here, there and everywhere..

The past two or three weeks have past in the blink of an eye!  I've been away camping two weekends in a row .. I have never had so many holidays :)  I'm not going to talk too much about them.. but both weekends were lovely.

The first trip was to the Mercian Gathering with my friend Jane.. the weather was lovely and dry, Friday and Sunday were scorching sunshine and Saturday was sun and cloud with a cool wind (I caught the sun rather nicely :).  It was a weekend full of lovely folk music and workshops.. I did Qi Gong for the first time (and loved it - must do more).  

Here are a couple of pics (as I didn't take my camera 3 of them are from the website.. hope its ok that I used them..)

A rather impressive wicker man under construction

Saturday night.. burning the wicker man

Once he had collapsed, and the fire had been racked into a long narrow burn lots of people jumped over it, the young bucks went first while the flames were rather high - they must of been mad - but that's young lads for you lol .. as time went on the flames got lower and lower and more and more people jumped over.  I must confess that much as I wanted to jump over I was wearing crocs on my feet.. and had visions of falling flat on my face as I run down the avenue before even reaching the fire!  So I watched and cheered instead.

Burning labyrinth.
Everyone joined hands and either danced or walked in procession through the labyrinth, between the flames, as an act of purification.

The Witchmen - The Other Morris
As a Terry Pratchett fan this was a real treat :)
both the dancers and their musicians are most excellent!

As lovely as the days were, both nights were COLD .. too cold to sleep well and I was totally shattered when I got home.  And what a lovely homecoming it was!  This was my first time away from the family and they missed me.. I came home to a spotlessly clean house, all the washing done, a cooked dinner complete with desert and my lovely hubby had brought a bottle of my favourite wine :)

I had four days to recover before, with a serious case of de-ja-vu I repacked the camping ki for a weekend in Cornwall (yes, back again lol)!  My mum-in-law was born and raised in Bodmin, Cornwall and has been feeling particularly homesick lately.  So we decided to take her for a long weekend back to her old stomping ground :) which just happens to be our favourite holiday destination. Having only been there 3 weeks previously it felt a little like we had never been away..  the nice thing is we got to do things that we were unable to do on the last trip.

Friday night was wonderful.. for the first time in 7 years all four of us got to play in the surf together at the same time on Polzeath beach.. yay.  As dogs are not allowed on the beach at least one of us usually has to stay behind with them, but mum-in-law was more than happy to sit and watch from the top of the beach.  The tide was high so we were not that far from her..  The sea looked like molten silver and was warm as bath water, the waves were beautiful and apart from us there were only about 5 other people in the sea at that time.. so plenty of waves for everyone :).  We finally forced ourselves out when the light started to fade..  

Saturday we explored Tintagel (which was quieter than I have ever seen it) here are a couple more pics :)

Tintagel

I like the colours in this one

Low tide at Tintagel exposed more caves to explore

Amber and Jess had lots of fun too :)

I found lots of beautiful colours and textures to be inspired and intrigued by..

Lichens on weather battered coastal walls

Stacked stones on Tintagel beach..
They look like they were placed, but they are so big and heavy I
 think they must have found their own way into this position.

And now I'm back home for the winter!  Autumn is most definitely kicking in .. there's a definite bite in the air and the berries are turning bright red.  It is time to get the bird feeders out!  

Everyone is either back at work or school now and I am free to do 'my thing'. First on the agenda I really ought to finish clearing out my 'craft' room - it's a store room really.  And then I can get felting - my fingers are itching to do this!

xx