Off out with Dru today, across the Downs to Sea Walls. There are new arrivals in the gorge - six Kashmir goats from Great Orme in North Wales, brought in to manage scrub in Walcombe Slade and help restore wildflower grassland. But first we scouted around the Downs in search of bee orchids. Apparently it's not a good year for them. We saw some bladder campion, though, and some magnificent seed heads.
At Sea Walls we scrambled down the very steep sides of the gorge to a rocky outcrop high above the muddy River Avon. Luckily, a fence has been installed to pen the goats in the gully, presumably until they become hefted, and this eased our precipitous slither.
It was low tide, and we could see the sun glancing off the mud banks that lurked a couple of hundred feet below us.
Dru had already visited the goats every day since their arrival earlier in the week, but this was my first glimpse. We saw two, then three, and finally all six sunbathing, eating and generally lazing about in the sun.
I was moderately pleased with my photos until I saw Dru's. I'm going to claim she achieves this because her camera is the dog's bollocks, but actually it's because she is knowledgeable, has a good, quick eye and doesn't walk around with her mind in China.
Eventually we scrabbled all the way down to the Portway, and without falling to our deaths.
And there were still more glories to behold, like a pair of buzzards and a peregrine (so Dru tells me). And these fugitive red hot pokers, looking better au naturel than ever they do in suburban gardens.
I also loved the scribble made by insects mining tracks under the bark of a dead tree. Nature's fine art! They could almost be the fossilised remains of prehistoric insects. Or an Art Nouveau illustration by Aubrey Beetlesbee. So very beguiling.
And back up top, another dead tree, this one with a chiff-chaff at the top, chiff-chaffing the remains of the afternoon away. Lovely.
Last weekend my son had an appointment with several roaming robots in Guildford. This afforded me the chance to pop my Surrey cherry, at the same time catching up with my old friends, the poets Jan Windle and Dónall Dempsey. At least they felt like old friends, it was just that we'd never met before. It was good to put that right, and to find that they were as engaging as I'd imagined.
It was the day after the Watts Gallery in nearby Compton had opened, having been closed for a couple of years for a much-needed restoration, and although I badly wanted to visit, I was concerned that it might be teeming with people. Happily, this wasn't so; in fact, we had our first stop, the stunning cemetery chapel, to ourselves.
Designed principally by Lady Mary Watts, the chapel is a mix of art nouveau, Celtic, Romanesque and Egyptian influences. Mary believed that anyone with sufficient interest and enthusiasm could produce beautiful decoration, and so she cajoled almost everyone in the village into learning how to model in clay.
It rather looks as if some of their likenesses have been appropriated for the architrave around the door.
If the exterior was a delight, the inside was fantastical - again an exuberance of styles, in painted and gilded gesso. This, and its close, curving dimensions, make for a wonderfully intimate and romantic space.
Outside, in the grounds, contemporary cloisters, an Art Nouveau well and complementary gravestones.
Though my favourite has to be this truculent cherub:
More anon.
At Sea Walls we scrambled down the very steep sides of the gorge to a rocky outcrop high above the muddy River Avon. Luckily, a fence has been installed to pen the goats in the gully, presumably until they become hefted, and this eased our precipitous slither.
