Monday

 On Monday we visited Ilam (pronounced eye-lamb) Park, in the Staffordshire Village of Ilam.  It is a 158 acre site which sits on either side of the River Manifold. It's managed by the National Trust.

  It seems ages since we last walked there.  I'd have to search back through my photos to see when it was.  I searched on here and came up with a post of November 2021, so possibly that was the last time.   

Ilam Hall, which was re-built and re-designed in the 1820s by the Watts-Russell family, was donated to the National Trust in 1934.  The main hall is leased to The Youth Hostel Association.

How the hall used to look before part of it was demolished in the 1930s.

Above The Church of the Holy Cross. 

The remains of a Saxon Cross on Paradise Walk. It was found in the foundations of a cottage in the village of Ilam in the 1840s.

Morning Coffee at the tea rooms and a visit to the bookshop before a quick photograph of another wallaby.

This one is Walla-B Fierce painted and illustrated by Ella Kasperowicz in collaboration with Pride in the Moorlands.

It was a lovely morning for a walk, dry and not too warm. There were lots of families enjoying themselves on the Mole Trail.

It was time to move on to our next destination for lunch and another wallaby.  I'll save that for a later post.

Orchids and books

 In February we were given an Orchid as part of a thank you present.  I wrote about it at the time - here.

About three weeks ago the last of the flowers died off so we freed the plant from its wire support and let it grow as it wanted.  Soon more flower buds appeared and now we have more flowers on the first of the two stems and buds enlarging on the second.  I'm hoping we can keep it going for a while longer.

In my last post I promised recent reading and more wallabies.

I've been reading quite a few books that had been reserved at the library over the last couple of months and as often happens they were ready for collection almost at the same time.

I enjoyed reading Gill Hornby's novel The Elopement, just as much as I did her first two Miss Austen and Godmersham Park.  All three feature the Austen and Knight families and are well researched and easy to read.  The fourth novel from the Reverend Richard Coles A Death on Location is just as gently amusing and entertaining as the the first three.

The Red Shore by William Shaw introduces a new detective called Eden Driscoll.  I've read all of William Shaw's DS Alexandra Cupidi novels which are set in Dungeness.  The new setting for this novel is Teignmouth in Devon.  I have many happy childhood memories of Teignmouth as we spent a couple of weeks there each summer over a number of years.  We stayed at the same guest house and always had a beach hut belonging to them on the back beach where the ferry crosses the Teign estury to Shaldon.  The setting for the book is in the area where we had the beach hut. I hope there are more books in this new series as I really enjoyed this one.

Above me and my cousin John on one of those holidays.  I'm not sure how old we were, perhaps nine or ten.  John was just two weeks older than me.  He would have been seventy five this coming Friday.

Death in Blitz City by David Young is set in Hull and has quite a convoluted storyline with several different elements shooting off at tangents until all is revealed.  It took a while to get into but I did finish reading it.

Another book I read on e-books Cloud Library  was Death at the White Heart by Chris Chibnall.  (I forgot to take a photo of the cover.) I hope this is the start of a series as I enjoyed it. 

I have three more books reserved but I suspect they will be longer getting around to my turn.  They are The Black Wolf by Louise Penny, Deadly Remains by Kate Ellis and The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith.

Two more Wallabies spotted over the last few days.

Wobbly painted by the Rachael and Phillippa Corcutt Collective in collaboration with Borderland Voices.  He's at the Manifold Valley Visitor Centre at Hulme End near Hartington.

We treated ourselves to a coffee at The Tea Junction tea rooms.

The Wallaby above is Bere painted by Nellie Shepherd and Briony Eyre from the Bullclough School of Art in collaboration with Beresford Memorial First School.  This one is outside the Peak Wildlife Park.

All for now.

This and That

The last three weeks have rushed by so quickly and we are into August already.  We have had a new roof fitted in that time.  All did not go well.  It all started on Friday 13th June when we went outside to find a fascia board had dropped off the front of the house.  Later we noticed a leak in one of the bedrooms.

The people who came to look at it said that the whole roof would have to be replaced, temporary repairs were done in the short term.  I'm not really surprised as neighbours either side have had to have replacements over the last year.  The houses were built in the early 1970s.  We decided to use the same firm as they were good and well recommended.

The scaffolding went up over the 16th and 17th of July and the roofers arrived on Monday 21st July.  They started work on one side of the roof and stripped off the old tiles and etc.  Two of them went to get some more materials leaving one man.  The heavens opened, the rain was harsh, almost like hail.  It came through the open roof into the loft, it soaked through the insulation and came out of the light fittings in the bedroom, bathroom and down the stairs.  The brave man left on the roof was trying on his own to place batons and put down the membrane to stop the rain coming through.  The others came back and secured that side but all had to go home for hot showers and a change of clothing.  Day two they arrived early, thank heavens it was dry weather, they worked hard to complete everything.  

