Couchill Woods, Seaton, Devon

 

This may come as no surprise but there's been a change of plan. ;) I really wanted to finish the one I promised before the end of the month but it's going to take a lot longer, so I'm posting this much shorter one instead.

A lot of the photos are too bad to include and although I'd love to go back and take better ones I can no longer manage the walk. However, the ones I've included give an idea of how lovely this woodland is and some of the uses it was put to in the past. So this is going to be much shorter than intended. If I can revisit in the future I'll re-do the whole post. One can but hope, lol.

This is a wonderful place for a walk. A plantation of trees belonging to the Clinton Devon Estates, it has been left for nature to take its course and is now mature and full of undergrowth and woodland plants with public footpaths running through it.

The first few photos are of the last bit of the walk here, with the tree plantation stretching along the roads. 

Couchill has some interesting history, as it is thought that a 3rd or 4th century Roman fort was built here - connected to the Legio Augusta II in Exeter due to tiles found bearing their inscription - although likely to be auxillary or fleet rather than a legionary fort.

Across the main Seaton Down Road and slightly south west is the nearby Honeyditches where a Roman villa was excavated. It is now thought to have been a mansio, which is really interesting. Mansios were the equivalent of a Bed & Breakfast for dignitaries and travellers on official business, carrying a passport giving them the right to stay in what were substantial villas.

Excavations showed the remains of a grape orchard on the southern hillside to provide wine for the guests plus a bath house along with the foundations of other stone buildings.

I visited the woods three times over several years, so the photos are somewhat different each time. I was told that there's an old reservoir here, which I subsequently found on the OS Map, but it must have been quite a walk through the woods and I gave up before locating it.

I did, however, find this on a walk around the lane circling the woods in 2007, seen below.  

It's an old metal utility box. After some research, I discovered that it may have been an emergency phone box, now left abandoned and redundant due to the woods no longer being worked and/or the widespread use of mobile phones. To read more about this you can access the article here.  

 

Lovely foxgloves amongst other wild flowers during a June visit in 2009.

And some other photos which were taken inside the woods, below.

This was a visit in April 2011 and the bluebells were out but the photos were too bad to include, along with some others along the walk to find the reservoir. 

The photo below is looking back down towards the entrance gate.

Whilst there I took the opportunity to take a self portrait, leaving my camera halfway down the slope as I ran down to the gate to pose. Unfortunately, I didn't get there quick enough on the first try and was still trotting down the hill when it took, lol. 

However, I managed to make it the second time where I did my 'wonder woman' power stance! ;)

And that's about all I've got for now. And if you think some of those photos are bad you should see the other ones! The write-up was so much easier to do by cutting it very short though, and I'm glad I managed to include it on the blog after all.

I'm not going to promise which one's coming up next, as the best laid plans of mice and men seem to go all awry for me lately, but I'm still working on Fore Street in Beer village. Although I haven't set up my new scanner yet, I expect to do so soon when I'll be able to scan the new photos of the infant school and master's cottage for their own article.

And just in time before the new month. Yay! Cheers everyone, and hopefully I'll be posting a bit more often now. Or have I just jinxed it by saying so? Oops!

Weather Lore: Part Two

 

As we're almost halfway through the year, it's a good time to continue with the wonderful world of sayings, signs and verses of weather lore. 

Last time we finished with April so we'll start here with May...appropriately enough! The hedgerows contain a lovely array of spring flowers, including these fragile and very pretty wild roses - called Dog Rose - that begin to show themselves in late May and during the month of June.

As mentioned last time, there's this well-known saying...

"March winds and April showers
Bring forth May flowers."

...and we certainly had a lot of both windy and rainy weather last year. Unusually, it was a very cold Spring and people in most of Britain were wearing jackets, hoodies and jumpers, etc, until the last week in June when we suddenly had a hot Summer for a couple of days! 

This year we had a fair amount of rain until a few weeks ago, when we mostly had sunny days, lovely and warm at last, although still chilly in the evenings and early mornings. Now we're in May there's a chilly wind with warm sun interspersed with cold patches of cloud.

Some signs of rain include Cumulonimbus clouds with their tall towers high in the sky, indicating heavy rain. They are also colloquially known as Thunder Clouds as they are sometimes a sign of thunderstorms on their way.

The clouds gradually spread out to form a fully cloudy sky. Sometimes they continue overhead, leaving a clear sky inbetween the passing of more of the tall clouds but eventually spread everywhere and the rain falls.

An old saying about Cumulonimbus clouds is :

"Mountains in the morning,
Fountains in the evening."

When there's moisture in the air distant sounds carry further, often with an slight echo. I find this one really interesting because our small coastal town is in a valley between two cliffs, and the echoey sound is quite pronounced. We also can't receive radio signals very well, but that's a whole different story.

Another sign is that of mist in the morning. Usually on the coast, mist on the rivers flow down towards the sea but can also happen inland when it can come from hills. Apparently, if the mist travels up river it can be a sign of good weather to come, whereas flowing downwards indicates bad weather.

I've seen this lovely phenomenon many times and it's a truly dramatic sight.

And here's the rhyme for that piece of weather lore:

"When the mist is from the hill
Then good weather it doth spill (spoil),
When the mist is from the sea
Then good weather it will be."

One of the most reliable indications of rain to come is due to excessive moisture in the air, which makes distant objects stand out brightly coloured and very clearly. Sometimes this can cause a golden glow around them too, which is fabulous when it's against a dark blue sky.

Interestingly, there is a local rhyme about this where I live in the small seaside town of Seaton, situated almost in the centre of Lyme Bay. Portland is an island on the eastern side of the Bay, and can only be seen from here when this effect takes place. As the rhyme says:

"See Portland plain,
Tis sign of rain."

Excessive moisture can also appear to cause rings around the sun or moon; called a corona if near to the sphere or a halo if further away. Of course, it's only our perception as seen through the moist air, and here's the folk rhyme defining how the rain cuts off sight of the moon the following evening.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
Tonight no moon we see."

I don't have a photo of this phenomenon so I'll make do with the crescent moon photo above. :)

And, of course, nearly everyone's familiar with this one:

"Red sky at night, shepherds delight,
Red sky in the morning, shepherds warning."

The photo below was taken one morning, starting with red clouds turning orange then gradually turning grey and covering the sky. I'm sure the rooftop birds knew what was coming as they seemed to be huddling in readiness. 

And a very fiery evening sky, below.

Some other bits of weather wisdom for May:

"Cold May and windy,
Barn filleth up finely"

Which is exactly how the weather is so far.

"A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay."

"Water in May brings bread through all the year."

There is also the wonderfully refreshing effect from rain hitting dry soil, which produces that delightful scent called Petrichor. 

It's a good job all this rain is good for us as we have such a lot of it here! ;)
 

And I'm going to leave it there for now. There is so much about May, plus other weather phenomonen, that continuing into the rest of the year would make this part rather long. Anyway, I really enjoyed writing that so I will make a start with Part Three. 

I'm not sure what's coming up next. I've only got one former website article to rewrite, plus one old photo shoot on the contents list but I'm not sure whether to add them or not. Also some Useful Books posts, which I'll have to get on with, along with more Other Photography and Odds & Ends. Anyway, I've got Fore Street in Beer to finish, and then that's it until some new photos have been finished, processed and scanned.

So, Fore Street in Beer it is then! Or is it? ;)

Cheers, everyone, and I'll be with you again soon. :)