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A winter walk near Whitchurch, England

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This Sunday we had a birthday to celebrate.

It began with lunch in the Watership Down Inn. Golden fish and chips, or delicious roast beef with Yorkshire puddings as puffed up as clouds, followed by irresistible variations on icecream and cake. Then out we headed into the winter grey for a walk.

Mud, slimy as sludge, clung to our boots from start to finish, but we didn’t mind the sliding, and we took no notice of the weather as it came and went, wiping over us like a damp cloth. We were celebrating, and it was beautiful.

Freshly planted fields, covered in flint, stretched up the hill to one side, while a chalk stream ran through trees in the valley below. There were a few other walkers, and dogs, but, for most of the way, it was just us, and the bridges we crossed and the mills we passed.

There was a rope swing – two in our party pirouetted lopsidedly – but mostly we just wound on, talking, and talking, past the swans, the ducks, the snowdrops and the trout, to arrive back at the old silk mill in time for tea.

A good Sunday!

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Sorry now it’s gone

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This is a thank you to a young shop, that turned a dark corner bright, during the lock/unlock days of Covid. Sadly, without enough customers, the shop has had to close.

We shall miss it. Purely selfish, but we loved knowing it was there. On some days, the space it occupied with such welcome, felt so sunny, that we might have been on faraway shores.

Now there is a gap in our lives, and in that gap there is a feeling of guilt. We were happy, occasional customers, serving our needs, not thinking about what the shop might need to benefit as much as we did, from it being there. We were careless, and are now sorry to have lost a business with such heart.

My thanks to the little wine shop, for the light it brought in the dark days. I hope that in the future we’ll do better at supporting the physical businesses that add so much to our lives.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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Final postcard from New Zealand – Hawke’s Bay

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Dotted with sheep and ridged with tiny tracks, the hills around Hawke’s Bay seem to roll on forever, like a rumpled duvet. For the most part the slopes are without trees, those having lost their ground centuries earlier to humans. The tallest of the peaks in that region is Te Mata, from where I took this photograph during my visit in June 2022.

On one of the days I was there, I was taken for a drive through the hills. For part of the way we followed the Tukituki River, along an almost empty, winding road towards the coast, to visit a beautiful old homestead. The day – so special – began grey and cold, and ended with bright sunshine.

We drove back in the evening, the last of the sun picking out the tracks left by livestock as they walked the hills in search of the sweetest pastures. The sheep, dotted far and wide, seemed so small against the geography of it all, and I could imagine, barely hidden beneath them, the restless shift of tectonic plates. Occasionally there were farm houses, and closer to Havelock North, some immaculate vineyards, but for the most part it was a quiet road. The distances between neighbours were not huge, but the hills added an isolating feel. I wondered how it was for the farmers.

The next day I flew out of Napier, to Auckland, the carpet of crewcut hills tumbling away beneath us.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023