ABC Wednesday - Beach(ish)

A beach hotel for baby who is looking out over the bay while watching briskly trotting horsey.

A blue sky day in Morecambe, further down there is a breakwater by the side of the jetty and railings in the popular seaside colour of blue.

Perhaps I will look at the birds,

 Oh he is a bit scary with that big beak, what a bonza bird.  Beach café in the background on the Stone Jetty, a nice place to take a break.

While watching  real birds, bombarding this boat, they must have a benefactor of fish.

 On the way back down the Stone Jetty there are lots of places to sit and rest your bike or browse amongst the sculptures.

 Or enjoy some birdy beachside humour

As Basil Brush would say Boom Boom 

(For those outside the shores of Britain, Basil Brush is a glove puppet fox who tells corny jokes and after the punch line laughs and says, boom boom)

You can bank on lots more words beginning with B over on the  ABC Wednesday meme.  We are now on our 7th blitz of the alphabet.

English Journeys

Nathan Burton has designed the covers for the new Penguin 'English Journeys' series. After seeing some of the covers on Caustic Cover Critics blog I wanted to rush out and buy them all immediately however  I managed to resist the urge and just got The Clouded Mirror, Rolt's meditation on canals, the English landscape and "endless summer days of childhood", together with

Henry James's travels around the corners of England.  This series of 20 little books each of which consist of  about 100 pages, cover poetry, gardens, walks, nature, the countryside, the perfect companions to take on a journey around England, even if you just wanted to gaze at the covers.

Saturday Mix - Flying

Sister is flying a kite. Unusually for the north west coast of England there is hardly any wind. But she has it fluttering.  Brother approaching.....

 No I want a go at flying. Why is it not flying?

Here comes Dad to the rescue.

 Never will fly wrapped round your ankle.   Tricky business flying kites.

My entry to Shannara's Saturday Mix photomeme whose theme this week is Flying (Flyga, flygande, flög)

 

ABC Wednesday - Activity

Are you ready for some aerobic activity?  Not aquarobics, this canal water might be nice for Anas platyrhynchos (Mallard)  but a bit murky for my taste.  But notice our mariner has a bike at the ready on the front.

A perfect way to journey through the countryside.  This old railway line would give a great non impact aerobic workout improving the distribution and consumption of oxygen and so improve the hear rate.  Not to mention enhance well being.

Unfortunately I have no pictures of Aqua-cycles but if your legs need a rest what about a canoe.  This was a team relay race on the River Severn. For a real work out maybe a team game of

Rugby League if you want an adversary and if you don't mind being battered and bruised.  A mix of aerobic and anaerobic and an action packed game for the spectator.

Relaxing to be spectators by accident as we sat on a rock in the sunshine, having a late lunch on the mountain side, and watched the participants on the Walna Scar track in the last stage of the triathlon a 9km run down to Coniston. They had already swum the lake for 1.5 km and taken a 28 km bike ride.  These were the stragglers but the ones in front looked remarkable fresh.

Later in the day these two were out for a bit of activity, a chat and a run. Fell running is a popular sport in the area and this is a nice soft track for training.

,

The perfect aerobic activities are cycling, swimming, rowing, running, walking and hiking. So lastly some walkers coming down Wetherlam, the reward, to go up again to Swirl How to get to the next peak, a bit of agility required to negotiate the rocks.  Some people are more adept than others in bouncing from rock to rock.

Are you ready to strap on your trainers or do you just feel like a nice sit down

when you can throw a ball at a dog and watch

its anticipation before bounding off.  Dogs are big on activity.

The abode of ABC Wednesday and its many participants can be found here.  There will be lots more

words starting with A.

Saturday Mix - Love

 Love of Nature

The prompt for Shannara's Saturday Mix photomeme this week is Love/Kärlek.  

The blossom was falling from the trees and scattering over the bracken so who could resist this 

heart shaped petal.

