skip to main |
skip to sidebar
In line with Commentator Diplo's request for a monochrome photograph of an Up-to-Date Puzzle Location, I give you....? The only help this week is that it's a location within the borders of my most recent travelling (qv). I didn't stay at this inn, but the place it's in does give rise to many thoughts about the current nature of the contemporary English village. Of which, of course, more later.
Just a quick one, as I'm off now to the Welsh Borders (well, the English side that is: Herefordshire and Shropshire) and will be out of range of the Blogosphere radar. But I thought you'd like this, a very uncompromising shed on the hard at Tollesbury. And yes, the side view shows it's got a corrugated iron roof. The only sound is the constant tap-tap of wire against aluminium masts and the voices of blokes in overalls tarring boats shouting nautical / weather notes at each other. One of my very favourite places, south of Tiptree which means you can call in for tea and scones at the jam factory served with a jar of Wilkin's 'Little Scarlet' strawberry preserve. Right, off to Offa's.
I thought I'd try something different for this week's puzzle picture. Instead of rummaging through dusty books for old photographs, I thought for this 20th in the series (please tell me if you're fed up with it and I'll think of something else) I'd get you guessing where I was yesterday afternoon. Clue: unless I'd got a handy rowing boat, I was sixteen miles away from a pint in the Rose & Crown.
Yesterday was a good day to be on the North Norfolk coast, what with summer-like weather and the first signs of the greening-up of the landscape. More time was spent than was good for us in Burnham Market, there being much to do in the coastal villages. More of that at another time, but I obviously couldn't resist these signs. Nothing more need be said about the fishy business at the top, and although the Hall's Distemper decorators with their plank have often been discussed in Unmitigated England, no image has thus far been forthcoming. We have talked about them as big wooden cut-outs next to railway lines, but this is the first time I'd seen them (or, tantalisingly one of them) in vitreous enamel. What a treat, an Unmitigated Tradesman and an Unmitigated House in glorious hot glass colour. I imagine the full size was too big for one sign, so a pair was made. I wonder where its companion and the other end of the plank is. I will think about it over a fishcake or four.
Between the village of Clare and the town of Sudbury in Suffolk runs one of our many River Stours. Meandering in its shallow valley it also forms the county boundary with Essex, and tucked up in the furthest north east of this county are a series of villages with the prefix 'Belchamp'. Which according to Norman Scarfe's Shell Guide to Essex is apparently a Norman reconfiguration of the Anglo Saxon 'Belc-ham' which means 'homestead' with a roof of 'timber beams'. I would think every Norman homestead had a timber-beamed roof by default, but most certainly there is a superb example of Essex / Suffolk vernacular domestic building at almost every turn of the sharply right-angled lanes that twist from Belchamp to Belchamp. Yesterday I found myself wandering around these lanes looking for Belchamp Walter, which I found bowered in trees down by a tributary of the Stour. I was searching for a ruined tower in a field (of cabbages as it turned out) as you do, but on the way I was helped by this signpost at Belchamp Otten. What amused me was the thought that B-Walter had obviously been omitted from the original, and had to have an appendix added, probably after a Belchamp deputation had descended on the council offices in Halstead with burning brands and sharpened pitch forks. Maybe.
An ordinary English town that enjoys an international reputation. I wonder if that lingerie shop is still there?
Not a very Easter Sunday kind of picture, but at least there's some daffodils in it. A little piece of 'pleasing decay' found at Stembridge out on the Somerset Levels. A landscape of cold water courses running through a landscape dotted with black willow trees cowed against the wind, and those simply extraordinary Somerset church towers with their pageants of pinnacles. All with the backdrop of the Quantocks and Polden Hills. Happy Easter everybody.
In line with Commentator Diplo's request for a monochrome photograph of an Up-to-Date Puzzle Location, I give you....? The only help this week is that it's a location within the borders of my most recent travelling (qv). I didn't stay at this inn, but the place it's in does give rise to many thoughts about the current nature of the contemporary English village. Of which, of course, more later.
Just a quick one, as I'm off now to the Welsh Borders (well, the English side that is: Herefordshire and Shropshire) and will be out of range of the Blogosphere radar. But I thought you'd like this, a very uncompromising shed on the hard at Tollesbury. And yes, the side view shows it's got a corrugated iron roof. The only sound is the constant tap-tap of wire against aluminium masts and the voices of blokes in overalls tarring boats shouting nautical / weather notes at each other. One of my very favourite places, south of Tiptree which means you can call in for tea and scones at the jam factory served with a jar of Wilkin's 'Little Scarlet' strawberry preserve. Right, off to Offa's.
I thought I'd try something different for this week's puzzle picture. Instead of rummaging through dusty books for old photographs, I thought for this 20th in the series (please tell me if you're fed up with it and I'll think of something else) I'd get you guessing where I was yesterday afternoon. Clue: unless I'd got a handy rowing boat, I was sixteen miles away from a pint in the Rose & Crown.
Yesterday was a good day to be on the North Norfolk coast, what with summer-like weather and the first signs of the greening-up of the landscape. More time was spent than was good for us in Burnham Market, there being much to do in the coastal villages. More of that at another time, but I obviously couldn't resist these signs. Nothing more need be said about the fishy business at the top, and although the Hall's Distemper decorators with their plank have often been discussed in Unmitigated England, no image has thus far been forthcoming. We have talked about them as big wooden cut-outs next to railway lines, but this is the first time I'd seen them (or, tantalisingly one of them) in vitreous enamel. What a treat, an Unmitigated Tradesman and an Unmitigated House in glorious hot glass colour. I imagine the full size was too big for one sign, so a pair was made. I wonder where its companion and the other end of the plank is. I will think about it over a fishcake or four.
Between the village of Clare and the town of Sudbury in Suffolk runs one of our many River Stours. Meandering in its shallow valley it also forms the county boundary with Essex, and tucked up in the furthest north east of this county are a series of villages with the prefix 'Belchamp'. Which according to Norman Scarfe's Shell Guide to Essex is apparently a Norman reconfiguration of the Anglo Saxon 'Belc-ham' which means 'homestead' with a roof of 'timber beams'. I would think every Norman homestead had a timber-beamed roof by default, but most certainly there is a superb example of Essex / Suffolk vernacular domestic building at almost every turn of the sharply right-angled lanes that twist from Belchamp to Belchamp. Yesterday I found myself wandering around these lanes looking for Belchamp Walter, which I found bowered in trees down by a tributary of the Stour. I was searching for a ruined tower in a field (of cabbages as it turned out) as you do, but on the way I was helped by this signpost at Belchamp Otten. What amused me was the thought that B-Walter had obviously been omitted from the original, and had to have an appendix added, probably after a Belchamp deputation had descended on the council offices in Halstead with burning brands and sharpened pitch forks. Maybe.
An ordinary English town that enjoys an international reputation. I wonder if that lingerie shop is still there?
Not a very Easter Sunday kind of picture, but at least there's some daffodils in it. A little piece of 'pleasing decay' found at Stembridge out on the Somerset Levels. A landscape of cold water courses running through a landscape dotted with black willow trees cowed against the wind, and those simply extraordinary Somerset church towers with their pageants of pinnacles. All with the backdrop of the Quantocks and Polden Hills. Happy Easter everybody.
