A few more pictures from the Air Show – the Red Arrows support helicopter, a Eurocopter Squirrel, at the Smugglers Inn field.
Team Merlin, 78 Squadron, RAF Benson.
19
Aug 10
Dawlish Air Show
A nice young man from RAF Benson offered to take my picture beside the Merlin. Once I was actually standing there it didn’t seem such a good idea, but it came out okay – I guess they’re trained for the tough assignments.
20
Jun 10
Orley Common
Greater Butterfly-orchid (Platanthera chlorantha)
Orley Common is half a mile west of Ipplepen on the road to Torbryan: grid reference SX 828 667. It is a fragile site of great value for its wildlife, geology and historical interest. Because it has fairly undisturbed ancient grassland and ancient woodland, it is very species-rich, with County and national rarities. The Common covers 19 hectares (47 acres), but feels smaller with it’s intimate, varied landscape. The area is an ‘ownerless’ Common, but is protected and managed by Teignbridge District Council under Section 9 of the Commons Registration Act, 1965.
Common Spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii)
Sloe berries (Prunus spinosa)
Tufted Vetch (Vivia cracca)
Dryad’s saddle (Polyporus squamosus). Bracket fungi, parasitic on deciduous trees especially elm, beech and sycamore, and causing an intensive white rot. Spring to summer, very common.
08
May 10
Keats at Teignmouth
Keats House, Northumberland Place; which may or may not be where John Keats and his ailing brother, Tom, lodged with the Jeffrey family during his two months in Teignmouth. Houses in the area have been renumbered many times since then, and in the early nineteenth-century the street was known as the Strand. From Keats’ letters it would seem that he stayed at a corner property with a view of the river, newly built on land reclaimed from a marsh. It sounds like an uncomfortable place to spend the winter, even for a healthy person, and unlikely to enjoy the ‘very beneficial climate’ described in contemporary guidebooks.
28
Apr 10
Teignmouth Harbour
More pictures from Teignmouth, 23 March 2010.
Looking from New Quay across to the Fish Quay, with Shaldon Bridge and the sheds of Teignmouth Docks visible in the background.
New Quay from Back Beach. The quay was constructed in 1820 by George Templer to facilitate the shipping of Dartmoor granite from Haytor. The building under scaffolding to the right of the picture is now the New Quay Inn, but in the days when fishing and fish trading were the mainstays of the town it was known as The Newfoundland Fishery. The house in Northumberland Place, where Keats and his brother stayed in 1818 is reached via a narrow street just off to the right – only a stone’s throw from the river.
In amongst the modern additions of tarmac, street lighting, road signs etc., which initially seem to have obliterated the history of the quays, there is still plenty of evidence of past activity.
New Quay – sheds and storage out on the river’s edge.
27
Apr 10
Keats at Teignmouth
We are here still enveloppd in clouds – I lay awake last night – listening to the Rain with a sense of being drown’d and rotted like a grain of wheat – There is a continual courtesy between the Heavens and the Earth. – the heavens rain down their unwelcomeness and the Earth sends it up again to be returned to morrow.
John Keats: Letter to J. H. Reynolds – 27 April 1818