ABC Wednesday - Zero

Are you sitting comfortably, perhaps with some ice in your glass against the heat of summer. Let me take you in a trip back in time from January to March this year when temperatures were below zero for weeks on end.  Wonder if that duck is having much luck in the frozen ground. 

Or are they puzzled why they are walking on water, fluffing their feather against the cold, these two were having a morning snooze Getting their Zeds in..  Which is the better insulator in zero temperatures,  feathers

or wool?  Perhaps

technical fabrics as modelled by this human.  The sun on its way down over the Irish Sea, still not cold enough to freeze salty water.

A 'nice' coating of ice over the snow at the top of the mountain, the trig point marking its Zenith. 

And we zealously expected some good views, well the snow capped hills are somewhere in the murk.

Let me finish where I started.  Zounds, some zany kids are taking their skate boards on to the lake.

Zip over to ABC Wednesday to visit the participants and lots more words beginning with Z

This is the end  Round 6 of Mrs Nesbitt's zestful meme.  Are you in for Round 7?  There are thousands of words out there and more being added all the time.  I wonder why I struggled thinking of one for Z.

Saturday Mix - Forgotten

Someone is missing her pretty little bag. Maybe she was going to a party dressed in a matching dress.  But here it is hanging on some farm fencing, forgotten.  Another person walking down this lane in the Black Mountains must have come across it and put it here hoping the little girl was going to come back and find it. There is always something poignant about small items lost by a child and put out of harms way on a windowsill, seat or fence by a passing stranger.

This is my entry to Shannara's Saturday Mix photomeme whose theme this week is Forgotten or Bortglömd 

 

ABC Wednesday - Yacht

How about a weekend sailing, a bit of Yachting.  Although this young girl is determined to head for open water without sails. Her boat is yar or easy to handle.  Pity it wasn't a dinghy because she is French, and would call it a youyou.  The man at the back reminds me of Millais' The Boyhood of Raleigh

which I remember hanging on my Grandparents wall, years ago, along with other paintings with a maritime theme, my Grandfather being a sailor.  However as this yacht is on a lake or Etang de Boulet it will not be journeying as far as Raleigh on the high seas.

A sunny day and a fresh breeze perfect for taking a yacht out on Coniston Water.

Wind rattling through rigging on moored yachts is one of the evocative sounds that always brings back wonderful memories of warm Mediterranean holidays.  No wind on this day though as can be seen by the still water, and not the Mediterranean but the old Maritime Cinque Port of Rye.

When visiting moorings there is usually

a boat for sale.  Have ye ever been tempted?  Have ye a yen for sailing , Yes?

We have the Dutch to thank for the yacht.  Their navy used light fast sailing vessels to pursue pirates in the shallow waters of the Low Country.  The original Dutch word started with a J and meant hunting. Soon the boats were being used for sport, and called speel-jachts, the naval ones were oorlog-jachts. Good job they did not enter our language as Jachts because what would I have done for the Y ABC.

Small fast ships would be popular with smugglers, and the south coast of England was a smugglers paradise, as long as they were not caught by the Revenue Cutters. Yikes.  Brandy and tobacco were brought at night by boat from France to avoid the high tax.  Battles were fought between gangs with the revenue just like Russell Thorndike's Doctor Syn whose stories or should I say, yarns, take place in Romney Marsh which is not too far from Rye.

The sign on The Ship Inn, which in times past was used as a store for smuggler's contraband, is headed with a quote from Lord Pembroke in 1781 - "Will Washington take America or smugglers England first".

Yomp over to ABC Wednesday for more blogs and words beginning with the letter Y

Saturday Mix - Weather (Väder)

The Gathering Storm

The path down from the Nine Standards to the village of Hartley at the beginning of June.

The Nine Standards. East Cumbria

Shannara's Saturday Mix a photomeme with a weekly theme.  This week is # 18 Weather or in Swedish Väder, another northern European country with a lot of it.