In the meantime we had the job of drying things out.  Some plastering and repainting had to be done.  The scaffolding should have been taken down early last week but the scaffolder had to have treatment on his eye which caused him a few problems and his team were not licensed to work without him.  They finally came on Saturday to take most of the scaffolding down, working over the weekend to catch up on work missed during the week.

They came back Sunday morning and we left them to it and took all the damp sheep's wool loft insulation to the local household waste and recycling centre and decided we needed a little break so we went to look for more Wallabies on the trail mentioned in my last post.

The Wallaby above is Sam, painted by Nichola Richardson in collaboration with Samaritans, Leek.  It's outside Blythe Bridge Community Library.

Woosh, above, is in Cheadle market place, painted by Creative Cheadle/Tudor House.

Above is Vivienne painted by Chris Thompson in collaboration with Westwood College.  It's in the grounds of Buxton and Leek College in Leek.

My favourite of these three is Sam.  

This sculpture depicts the nature and beauty of the Staffordshire Moorlands.

 

Curlew

Lapwing

It's raining and windy outside today.  I'm glad we had our little break yesterday.  At least we are warm and dry under our new roof.

I'll be back with recent reading and perhaps some more Wallabies.  

A Walk in the Rain and the first Wallaby

 Yesterday we walked in soft and gentle rain at Biddulph Grange Country Park.  The country park is next door to the National Trust's Biddulph Grange Gardens and was originally part of the same estate.

It is 35 hectares of landscaped views and natural features designed by Victorian industrialists James Bateman and Robert Heath. 

There are both original and newly laid out paths through both meadow and woodland leading to the lake and it's boathouse built in 1903.

A Hydro-electric scheme begun in 1904 was reinstated in 2000 and provides sustainable power for local use.

We walked as far as the lake, you can see the boathouse in the distance and the rain on the lake.

Back at the visitor centre we spotted the Wallaby.  There are ten in all and they are part of the Where's Wallaby trail around the towns and beauty spots of the Staffordshire Moorlands.  Why wallabies? There is a story to tell.  

At the time of the second world war five Bennett's wallabies escaped into the wild from a zoo at Roaches Hall run by a man called Henry Courtney Brocklehurst.  Sadly he lost his life in Burma during the war.  The wallabies bred and at one time as many as fifty were counted on and around the Roaches.

There are now wallabies at the Peak Wildlife Park who are celebrating their 10th Anniversary this year.  Hence ten wallabies.  They have joined with Outside, Wild in Art and the Staffordshire Moorlands Council to commission ten artists to work with ten community groups to create the wallabies.

The Wallaby above is called Berry B painted by Clare Ash and the Biddulph Youth and Community Zone.

Above a Wallaby and Joey taken at Peak Wildlife Park in February this year.

The exhibition runs from 18th July to 5th September so we have plenty of time to seek out the other nine over the summer.

A few more and a Lazy Fox

Mr Fox has been visiting the garden in the early mornings and evenings.  A few days ago I spotted him relaxing on the top lawn.  I'm glad he feels safe here.

In my last post I promised a few more photos of The Ragged Victorians at the Gladstone Pottery Museum.

I can't remember what character the man above was meant to be.  I love his hat.

The Rat Catcher.  I expect that today he would be called a Rodent Control Operative.

Fallen on hard times

The two girls were really involved in their conversation.

Below the Shepherd in sepia tone

and the girls in black and white

All for now.

Ragged Victorians

 Today the Ragged Victorians were in town so we walked down the hill to find them. 

 They were at the Gladstone Pottery Museum where a Victorian Day was being held.

We could hear the music from the barrel organ as we entered the museum.  

The Ragged Victorians are a living history group re-enacting the lower classes of England in 1851 and very good they are too.  So many different characters.  The sober shepherd, the rat catcher, the fish wife, the policeman, the wounded soldier and many more.

I took loads of photos so I'll share a few now and perhaps do something later with more of them.  I might try to sepia tone some of them or perhaps monochrome.

The Fisherman's wife making nets.

Lavender seller

The Rat Catcher

In the Doctor's waiting room

A friendly hug

The sober shepherd seeking work

Policeman.  

The costumes were wonderful, suitably grubby and well worn, roughly mended shoes clattered on the cobbles.

All for now.