Cornwall – My Photographs of my recent trip.

Some of you wondered where I had disappeared to last week, well, here is the answer….

I had been on a week long trip to Cornwall in the far South West of the UK. It took me over 9 hours to drive there and another 9 hours to drive home again. For some of you that might not sound a lot but in the UK that’s a long time to drive!

The traffic jams seemed to go on forever, they were incessant, but eventually I arrived in Cornwall and as you can see, we had fantastic weather and it was truly beautiful. So lovely, I wanted to stay there forever, to escape from the turmoil of normal life.

I did partake of fish and chips while I was there, but I could hardly describe myself as ICHTHYOPHAGOUS (Melanie B Cee, please take note 😉 )

I hope you enjoy these photos.

I have included the following word prompts:

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2020/09/15/ichthyophagous/

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/09/15/rdp-tuesday-stay/

https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2020/09/15/your-daily-word-prompt-turmoil-ydwordprompt-September-15-2020/

FOWC with Fandango — Incessant

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A Gallery of Photo’s from my Trip to Devon.

The Word of the Day is Gallery, here is a gallery of photos from my recent trip to Torquay in Devon.

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/10/02/gallery/

This is me in front of Haytor Rocks on Dartmoor.

Some Wild Dartmoor ponies sheltering from the rain.

This is Greenway – It was the home of the Queen of Crime Fiction, Agatha Christie.

This is one of the beautiful views of the River Dart from the grounds of Greenway.

Brixham Harbour, with the sun just coming out after a morning of rain.

Dancing with my Rainbow umbrella in the rain.

This is part of Dartmouth Castle on the River Dart.

This is a grand house called Carlton Fishacre, a beautiful house set in spectacular gardens, it’s near Brixham in Devon.

The Beach at Goodrington near Paignton, Devon (you can see the very red coloured sand that’s common in this part of Devon). In the distance you can see a cruise ship that was full of American visitors to Torquay, they are now sailing to Ireland.

 

I hope you enjoyed these pictures from my recent trip to Devon. 🙂

My Garden – Some Pics and a Haiku

My True Desire is

Just to sit in the garden

and watch my chickens.

 

 

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/desire/

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/19/rdp-tuesday-garden/

 

A Snowy time in the Peak District

A couple of weekends ago I spent a few days up in the Peak District, which is in Northern England.

I actually stayed near Macclesfield, which is in the county of Cheshire, not far from the City of Manchester, but most of the Peak District is in the county of Derbyshire.

At the time, we had a smattering of snow where I live, but nothing much. Up in this part of the peaks however, it was another story. They had had a couple of feet of snow a few days before I arrived, and with day temperatures remaining below zero centigrade here, it wasn’t going anywhere.

It does make for some lovely pictures and I thought I would share them with you.

 

This is the old Victorian gardens in the Town of Buxton in Derbyshire.

This is the sign for the Cat and Fiddle pub, which is on one of the high spots on the road from Macclesfield to Buxton. Sometimes, this road is closed in the winter.

 

This is the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire, a few miles south of where I was staying. They didn’t have any snow here at all. This is where the famous Bakewell Tarts and Puddings come from, so I had to stop off to buy a few.

I hope you like the pictures.

Have a great weekend. 🙂

 

Scenes of London at night.

These photos were taken on a night out to London with family who came to stay over Christmas. We went to see Macbeth at the Globe, after visiting St Paul’s Cathedral.

My 10 year old self – A short story

I am reposting this story in response to Esther Chilton’s Challenge to post a story, poem or Limerick on the subject of favourite childhood memories:

https://esthernewtonblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/i-challenge-you-to-36/

 

This story was written in response to the Tuesday Writing challenge posted on the Go Dog Go cafe, see link below:

Tuesday Writing Prompt Challenge July 10, 2018

It was also written in response to the Word of the Day word prompt: Deviate

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/deviate/

and the Three Things Challenge on the Haunted Wordsmith Blog:

https://thehauntedwordsmith.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/three-things-challenge-10-july-2018/

Today’s things are: monkey, April, brick

 

Looking back on my ten year old self I have only dim and distant memories of what life was like. I remember everything was much bigger then, people in particular, but also houses, trees, brick walls and ruined castles.

I seem to remember I had a passion for climbing things. In my memories I always seem to be climbing up something, trees mostly. My Mother used to say “He’s just like a little monkey” as I would often disappear up a tree only then to re-emerge in the branches swinging from a limb.

I was also fascinated by Castles. Near to our home was a ruined castle which we used to visit and take picnics too. Only from April to September, never in Winter. I also remember at school taking part in a cross-country race from the train station to the Castle ruins and back, which would have been about 4 miles. When I never returned to the finish line, my parents were rather distraught. Then followed the planned route back to the castle only to find me climbing its walls. I was always one to deviate from my intended course as soon as something much more fun distracted me. I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to run back to the train station, I had wanted to stay in those familiar walls of stone and brick.

In my head it was my castle and I was King of it.

The End

 

Copyright: Kristian Fogarty 10/July/2018

Bergen and a visit to Trollhaugen – home of the composer Edvard Grieg.

