptonshire gives way to Bedfordshire, and in the fascinating manner of these things in England, Bedfordshire decides immediately to start becoming East Anglian. Timber and thatch replacing stone, the landscape finally freed from the results of the vanishing boot and shoe industry of the Nene Valley. I didn't expect any great surprises, but they came very quickly and in the case of the above very dramatically.

    This is Yielden Castle, dominating the village of the same name and still showing much of its origins in the massive motte and bailey. This is a classic example of a Norman castle quickly put up by one of the Conqueror's mates in the aftermath of the 1066 invasion. And like so many, when families and priorities changed, almost gone within two hundred years.   

    The road circumnavigated the imposing mounds, and across the fields I saw that inviting sight, a church backed-up against higher trees.This was St.Mary Magdalene in Melchbourne, and, as the porch notice told me about where to find the key, in the Sharnbrook Deanery of the St.Albans Diocese. Not having time to knock-up a local I contented myself with standing on tiptoe to look through the unadorned window glass. I saw a beautifully plain 1779 Georgian interior with box pews, virtually un-messed about with and still with those little openings set in each window for ventilation. The churchyard was eerily quiet, but did afford a view of a thatched house that demonstrated that we can still restore buildings with taste and empathy. Sometimes.

    Pressing the lens gently against the church glass produced pictures that made-up for not gaining an entrance, but not quite pressing the lens against the glass produced something equally pleasing if slightly spooky. When I showed the boys the result they actually stopped talking about the chocolate protecting film and said "Wow, how did that happen?" I told them that I'm still very disturbed by it because "...the cottage simply wasn't there when I turned round". I was stared at again, and their conversation quickly turned back to Drax, Gamora and Baby Groot.