I was very lucky with the weather in Norway. Call me prophetic but I happened to choose the one week in October when temperatures remained in the high teens (in Centigrade or low 60’s in Fahrenheit) and rather than a Blizzard, we had sunshine for the most part, apart from when we went to Flam (previous photos) where it rained all day.

Bergen is known for being the second largest city in Norway after its capital Oslo. It also has milder winter temperatures but rains for 270 days a year! We were lucky because, although it rained in the morning, we had a lovely sunny afternoon.

This part of Bergen is known as Bryggen and is the oldest part of the harbour. The wooden buildings here were rebuilt after the war but recreate the original harbour that dates back to medieval times. The City was one of the key outposts of the Hanseatic League, a trading union similar to the Single Market or the European Union, which operated in Northern Europe in the middle ages.

This is Haakon’s Hall, named after the Norwegian King Haakon. This is a post-war reconstruction of what the original building would have looked like.

This is a statue of the Composer, Edvard Grieg. On the left is the new concert hall which gives small concerts and piano recitals of Grieg’s music. His music from the Peer Gynt suite is particularly famous, including Morning, The Hall of the Mountain King and Anitra’s dance, to name but a few.

This wooden house is called Trollhaugen, (Home of the Trolls) and was named by Grieg’s wife Nina. The house was built in 1885/6 and they lived here only in the summer months. It was built in a very traditional style and had no electricity or running water (despite being available at the time) because Edvard Grieg was ultra conservative. 

This is a photograph of the Composer (on the right) entertaining with friends. His wife is in the centre of the picture. Nina was a soprano and most of Edvard’s music for the voice was written for her. They had lots of friends, including the composers Lizst and also Tchaikovsky.

Edvard Grieg demanded absolute silence when he was composing and he found his house was too noisy so he built himself a wooden cabin on the edge of the lake in which he did most of his work.

This stone in the cliff marks the grave of Edvard Grieg who lived from 1843 to 1907. His wife, Nina is also buried here. She lived from 1845 to 1935. The grave is pointing eastwards over the lake because Grieg wanted them to always face the rising sun.

This is a photo taken through the window into Grieg’s private hut where he wrote his music.

 

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of the photographs of my truly magical journey to Norway. I loved the country and the scenery and am now saving up so I can visit Oslo in a few years time.

🙂

 

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/prophetic/

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/rdp-thursday-blizzard/

 

Flam, Sognefjord and more waterfalls.

I recently went exploring the wonders of Norway, well not all of them, just a taster.

I wanted to share some of my photos with you.

This is Vossvangen lake. The Town of Voss is situated on this lake and is an excellent base for the area. If you are interested in Sport, this area is famous for is Skiing in the Winter and its fishing in the summer.

This photo was taken from the Flam railway which provides fantastic views on its trip from Flam on the Sognefjord up to the town of Myrdal. On the left of the picture is a famous Zigzag road which provides quite a harrowing journey for tourists, but thankfully they close the road from the 1st of October, so we went back to Flam a different way. 🙂

There had been so much rain in the previous weeks that this waterfall had become much large than usual and the stream had burst its banks. I didn’t linger too long.

The turf-roofed houses here are part of the Gudvangen Viking village. Well worth a visit, apparently.

This was actually the only day we had where it rained all day. It made the waterfalls extra impressive though.

 

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/exploring/

 

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/17/rdp-wednesday-sport/

First photos – Delft and The Hague

You may be aware if you follow my blog, that I recently took a trip to Norway. Well I didn’t go straight to Norway, the first port of call was Amsterdam and we decided, rather than wander in Amsterdam where I have already spent some time, we’d visit Delft and The Hague instead.

Here are a few photos.

From here the ship did a ricochet off the Hook of Holland and we ended up in Norway. I will share some of the highlights of the trip with you over this week. 🙂

 

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/ricochet/

 

Scenes of Ireland – 2011

These are some pictures I took on a holiday to Ireland back in April 2011. The Title picture and the picture below are of the Cliffs of Moher on the West coast of Ireland in County Clare.

The picture above is of the famous Blarney Castle. People still queue up to dangle backwards from the battlements in order to kiss the blarney stone and receive the gift of the Gab. As I’m scared of heights I didn’t bother. Plus I don’t really need the gift of the gab as I talk too much as it is.

This picture above is of the sunken garden on Garinish Island of the coast of County Cork near Bantry Bay.

This picture is of the Rock of Cashel, said to be the ancient seat of the Kings of Ireland. One famous tale from the past is that one fierce warrior king who was being crowned king of Ireland was taken by surprise when the bishop who was proclaiming him king accidentally dropped the sword and it pierced his foot. He didn’t scream though because he thought it was part of the ceremony. 

If you happen to be a fan of old films, you may recognise this ruined church yard from a rather famous film set in Ireland.

An actor by the name of John Wayne sat on this bridge.

And this was the cottage used for some of the scenes. The film is The Quiet Man. In my view, the best John Wayne film ever made. With the lovely Maureen O’Hara. 

 

I hope you liked my pictures.

🙂